“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
passionate pachyderms
Pharmacist Steve steve@steveariens.com 502.938.2414
I have been posting on this blog, now in my SIXTH YEAR… Hardly a week that doesn’t go by that I get at least one notice that someone has added me to a NEW FACE BOOK PAGE CONCERNING CHRONIC PAIN.
Just how many THOUSAND(s) for Face Book Pages do we need that are focused on those in the chronic pain community and it’s issues ?
Does the old saying “United we stand… divided we fall ” … seem to apply here.
IMO, there is simply a SINGLE ISSUE that effects all of those in the chronic pain community – you are either getting adequate pain management or you are being denied adequate pain management… There are numerous players involved prescribers, pharmacists, insurance companies and various governmental agencies.
There are a number of sub-issues, but helping getting optimized pain management for all chronic pain pts.. those other issues should go away or become basically non-issues.
It is estimated that there is about 230 million eligible voters and in the typical Presidential election… 106 million will fail to vote and more will fail to vote in “off-year” elections.
Generally speaking, 98% of politicians – especially Congress – will get reelected no matter what they do – or don’t do – when they are in office.
Congress and state legislatures generally function on a seniority basis… those who have been around the longest, get to pretty much control what bills get passed or even what bills even get to be voted on by the entire body.
Everyone should be able to register to vote BY MAIL and vote BY MAIL.. there is no reason for failing to vote… If you don’t know who to vote for… vote for the person challenges the current person holding the office. Especially those who have been “in power” for decades.
The other issue is that all of these thousands of Face Book Pages either need to consolidate or their members consolidate around a SINGLE FACE BOOK PAGE… so that everyone can get a better picture of what is going on for/against those in the chronic pain community.. A clearer picture – unlike the above puzzle…
You can contact the media and politicians, but the DEA and other agencies have at least a couple of dozen decades lead in putting out anti-opiate propaganda pieces…
We also don’t know how many “behind closed door meetings” that upper level DEA agents have with members of Congress and members of city/county/state of law enforcement that can have “informal -off the record -meetings” with bureaucrats/legislators.
The chronic pain community doesn’t need a SINGLE SPOKESPERSON… but.. they do need a SINGLE MESSAGE… Until that happens, the chronic pain community will look like the above puzzle … no clear picture/message because a lot of pieces are missing.
The Snowden effect continued to roll today, with fresh revelations detailing how the pervasive surveillance of the National Security Agency (NSA) is in fact linked to domestic criminal prosecution. The idea, and the defense, that NSA activity only impacts non-United States citizens and terrorists, is now utterly specious.
The NSA is one of the member agencies of a DEA unit called the Special Operations Division (SOD). The SOD, according to Reuters who broke the story, is at work “funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help” start, and win criminal investigations of United States citizens.
Therefore, there is a direct connection between the NSA and its surveillance efforts and regular criminal prosecution in the country.
The Washington Post read the Reuters piece as an indication the NSA is leaking phone record information to the DEA, through the SOD, but we’re not convinced that it’s a proper reading of the source. However, the SOD does operate the ‘DICE’ database, which the DEA told Reuters has around 1 billion records, both telephonic and digital. The majority, but not all, are sourced by the DEA itself.
What’s most surprising about today’s revelations is the process by which the DEA covers the tracks of its information. Using “parallel construction,” where information came from is hidden. Reuters tells a story in which a judge was told that a tip kicked off the investigation at hand. However, after pressing, it was admitted that the data had in fact been first captured by the NSA, and distributed by the SOD.
By creating new pasts for received data, the DEA can avoid potentially awkward questions about the legality of its evidence.
And the data that the NSA collects could be very useful to the DEA. The NSA, for example, collects metadata on every phone call placed in the United States. It is not clear what the NSA shares, or how often. However, it’s the fact that NSA data is being handed to the DEA through the secret SOD that is troubling prima facie.
This is not the last time that we will have a conversation similar to this one. According to the New York Times, other agencies inside the Federal government are clamoring for the information that the NSA has collected, and continues to collect.
Oversight?
It has also recently been reported that members of Congress are being denied access to information about the NSA’s activities, both by having requests ignored, or simply denied. Glenn Greenwald has primary source information, letters sent by members of Congress asking for specific information.
