Methadone Kills..Choose Life
February blew into this year with winds of change, the face of the worlds weather is changing rapidly, more rapidly that we had thought. Violent winds, life taking events, freezing temperatures across the northern hemisphere and ice melting away in rapid quick fire sequences from the southern hemisphere!
As we thought in December, this old world that we know is all changing. Life on earth has always been a series of questions, how did it start, where did some of the life we know as fossils disappear to, what caused the ice age...the questions are as endless as the universe.
We all live in micro cosims of life, our family, our employment, our friends, our state, our country, our world but in this age of ever quickening communication speeds what we once thought of as unending is being stretched to the limits. A family member can be hit with personal tragedy thousands of miles away and yet we know it almost instantly via email, or phone, or cell phone, or pager, no longer do we have to wait days to learn that someone we love is in harms way, in a hospital or even dead. The world has become smaller and smaller in this lifetime. A letter once took weeks to reach Europe, now it takes only the breath of seconds from the time we type and hit the word send on our email. In such an age you would think that human beings would be more caring, more aware of the world around them, more connected! Alas that is not true.
This past month we watched while a dear friend hovered between life and death in a hospital here in California, each day we came back home and wrote emails to her family letting them know each step of the way how she was, and we stood by in awe of modern medicine as she rallied, awoke from an 11 day medication induced coma and worked her way slowly but steadily back into this world.
It is an amazing age in which we live, every human being alive should be grateful for the technology that surrounds us, we should live in a state of pure gratitude for all the benefits that this era of swift communication, and medical technology has given us.
Our friend is out of the hospital now, but she has returned to live in her uncles home and he is unfortunately a legal addict. In this world there are those who really would have no part of it, in fact there are those who are so caught up in the games that they have learned to play that they have no time for even the smallest piece of gratitude, no time for anything but their own twisted and perverse desire to be the center of attention at all times. Our friends uncle is one of these people. There are in this world people who so cloud their minds with drugs legal and illegal that their only pleasurable moments in life are those following their favorite fix, or as we observed this week...the moments when the doctor provides that all important prescription to druggie Nirvana, the pain medication methadone.
We have had the sad occasion to witness the results of being allowed to wallow in self pity, while using others who had good intent as mere enablers. We have seen first hand the results of self love so strong that it utilizes the unaware, the weak and the would be helpful friends like pawns in a chess game.
At this point you are probably wondering what soap box I am on this month...here goes! The adverse affect of drugs in our society is at an all time high. A person who we know and care about has become so dependent on pity, and pills that he is no longer any earthly good to himself or to anyone else, and we fear that he is taking our friend who almost lost her life a few weeks ago with him. I became a care giver to the person in question when his niece was suddenly taken ill and hospitalized. Nothing that I ever learned in school could have prepared me for the two weeks of hell through which we have just passed.
We live in a society where there are too many physicians who are dead set on keeping their patients 'out of pain' and in which there are far too many legal drug addicts hooked on prescription medications which could easily be replaced with long walks, contemplative meditation and proper diet! Case in fact is our friend, a man who was once a professor of some standing at a University, a man who by his own brothers account has long used and abused friends, family and legal prescription drugs. We were called to his home by him late in the night, he told us he had fallen and couldn't get up...what he didn't tell us was that he had used nearly four times the amount of his methadone ( yes, given to him for pain...fibromyalgia he says) and as a consequence was high!
When we arrived at his home the front door was unlocked, and we found him not on the floor, but sitting gaily in his chair puffing away on a cigarette ( he has a $500 a month smoking habit) and laughing while watching a movie! He had managed to get up alright, get up and call half a dozen friends to come to his rescue!
All of this has given me a wake up call, when is too much medication OK? Who exactly regulates how many doctors he may be getting different medications from? And most importantly when was the last time that this human being took a good long look at himself in a mirror?
So I began to wonder how many people in the state where we live are given Methadone prescriptions every month, along with three or four other pain medications by so called Pain Management Clinics... the statistics that I have located so far tell me more than I wanted to know. On average, every household in the state has at least one family member on legal prescription pain killers, and every other person in the state knows someone who is legally high 24/7!
Outraged! That is how I feel! Totally outraged. Here is a man whose General Practitioner told me in front of her patient that he has " Debilitated" himself by his self destructive behaviors, he doesn't exercise, smokes two to three packs of cigarettes a day, over utilizes his prescription pain drugs, and basically has set himself on a course for death. In two weeks of doctors visits with this person never once did I hear any doctor suggest that he should be put in a rehab, given less pain medication and assisted in learning other ways to cope with his so called pain! The only doctor in fact who would discuss his problems was his GP and she told him that he had debilitated himself. She had tried ,she said, to tell him to go to physical therapy and work at strength building, she sent him to classes to learn to control his diabetes with diet and exercise, he didn't go, she tearfully related to me that she couldn't in good conscious apply for in home health care for him because he wouldn't do the things she asked of him.
In a society where there is so much information, and assistance to aide a person in being healthy, even with several illnesses it is beyond me that doctors can continue to dispense pills as if they are the answer to every pain!
