Fentanyl
I’ve written about this before, mainly as a criticism of the overkill coverage by the mainstream news media of the overdose epidemic.
What I want to do is tackle this problem from a different angle: pain management.
Pain has a healthy purpose. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but hear me out: when something is wrong in the body, a message is sent to the brain. The result is the feeling of pain, a kind of “Warning! Warning! Will Robinson…danger!”
Western medicine treats symptoms, mainly, and when we go to the family doctor complaining of our aches and pains, he or she will prescribe a painkiller to help us cope, hoping that the body’s natural healing abilities will kick in, meanwhile.
When the pain doesn’t abate, something serious is going on, but instead of spending precious time and stretched resources finding the cause, more often than not, we are given stronger painkillers.
Mind Over Matter?
I, for one, am a great believer in the power of the mind. My usual joke is:
If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter…
But it’s actually more important than that. I may have shared this with you before, but I don’t need painkillers when I’m having dental work done.
Let’s call it self-hypnosis. In truth, I just put myself into a meditative state, where bits of information can enter and leave my mind as if they were surrounded by soap bubbles. I let them float up, up and away.
But not everyone can do this, especially when pain becomes chronic, followed by acute episodes, like fibromyalgia. Seemingly, sufferers have an increased sensitivity to pain and no way to relieve it. So strong painkillers are sometimes the only ‘remedy’.
Overdose Epidemic
Somewhere along the way, doctors started over-prescribing opioids. Then the street merchants (drug dealers) took the excess drugs and started to mix them with other illegal drugs, as a cheap way to increase their profits. Unfortunately, their ‘work’ is not supervised by the authorities, so mistakes can happen. And there were plenty of mistakes, resulting in lethal overdoses.
Fentanyl and carfentanil are deadly:
It doesn’t take much to kill you. And if you think that these opioids are going to ‘solve’ your pain problems, they will, but not in the way you expected.
Does the term ‘opioid’ derive from the word ‘opium’? Just wondering.
Conclusion
The hidden warning isn’t so hidden after all. It does what it says on the label:
