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I recently re-read a USA Today article on our national disgrace–no, not that one. This stomach-churner didn’t even make the front page, though it’s moved to the center of many of our lives: Big Pharma is encouraging geriatricians to prescribe—and then keep prescribing—opiates at a feverish pace.
As Dr. Mel Pohl of the Las Vegas Recovery Center points out in the article’s online video, the US has four percent of the world’s population but 80% of its opioid users. And why’s that? Because America just keeps taking out its prescription pad. The video features a number of heartbreaking stories—including that of 67-year-old Betty Van Amburgh, who was prescribed “a constant changing of medications” after back surgeries and ended up treacherously addicted. Van Amburgh entered rehab with a shopping bag full of prescribed fentanyl, hydrocodone, and Xanax. She was nearly unconscious, yet still in pain.
This medical system is rendering our parents comatose, but no one’s taking responsibility because they don’t yet know what else to do. . .plus there’s just so much money to be made from pain.
And it breaks my heart.
I visited my mother a few weeks ago. It was all the same: The bedroom smelling of urine; the nest of a bed, the tray of pills and white tablets scattered everywhere. I could grab one so easily. I hear they’re—Oh, I hear they’re delicious.