I have a new flash for those of you who are like my friend...get up out of you wallow of self pity, take a walk, try putting out the cigarette and reaching for the crunch of a good apple! Get up out of your chair where you sit two feet from the TV, in a drug and smoke induced trance and try LIFE!
This whole sordid mess has made me wonder about the ethics of doctors who would rather hand out a prescription for legal pain pills than tell a patient to get up off the duff and join the living! How can we stand by and let pills become the end all for such things? I have arthritis, serious rheumatoid arthritis,twice I have face death head on, I am sixty one years young! I have an artificial tendon in my right leg, blood pressure that is sometimes dangerous and yes I take medication, but I also eat healthy, don't smoke, exercise, read, write, walk the dog, play with the grand kids, enjoy life and think about new ways to be involved in life everyday.
What happens to a persons physche that leads to a way of life that totally revolves around them and their next fix? Who should be held accountable for the thousands of people who are on three, four or more pain killers who might have a better quality of life if their doctor looked them straight in the eye and said, you need rehab? Is the money baron of the drug companies responsible, is the doctor? No! It is the person who decided what goes into their system, it is that individual who decides that smoking away $500 a month is more important than paying their mortgage and it is the person who decides to sit down, lay down and kill themselves slowly by doing absolutely nothing to help themselves...and it is those who are enablers and think it is alright for their friend to be so stoned on legal prescriptions that they disrupt a half dozens friends lives with calls for help when what they really need is to be locked up, dried out, and pushed into helping themselves.
I am outraged! Totally completely outraged that we have come to such a place in our society that this sort of practice of medicine is allowed. If I were a politician I would be on the street corners of America tomorrow publicly displaying the statistics for the legally drugged! I wish that there would be an outcry from people who know people like my friend! I wish that there was a magic bullet to take away the adverse affects of too many years of abuse of legal prescription pain killers...I wish that I had never known anyone who is so self absorbed that they can't tell the difference between real illness and drug overdose! I wish that I could change the laws so that all drug dispensers would have instant access to the names of those who are receiving legal pain killers from more than one doctor, and that doctors had to report every patient that comes in asking for an increase in medications to dull their senses before they could dispense the prescription. Of course none of those things will ever happen and thousands of people will continue to live in a drugged stupor induced by medications prescribed by multiple doctors who don't seem to care as long as their yatch is paid for!
For myself I choose LIFE! Living daily to the fullest of my potential, streaching my mind, my soul and my body for the sake of staying alive! I wish that there were some way to reach the depths of the minds of people like my friend and to infuse them with a zeal, a zest for life so that they could see that it is really worth the effort! Life is struggle, sometimes it is painful, and of course it isn't always easy, of course it won't always be what you wish, but it is real, it is earnest, it is wonderful and it can at times be tremedously rewarding! One need only reach for health, for strength, for involvement and suddenly life is BEAUTIFUL!!
As we thought in December, this old world that we know is all changing. Life on earth has always been a series of questions, how did it start, where did some of the life we know as fossils disappear to, what caused the ice age...the questions are as endless as the universe.
We all live in micro cosims of life, our family, our employment, our friends, our state, our country, our world but in this age of ever quickening communication speeds what we once thought of as unending is being stretched to the limits. A family member can be hit with personal tragedy thousands of miles away and yet we know it almost instantly via email, or phone, or cell phone, or pager, no longer do we have to wait days to learn that someone we love is in harms way, in a hospital or even dead. The world has become smaller and smaller in this lifetime. A letter once took weeks to reach Europe, now it takes only the breath of seconds from the time we type and hit the word send on our email. In such an age you would think that human beings would be more caring, more aware of the world around them, more connected! Alas that is not true.
This past month we watched while a dear friend hovered between life and death in a hospital here in California, each day we came back home and wrote emails to her family letting them know each step of the way how she was, and we stood by in awe of modern medicine as she rallied, awoke from an 11 day medication induced coma and worked her way slowly but steadily back into this world.
It is an amazing age in which we live, every human being alive should be grateful for the technology that surrounds us, we should live in a state of pure gratitude for all the benefits that this era of swift communication, and medical technology has given us.
Our friend is out of the hospital now, but she has returned to live in her uncles home and he is unfortunately a legal addict. In this world there are those who really would have no part of it, in fact there are those who are so caught up in the games that they have learned to play that they have no time for even the smallest piece of gratitude, no time for anything but their own twisted and perverse desire to be the center of attention at all times. Our friends uncle is one of these people. There are in this world people who so cloud their minds with drugs legal and illegal that their only pleasurable moments in life are those following their favorite fix, or as we observed this week...the moments when the doctor provides that all important prescription to druggie Nirvana, the pain medication methadone.
We have had the sad occasion to witness the results of being allowed to wallow in self pity, while using others who had good intent as mere enablers. We have seen first hand the results of self love so strong that it utilizes the unaware, the weak and the would be helpful friends like pawns in a chess game.
At this point you are probably wondering what soap box I am on this month...here goes! The adverse affect of drugs in our society is at an all time high. A person who we know and care about has become so dependent on pity, and pills that he is no longer any earthly good to himself or to anyone else, and we fear that he is taking our friend who almost lost her life a few weeks ago with him. I became a care giver to the person in question when his niece was suddenly taken ill and hospitalized. Nothing that I ever learned in school could have prepared me for the two weeks of hell through which we have just passed.