Others have reported similar issues in more pedestrian fashion, including Rep. Justin Amash, who tweeted that access to certain information was provided for a mere three hours, and that many Representatives missed the chance, and that those who did see the document in question were not allowed to discuss it with those that did not.
There is work afoot, as you might have expected, to keep information regarding the NSA’s activities out of the public eye. To some extent that is perfectly reasonable, given that such agencies are clandestine by nature. When Congress, tasked with oversight of American intelligence operations, is lied to, denied information, and then provided only select facts for limited periods of time, something is wrong.
And, given that the NSA is slipping the DEA information about domestic phone calls, we’ve never needed more stern hands on the NSA’s wheel.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an advisory regarding serious adverse events linked to the medical food Limbrel (flavocoxid; Primus).
Limbrel is indicated for the dietary management of the metabolic processes associated with osteoarthritis, and is available in 250mg and 500mg strength capsules. The capsules contain two types of flavonoids called bicalin (from Scutellaria baicalensis) and catechin (from Acacia catechu); both dosages contain zinc.
A total of 194 adverse events have been reported regarding Limbrel, and an association between its use and the reported adverse events was determined in 30 of those cases.
Specifically, there have been reports of two serious and potentially life-threatening medical conditions among these adverse events: drug-induced livery injury and hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Symptoms of drug-induced liver injury can include jaundice, nausea, fatigue, and gastrointestinal discomfort. Symptoms of hypersensitivity pneumonitis can include fever, chills, headache, cough, chronic bronchitis, shortness of breath or trouble breathing, weight loss, and fatigue.
While the FDA is reviewing the formula and manufacturing process for Limbrel, clinicians and consumers are recommended not to use the product. Consumers should immediately discontinue use and report any of the aforementioned symptoms if they occur. Healthcare professionals should advise their patients to immediately stop taking Limbrel and report any symptoms related to the product to MedWatch.
For more information call (480) 483-1410 or visit FDA.gov.
INDIANAPOLIS — After passing 15 bills last session in an attempt to stem the opioid crisis, the Indiana General Assembly will fine-tune some of those during the upcoming short session.
Among prescription reform efforts, pharmacists would be required to dispense prescription drugs in lockable bottles.
“These are vials that opioids will leave the pharmacy and have a pin number … where you put the vial in the medicine cabinet, you know no one can get into it,” said state Sen. Jim Merritt, R-Indianapolis.
Randy Hutchens, executive vice president of the Indiana Pharmacists Association, said the association did not yet have a position on Merritt’s proposals.
But in a statement, Hutchens said, “Our Indiana Pharmacists Alliance is supporting the fight against the opioid crisis in Indiana. We support pharmacists serving as a primary resource as a medication expert to counsel patients about their medications and reduce opioid misuse; drug take back programs; and prescription drug monitoring.”
Both Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, and Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said this week that the opioid crisis would be one of the two top legislative issues facing the 2018 session. The other issue is workforce development, they said.
The Indiana Department of Health says the three most commonly prescribed drugs that are abused include opioids, depressants and stimulants. Opioid pain relievers, including hydrocodone and oxycodone, contributed to 274 of the 1,236 drug overdose deaths in 2015 in Indiana.
Heroin overdoses, however, saw 40 percent increase in 2015 compared to 2014, a rise that the department attributed to heroin’s relatively cheap price and easier accessibility.
Merritt said he also planned to introduce legislation requiring pharmacies to initiate prescription take-back programs, as well as legislation requiring all licensees for controlled substances be registered in INSPECT, the state’s prescription monitoring program.
Some physicians have said that their rural offices do not have reliable access to the internet and, subsequently, to the INSPECT system.
Merritt said his legislation would only require registration and not mandate use of the system (INSPECT).
Donnelly bill increases shared data
A bill to address opioid abuse by veterans was signed into law this week by President Donald Trump.
The bipartisan bill was introduced by U.S. Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana, and Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota.
The Veterans Administration Data Accountability Act, Donnelly said, will enable the VA to share data with Indiana’s prescription drug monitoring program, INSPECT.
The VA is currently sharing prescription data only on veterans, not their dependents or others treated by VA providers, due to technical issues related to the VA’s health records system. As a result, a significant amount of VA prescription data is not being shared with the state’s prescription drug monitoring program, Donnelly said.
Apparently Senator Merritt has never heard of a hammer.
While a lockable bottle might prevent someone from taking a few tablets out of the bottle in a friend’s/relative’s medicine cabinet… they will just TAKE THE ENTIRE BOTTLE.
