I HAD A POST YESTERDAY ON THE IDIOCY OF THE WAR ON PAIN PILLS, and there was a lot of interesting discussion in the comments. A Facebook friend who’s been facing severe pain for years and is now on a “forced taper” off of her medication sends this:

My fellow Chronic Pain Patients (CPP’s) want our voices heard from the highest rooftops, especially now that the unintended consequences of the war on Opioids, as every day, I read yet another person in my pain groups has committed suicide as when the pain is so dire, desperation kicks in & you’ll do whatever it takes to ease the pain.

I’m a Cradle Catholic so I would never hurt myself. But I see why others do. We CPP’s are treated like criminals by doctors & pharmacies (I.e., after getting all my prescriptions from CVS for 21 years, and they know my health history told me they will no longer fill opioids for me or anyone. The chain pharmacies are all doing this, so we have to go 1 1/2 hour round trip & $6 in tolls to a mom & pop pharmacy at least once a week), we’re lumped in with addicts.

CPP’s do not get “high” from opioids, but we can’t function or have any type of life while in intractable & unrelenting pain. Only 1.32% of opioid deaths are from people who get their prescriptions legitimately. I am terrified by this new doctor & where I live at the South Jersey Shore, we don’t have a lot of options. I am petrified over my forced-taper & also being forced to undergo injections & nerve blocks that I have had 19 injection procedures & the one Surgeon who did my Celiac Plexus block butchered me & made it worse, yet I told my new doctor & he said I had to get them all again or he won’t write for my Rx. He also won’t give me back my old prescription regiment that allowed me to live life outside of bed.

The war on pain pills is hysterical idiocy — like so much government policy.