Just like anything else, there is more to it than drug X

Opioids are pretty addictive by themselves, really more so than any other drug. In addition, a lot of the pill mills were placed in poor areas, precisely because low agency people would become addicted to them.

Purdue is very predatory with their selling of opioids.

Yes, that’s part of it. There are a lot of people at different levels that made a lot of money off of pushing pain meds.

They did similar stuff with Valium in the 70's-80's too.

And cocaine in the 30s

And heroin before that

It changes decade to decade but there is always some substance

I don't think those are really comparable, the opioid crisis is now so bad that the US has a decreasing live expectancy. There's tens of thousands of deaths every year because of it.

Think of it this way

When they die off, our expectancy goes up

/s

The problem isn't a drug company conspiracy

It's the fact that, pound for pound, there is no pain medication as effective as opiates yet available for human consumption.

Sure, a lot of pain can be managed by therapy, but stretching and exercise aren't going to deal with the pain of say, burns or surgery.

There are a few new pain killer methods being researched, an a sodium channel blocker based off the mechanism that causes certain people to feel literally no pain at all ever.

But the same tardmongers that call for strict testing and eval are the same tardmongers that bitch it now takes decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to get a med through to human trials.

Not counting the hundreds of billions that go in to R&D, production, and distribution that have to be recoupped at the minimum

Half the reason the medical field still pushes opiates is because there's nothing better that's legally allowed yet.

And believe me, the first company to get an effective non-opiate painkiller on the market is going to DOMINATE it for the next several decades at least.

Bruh

Surgery pain is awful

I recall the Va trying to drown my ass in opiates

I had to fight for physical therapy

The VA is a whole 'nother can of bullshit

And it still sucked

Because I had turned down said opiates

Yep

Like opiates for a week or two after a major injury and/or surgery is fine

They had me on oxy full time though

But after that you should be doing PT to deal with the pain

I cannot recall but they wanted me on something stronger full time

stronger than oxy? Fuck me you'd have been out of your gourd.

No I remember now. Oxy was the initial push to be my base pill. Which ironically was what they gave me post op in the USMC so to have that for pain management is overkill

I ended up on vicodin for a year.

Fuck that shit

Niggas wanting to kill my kidneys

Soda gonna do that for em haha

This was in 14 prior to the opiate reform in the VA

Now they fight just to issue vicodin

The VA just needs to be gutted and replaced