And to require all prescribers to register to the state’s PMP system ( INSPECT).. BUT DON’T HAVE TO USE IT.
Oklahoma law currently says electronic prescribing may be used for controlled substances. A task force wants that “may” changed to “shall.”
The one-word switch would effectively end paper prescriptions for opioids, which are Schedule II drugs. Tulsa County Director of Governmental Affairs Terry Simonson said those are easily forged.
Nearly every expert on an opioid task force — from pharmacists to DEA agents — was fooled by a fake prescription. A real prescription was scanned and altered on a computer and printed on security paper readily available online.
The security paper simply can’t be photocopied.
“It was so easy. It was just kind of mind-boggling that that’s all it took,” Simonson said.
According to Surescripts, only 8 percent of the 14,000 prescribers in the state of Oklahoma are using e-prescribing for controlled substances. Meanwhile, 96 percent of the state’s pharmacies can receive electronic prescriptions.
Attorney General Mike Hunter said e-prescribing could be an important piece of a comprehensive solution the Oklahoma Commission on Opioid Abuse will recommend later.
“But I’m convinced that it will have a material impact on this leakage of opioids into the hands of addicts,” Hunter said. It could lead them to using it more, rather than signing up for addiction treatment Orlando and getting help.
Besides making it difficult to forge prescriptions, e-prescribing would make it easer for doctors to prescribe smaller amounts of opioids. The drugs are often given in larger amounts than needed so patients won’t be stranded with an insufficient supply for their pain. An electronic prescription could be easier for doctors to monitor and renew as needed.
The Tulsa County task force has the ear of state Rep. Glen Mulready for a bill to change the law saying electronic prescribing may be used for controlled substances to say it shall be used. Sen. AJ Griffin said she is interested in being a bill’s senate sponsor, and she has other legislation in mind.
“Our state is one of the very few that does not have a 911 Good Samaritan law. I have introduced that piece of legislation now for four years, and it’s been blocked every time,” Griffin said. “It will be my No. 1 priority as we move into 2018 session.”
There are 40 states with Good Samaritan laws to help protect people from drug possession charges when they call 911 for an overdose.
This change in the law could have MAJOR UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES..
While the DEA has changed the law about if a pharmacy can transfer a electronic C-II to another pharmacy if the pharmacy that originally received the electronic C-II did not have inventory and/or the Pharmacist was “not comfortable” filling it… Before the law was changed… at this point the electronic C-II became DOA.
Because the DEA has changed the law… does not mean that the pharmacy’s software has been updated to be able to forward/transfer the electronic C-II to another pharmacy and/or the state’s laws have not been updated to agree with the Federal law..
I want to share something with you today – and that is a giant thank you from people all across the country. I’ve heard it everywhere I’ve travelled this year – “thank goodness for the ACLU.” “Thank you for fighting back.” “Thank you for standing up for people’s rights.”
People are so grateful for our work – work that you make possible.
If you have any doubt about what you helped accomplish, I hope you will take a few minutes to watch this short video – and accept sincere thanks from me and my team here at the ACLU for partnering with us in standing up to cruel policies that target the most vulnerable among us.
Tomorrow, there will be more legal appeals to file and new emergencies that will require us to show up – in court, in the legislatures and on the streets. But for right now, I hope you will take time to reflect on the powerful impact you have on the lives so many. And please accept one giant Thank You from all of us at the ACLU.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration this week will grant Schedule II status to a synthetic THC drug developed by a pharmaceutical firm beset with controversy.
The DEA on Wednesday is expected to finalize the previously suggested Schedule II status for Syndros, the FDA-approved liquid dronabinol
John Kapoor and other executives were accused of providing kickbacks to doctors to prescribe the company’s Subsys fentanyl spray, a highly addictive and potentially deadly opioid painkiller. Prior to Kapoor’s arrest, Insys was party to several investigations, lawsuits and enforcement actions related to Subsys.
Syndros’ advancement, approval and scheduling have been viewed by analysts as potentially positive developments for the firm.
Insys launched Syndros in late July as a treatment to help alleviate nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy patients and to address anorexia-associated weight loss in AIDS patients. Syndros generated $700,000 in revenue during the first two months, company officials said earlier this month.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the new drug application for Syndros and, alongside the Department of Health and Human Services, provided a scheduling recommendation for the drug. DEA officials concurred, noting that the drug would have the same abuse potential as other substances classified as Schedule II, according to the preliminary, “unpublished,” filing made Tuesday in the Federal Register.
