{"id":64074,"date":"2016-03-15T13:59:24","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T17:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=64074"},"modified":"2016-03-16T08:31:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T12:31:16","slug":"no-clue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/15\/no-clue\/","title":{"rendered":"no clue…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The CDC today published prescribing guidelines aimed at opioid painkillers<\/a><\/div>\n
Pharmalot<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
by Ed Silverman<\/div>\n
March 15, 2016<\/div>\n

After months of controversy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today published prescribing guidelines to address the epidemic of deaths and overdoses attributed to opioid painkillers. The guidelines, which focus on chronic pain except for cancer and end-of-life care, arrive amid intensifying concern over the widely prescribed drugs. Every day, more than 40 Americans die from overdoses of opioid painkillers. And each year, 2 million people abuse or misuse the drugs.<\/p>\n

Many state lawmakers have responded to the crisis by introducing bills to restrict prescribing. And the Food and Drug Administration is pushing drug makers to develop more tamper-resistant products. But the CDC guidelines, while voluntary, arguably represent the most sweeping effort to address the problem. “We don’t want people getting more opioids than needed,”  said Dr. Debra Houry, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “So we hope this will give patients and health care providers help in assessing the risks and benefits.”<\/p>\n

The guidelines<\/a> are targeted at primary care physicians, in particular, since family doctors write the vast majority of prescriptions for painkillers. Notably, the agency recommends doctors prescribe opioids only after other therapies have failed and rely on the lowest possible doses. The CDC also suggests that short-term treatment — typically, just three days, but sometimes seven days — is far more preferable than long-term use. The overriding concern is that patients who take opioids for extended periods are much more likely to become addicted…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
"I’m sorry, but I’m not someone to talk to about pain medications. Several years ago, I cancelled the part of my DEA license that has to do with narcotics and so I can no longer prescribe them. Narcotics are not a psychiatric medication, and I got so tired of being asked and not knowing what to do that I decided to eliminate the problem. The only other alternative was to stop working here."<\/font><\/em> And that’s the truth. Most patients say, "I understand"<\/font><\/em> and then go on to add "It’s a shame that the people who abuse medications make it so hard on those of us who genuinely need them."<\/font><\/em> As a matter of fact, the ones that I’m sure are drug seeking and\/or addicts also say that same thing. I have no clue what to do about the opiate problem. These guidelines sound mighty stringent to me, but maybe that’s what it takes. I fear that if they’re too prohibitive, the entrepreneurial cartels will expand even further to fill the void… <\/div>\n
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UPDATE: It didn’t really occur to me as I was writing this, but in retrospect, I don’t think I was totally forthcoming. One of the factors in how I dealt with this  surely had to do with my own experience. At age 37, half my life ago, my back went out<\/em> – and it never came back<\/em>. When it first happened, I was in the hospital and had pain medication of some kind. It was the days before CAT scans and MRIs, and I had a myelogram that was negative. So I left the hospital in a lot of pain with a large bottle of Percocet tablets. When I got home, I took the two that it said to take on the bottle. Within a short time, I had the thought "I can see why people get addicted!" and I never took another one. The euphoria was compelling and I guess it scared me. I’ve intermittently had a terrible time with my back ever since with two major fusions – one several years after it first started and another in my sixties when I had spinal stenosis from the scarring with temporary  paralysis. The only narcotic I took after leaving the hospital was hydrocodone after the surgeries for maybe two weeks. I’m no pain stoic, but I just knew if I took it as long as it felt like I needed it, it would’ve been extremely hard to stop. As it played out, even in that short time, I had mild withdrawal symptoms both times. So I’m hyper about people getting addicted. I’ve seen it happen a lot, and it’s not pretty… <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CDC today published prescribing guidelines aimed at opioid painkillers Pharmalot by Ed Silverman March 15, 2016 After months of controversy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today published prescribing guidelines to address the epidemic of deaths and overdoses attributed to opioid painkillers. The guidelines, which focus on chronic pain except for cancer and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64074"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64093,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64074\/revisions\/64093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}