Schedule II substances include Vicodin, cocaine, oxycodone and Adderall.
In the final rule filing, the DEA noted that four comments were submitted in support of the Schedule II listing while four comments were submitted in opposition.
Of the latter, one indicated the dichotomy between Syndros garnering Schedule II status while marijuana remained in the stricter classification of Schedule I. Two commenters expressed concern that pharmaceutical firms were profiting from approved drugs containing marijuana constituents and another commenter noted that the FDA should not approve drug containing any constituents of marijuana.
“The DEA notes that FDA-approved products of oral solutions containing dronabinol have an approved medical use, whereas marijuana does not have an approved medical use and therefore remains in Schedule I,” DEA officials wrote in the filing.
Marijuana advocates have blasted Insys for its stance opposing cannabis legalization. The company donated $500,000 to the campaign against marijuana legalization in Arizona and has expressed concerns about “natural cannabis” and the legalization of marijuana in regulatory filings.
Company officials previously have told The Cannabist that synthetic drugs are highly reliable and consistent and can meet the rigorous demands of the FDA process and subsequent commercialization.
Insys officials were not immediately available early Tuesday morning to respond to The Cannabist’s before-hours request for comment.
(Reuters Health) – Policymakers and insurers have been pushing people addicted to opioids into abstinence-based detox programs, but a new study concludes that methadone and similar drug-maintenance treatments save lives and money.
If the nearly 47,000 Californians who began treatment for opioid-use disorder in 2014 had received immediate access to methadone or another opioid-agonist treatment – instead of first being forced to completely withdraw from opioids – the healthcare and criminal-justice systems would have saved $3.8 billion, researchers estimate.
Moreover, 1,262 lives would have been spared, lead researcher Emanuel Krebs, a health economist at the British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, British Columbia, said by Skype.
“If you offer opioid-agonist treatment from the outset, people live longer, and they incur lower costs on society,” said senior author Bohdan Nosyk, a health economist and professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“People may not want to stay in treatment, but it’s their best chance of staying alive,” he said in a Skype interview.
Methadone and buprenorphine, opioid agonists, bind to the brain’s opioid receptors; the correct dose will eliminate withdrawal symptoms and cravings. International addiction experts consider initial opioid-agonist treatment, or OAT, with no duration restrictions, the evidence-based standard of care for opioid-use disorder, the authors write online November 20 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
But in California, where more people have been diagnosed with opioid disorder than in any other U.S. state, publicly funded treatment programs require patients to “fail” – twice – at a three-week course of medically supervised withdrawal before they become eligible for OAT.
“My belief is that California’s persisted with this medically managed withdrawal because they think they’re saving themselves money,” Nosyk said. “You’re paying more than that in the criminal justice sector, in the healthcare section in the long run.”
Using state data, Nosyk, Krebs and colleagues created a computer model to examine the impact immediate access to OAT would have had on Californians treated for opioid-use disorder in 2014.
It would have saved as much as $850 million over five years, not including savings to the criminal-justice system, and more than $2 billion, including the cost of arrests and prosecutions, the study found.
Over 10 years, the total savings would rise to $2.87 billion, the model showed.
“We have to prevent new cases of addiction,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management in Boston. “But for the millions who are addicted, the study authors nailed it – the effective treatment, the opioid-agonist treatment, needs to be very easy to access.”
“It’s very hard to recover with an abstinence-based approach. Most people can’t do it, yet that’s been the first-line treatment. That’s why we’re failing,” he said in a phone interview.
Opioids killed more than 33,000 people in the U.S. in 2015, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prescription painkillers are fueling the epidemic.
“If we want to see overdose deaths come down, we need to make sure people who have opioid addiction are able to access effective treatment more easily than they can access heroin, fentanyl or pain pills,” said Kolodny, who was not involved with the study.
An editorial accompanying the study says it adds to decades of data on the efficacy of opioid agonists and should lead policymakers to spend fewer healthcare resources on medically supervised withdrawal and more on opioid-agonist treatment.
The editorial writers, Dr. Jeanette Tetrault and Dr. David Fiellin of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, likened treating opioid disorder with medically assisted withdrawal to treating diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening complication of diabetes, without addressing diabetes.
Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, sees opioid-use disorder as a life-threatening disease.
“A person injecting heroin is the equivalent from a medical perspective of a person having a heart attack,” said Lembke, who treats opioid addicts with buprenorphine and was not involved with the new study. “Lifesaving treatment can’t wait.”
California’s guidelines should be changed to allow patients immediate access to opioid agonists, she said by email.
“We need a model whereby patients can get immediate access to opioid-agonist treatment, a lifesaving intervention, without obstacles,” she said.
Some patients are forced to wait months for treatment, she said, and in the meantime most of them will relapse, and many will die.
“Among experts in the field of addiction, we already know that detox doesn’t work, that they’re going to relapse and when they relapse, they’re going to be at great risk for an overdose, that they’ll be at great risk for hepatitis,” Kolodny said. “Opioid addiction is a life-threatening illness.”
Long Island, NY – November 21, 2017 – U.S. Reps. John Katko (NY-24) and Tom Suozzi (NY-3) today announced that they have introduced bipartisan legislation geared towards reducing opioid addiction and drug abuse in New York and nationwide.
The legislation, introduced in the Senate by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), would limit the initial supply of opioid prescription for acute pain to seven days. When a person is treated for acute pain, such as a broken bone or wisdom teeth extraction, an over-prescription of a painkiller can pave the way to addiction and abuse. This legislation is modeled after current New York State law.
Rep. John Katko said, “The opioid drug epidemic has devastated families in Central New York and communities nationwide. This bipartisan bill would target one of the root causes of drug overdoses in the United States, which is the over-prescription of highly addictive opioids. Our legislation limits the supply of an initial opioid prescription for acute pain to seven days. Doing so will reduce over-prescription of painkillers and help reduce the risk of opioid dependency.”
“The opioid epidemic is tearing apart families and friends while infecting whole communities on Long Island, Queens and throughout the nation,” said Rep. Suozzi. “Our bipartisan legislation takes a big step toward preventing people from being over-prescribed and beginning a downward spiral towards dependency on opioids.”
This legislation would require medical professionals to certify, as part of their DEA registration, that they will not prescribe an opioid as an initial treatment for acute pain in an amount that exceeds a seven-day supply, and may not provide a refill. This limit does not apply to the treatment of chronic pain, pain treated as part of cancer care, hospice or other end of life care, or pain treated as part of palliative care.
Those who suffer from drug addiction or know someone who is addicted are encouraged to call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Helpline: 1-800-622-HELP (4357) for assistance.
Reps. Katko and Suozzi released a video message following introduction of this bill, available here.
The suicide note Doug Hale left before killing himself.
Source: Tammi Hale
Six months after surgery to repair a damaged urinary tract in 1998, computer technician Doug Hale woke one morning with excruciating, burning pain. Hale’s suffering persisted for years, despite all sorts of treatments. Finally, in 2006, he was prescribed strong doses of opioids.
Fast-forward 10 years. Still on his pain killers, Hale was popping so many of the highly addictive pills that he regularly ran out of his prescription early. His doctor cut off his supply and urged Hale to enter a detox program. That didn’t work. Hale, still in agonizing pain and now suffering from intense withdrawal symptoms, returned to his doctor and pleaded to get back on his opioid regime. The doctor refused. The next day, Hale put the barrel of a small-gauge gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
It would be tempting to view Hale’s death, at 53, as one more sad entry in the never-ending national tragedy of opioid deaths. In fact, it’s much more than that. Hale’s story is a window into the country’s silent majority of opioid sufferers. These are the millions of painkiller-dependent users inhabiting a vast gray zone somewhere between medical patient and drug addict, who are finding themselves suddenly abandoned in droves by the medical system. Under threat of lawsuits and government and insurance industry crackdowns, doctors have been cutting off the supply of painkillers, forcing many of their patients to quit cold turkey after years or even decades of dependence, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. Worst of all, those left suddenly without their meds often have nowhere to turn for help.
“These are victims of our era of aggressive prescribing,” said Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. “These patients become hot potatoes that no one wants.”
Roughly 8 million Americans are on long-term opioid therapy for chronic pain, and as many as a million are taking dangerously high doses, said Michael Von Korff, a senior researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. In the Medicare program alone, 500,000 patients were on high opioid doses in 2016, according to a 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Many health professionals, fearing sanctions or even the loss of their licenses following government cases against a handful of doctors, have been caught up in a broader crackdown sweeping the pharma industry. In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines for treating chronic pain, warning doctors to avoid prescribing high opioid doses when possible. Doctors have been heeding the message. Since peaking in 2010, prescriptions for more dangerous, higher-dose opioids dropped 41 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to a CDC analysis.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen states and about 100 counties and cities have already sued Purdue Pharma LP, other opioid makers and drug distributors, in a strategy echoing the litigation that led to the 1998 $246 billion settlement with Big Tobacco. Purdue is proposing a global settlement in an attempt to end state investigations and lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported on Nov. 17. And last month, President Donald Trump declared widespread opioid abuse a public health emergency.
Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, said it is “deeply troubled” by the national opioid crisis and is distributing the CDC’s treatment guidelines to doctors. Johnson & Johnson, maker of the fentanyl-containing Duragesic patch, said it is “committed to working with federal, state and local officials to help find meaningful solutions” to the opioid problem. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., which sells generic opioid pain killers, declined to comment but in the past has denied wrongdoing.
In the battle to wean patients off opioids, dosage has emerged as a critical issue. Chronic pain sufferers on high doses aren’t necessarily addicts, at least not the sort who would resort to buying drugs on the street, experts say. Some may indeed benefit from the drugs and function well on them. Yet many aren’t getting better or going back to work and still report high levels of pain, despite big doses. Even patients taking high doses prescribed by their doctors run the risk of overdosing, recent studies showed. As many as 25 percent of pain patients may exhibit some level of misuse of the drugs, studies have found.
How America’s Opioid Crisis Spiraled Out of Control
With most medical and government resources focused on treatment for more obvious drug abusers, few formal programs exist to help patients dependent on opioids. And there is little guidance for doctors, who are more accustomed to prescribing than un-prescribing drugs. A few hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic have intensive outpatient pain-rehab programs, but they are pricy. The Mayo Clinic’s costs roughly $30,000 to $40,000, though most insurance companies cover at least part of the program, which offers help to specifically taper patients off opioids. The three-week intensive program consists of counseling and alternative treatments such as physical and occupational therapy.
Experts who have studied opioid dependence say that, in some cases, it’s too risky to reduce doses until complex psychological problems are under control. But that message isn’t always getting through to doctors. “We have created this monster, and we think we can stop this by just stopping opioids,” said Ajay Manhapra, a Yale University lecturer and addiction medicine specialist who treats patients at the Hampton VA Medical Center in Hampton, Virginia. Researchers who think drug doses can be brought down quickly “are very naive.”
Clare Rhodes, a 63 year old San Jose resident, took OxyContin for more than a decade following a 2001 back operation — first prescribed by a surgeon who promised it wasn’t addictive. She was cut off in 2012, after her doctor was arrested for prescribing opioids to addicts. Even though she had never misused her meds, other pain doctors covered by her workers’ compensation policy refused to take her case, so she was forced to go cold turkey. The withdrawal symptoms lasted a year and were worse than the side effects she got from breast cancer chemotherapy treatment. Rhodes was constantly agitated, suffered diarrhea, broke out in cold sweats and was unable to sleep more than an hour at a time.
Now Rhodes runs a private Facebook group for chronic pain patients. Few patients are being eased off the drug gradually, she said. Many are forced off their meds after their doctors retire or move to another clinic. So many patients on the discussion group expressed suicidal thoughts that she tried to find a psychiatrist or psychologist to offer guidance, but no one was willing to take on that responsibility. “It is an insane situation,” said Rhodes. “They are simply being cut off. It is unconscionable that doctors are doing this to their patients.”
Some have seized on medical opioid addiction as a business opportunity. Breaking Benzo, a telemedicine startup in Palo Alto, California, offers online psychiatry appointments and round-the-clock access to health coaches to help people quit opioids or anti-anxiety drugs called benzodiazepines. The service, available in California, costs $349 a month, doesn’t currently take insurance and plans to expand to at least 10 other states by next year, including hard-hit states Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. It is in the process of getting certified for insurance coverage.
The medical system didn’t quite know how to handle the case of Doug Hale.
A paralegal and computer technician, Hale once enjoyed an active life that included scuba diving, softball and hiking. That was before a progression of medical problems forced him to go on disability. In 1998, he needed major surgery from an obstructed urinary tract. Months later, he developed a painful and mysterious bladder inflammation.
Over the next five years, Hale tried and failed a long list of non-narcotic treatments, including behavioral therapy, nerve blocks and nerve stimulators before doctors started him on opioids in 2004, according to his wife.
A family photo of Hale with his daughter Niki Elnicki and his wife Tammi.
Source: Tammi Hale
He progressed through a laundry list of opioids, including Dilaudid, hydrocodone, oxycodone and fentanyl, before ending up on high doses of methadone, a long-acting opioid painkiller that is better known for its use in treating heroin addiction. Complicating his care was a cerebral hemorrhage in 2006 that left him with short-term memory loss, migraines and seizures.
The final years of Hale’s life were a blur of doctor visits for chronic pain, seizures and other medical problems. Most of his treatment was through his primary care doctor, Stephen Kornbluth, and other doctors at Castleton Family Health Center near Hale’s home in Rutland, Vermont. He also traveled to New Hampshire to see a neurologist and a pain doctor and twice checked into a detox center at a psychiatric hospital for week-long treatments. Nothing worked.
By April 2016, Hale was taking 16 methadone pills a day, a huge dose. His daily intake was many times the level the CDC says can significantly increase overdose risk. It still wasn’t enough to ease Hale’s pain. He started taking two or three additional pills a day and ran out a week early. His wife says he was having problems absorbing his medications as a result of weight loss surgery.
Hale and his wife sought additional methadone at an April 9 appointment. The doctor who saw him that day warned that his misuse was “exceedingly dangerous” and could put Hale “at risk for death,” according to the doctor’s notes from the encounter. But worried about severe withdrawal symptoms, she renewed the prescription for a week, until Hale’s next regularly scheduled visit with Kornbluth, who also opted to extend prescribing the drug at a lower dose.
But after Hale ran out early again in May, Kornbluth finally lowered the hammer. He told Hale and his wife, Tammi, that he wasn’t comfortable continuing the drugs beyond a month, and offered to send him yet again to a detox clinic. “Too many times she and he have messed up, though I am not convinced that there is abuse consciously,” Kornbluth wrote in medical records that Tammi Hale later received from the clinic. Hale’s wife says Kornbluth gave the couple a different reason for the discontinuation. “‘I don’t want to risk my license for you any more,’ those were his exact words,” said Tammi Hale. “We felt we had been dumped and abandoned.”
“I remember saying to the wife that I can’t prescribe because there was very inconsistent use, and I couldn’t in good conscience write for that,” said Kornbluth in response. “She kept saying she was very comfortable with that, she understood.” He said he made clear he was not opposed to Hale trying to get opioids from a pain specialist. Far from being abandoned, Hale had numerous consultations with specialists, Kornbluth said.
By mid-July, after his second stay at the detox clinic, Hale had hardly slept in two weeks. Though now entirely off opioids, he had constant tremors and shaking. He broke down crying at a visit with Kornbluth. In September, the Hale couple applied for a last ditch option: a methadone clinic for addicts. But the clinic turned him down on the basis that he wasn’t truly an addict.
On Monday, Oct. 10, Hale and his wife saw Kornbluth. The doctor refused their entreaties to restart the opioids. That day, Kornbluth was still working on finding a program that would take Hale, who, the doctor later wrote in his records, fell through “the cracks” between medical providers.
The next day, Hale was dead. “Can’t take the chronic pain anymore,” he wrote in a wobbly penned suicide note. “No one except my wife has helped me.”
Here we have Kolodny claiming that these suicides are a consequence of pt’s chronic pain being readily treated and that they are now “hot potatoes ” …mostly due to the CDC guidelines that he helped to create..
How much longer before Kolodny is recognized as the charlatan he REALLY IS ?
Nothing like someone placing blame on the system that they help to create and put in place.
Could Hale’s chronic pain be a direct/indirect results of a botched surgery on his urinary tract ? One of the estimated 250,000 – 400,000 deaths caused by medical errors ?
I have been posting on this blog, now in my SIXTH YEAR… Hardly a week that doesn’t go by that I get at least one notice that someone has added me to a NEW FACE BOOK PAGE CONCERNING CHRONIC PAIN.
Reps. Suozzi and Katko Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Combat Opioid Addiction