We live in a society where there are too many physicians who are dead set on keeping their patients 'out of pain' and in which there are far too many legal drug addicts hooked on prescription medications which could easily be replaced with long walks, contemplative meditation and proper diet! Case in fact is our friend, a man who was once a professor of some standing at a University, a man who by his own brothers account has long used and abused friends, family and legal prescription drugs. We were called to his home by him late in the night, he told us he had fallen and couldn't get up...what he didn't tell us was that he had used nearly four times the amount of his methadone ( yes, given to him for pain...fibromyalgia he says) and as a consequence was high!
When we arrived at his home the front door was unlocked, and we found him not on the floor, but sitting gaily in his chair puffing away on a cigarette ( he has a $500 a month smoking habit) and laughing while watching a movie! He had managed to get up alright, get up and call half a dozen friends to come to his rescue!
All of this has given me a wake up call, when is too much medication OK? Who exactly regulates how many doctors he may be getting different medications from? And most importantly when was the last time that this human being took a good long look at himself in a mirror?
So I began to wonder how many people in the state where we live are given Methadone prescriptions every month, along with three or four other pain medications by so called Pain Management Clinics... the statistics that I have located so far tell me more than I wanted to know. On average, every household in the state has at least one family member on legal prescription pain killers, and every other person in the state knows someone who is legally high 24/7!
Outraged! That is how I feel! Totally outraged. Here is a man whose General Practitioner told me in front of her patient that he has " Debilitated" himself by his self destructive behaviors, he doesn't exercise, smokes two to three packs of cigarettes a day, over utilizes his prescription pain drugs, and basically has set himself on a course for death. In two weeks of doctors visits with this person never once did I hear any doctor suggest that he should be put in a rehab, given less pain medication and assisted in learning other ways to cope with his so called pain! The only doctor in fact who would discuss his problems was his GP and she told him that he had debilitated himself. She had tried ,she said, to tell him to go to physical therapy and work at strength building, she sent him to classes to learn to control his diabetes with diet and exercise, he didn't go, she tearfully related to me that she couldn't in good conscious apply for in home health care for him because he wouldn't do the things she asked of him.
In a society where there is so much information, and assistance to aide a person in being healthy, even with several illnesses it is beyond me that doctors can continue to dispense pills as if they are the answer to every pain!
I have a new flash for those of you who are like my friend...get up out of you wallow of self pity, take a walk, try putting out the cigarette and reaching for the crunch of a good apple! Get up out of your chair where you sit two feet from the TV, in a drug and smoke induced trance and try LIFE!
This whole sordid mess has made me wonder about the ethics of doctors who would rather hand out a prescription for legal pain pills than tell a patient to get up off the duff and join the living! How can we stand by and let pills become the end all for such things? I have arthritis, serious rheumatoid arthritis,twice I have face death head on, I am sixty one years young! I have an artificial tendon in my right leg, blood pressure that is sometimes dangerous and yes I take medication, but I also eat healthy, don't smoke, exercise, read, write, walk the dog, play with the grand kids, enjoy life and think about new ways to be involved in life everyday.
What happens to a persons physche that leads to a way of life that totally revolves around them and their next fix? Who should be held accountable for the thousands of people who are on three, four or more pain killers who might have a better quality of life if their doctor looked them straight in the eye and said, you need rehab? Is the money baron of the drug companies responsible, is the doctor? No! It is the person who decided what goes into their system, it is that individual who decides that smoking away $500 a month is more important than paying their mortgage and it is the person who decides to sit down, lay down and kill themselves slowly by doing absolutely nothing to help themselves...and it is those who are enablers and think it is alright for their friend to be so stoned on legal prescriptions that they disrupt a half dozens friends lives with calls for help when what they really need is to be locked up, dried out, and pushed into helping themselves.
I am outraged! Totally completely outraged that we have come to such a place in our society that this sort of practice of medicine is allowed. If I were a politician I would be on the street corners of America tomorrow publicly displaying the statistics for the legally drugged! I wish that there would be an outcry from people who know people like my friend! I wish that there was a magic bullet to take away the adverse affects of too many years of abuse of legal prescription pain killers...I wish that I had never known anyone who is so self absorbed that they can't tell the difference between real illness and drug overdose! I wish that I could change the laws so that all drug dispensers would have instant access to the names of those who are receiving legal pain killers from more than one doctor, and that doctors had to report every patient that comes in asking for an increase in medications to dull their senses before they could dispense the prescription. Of course none of those things will ever happen and thousands of people will continue to live in a drugged stupor induced by medications prescribed by multiple doctors who don't seem to care as long as their yatch is paid for!
For myself I choose LIFE! Living daily to the fullest of my potential, streaching my mind, my soul and my body for the sake of staying alive! I wish that there were some way to reach the depths of the minds of people like my friend and to infuse them with a zeal, a zest for life so that they could see that it is really worth the effort! Life is struggle, sometimes it is painful, and of course it isn't always easy, of course it won't always be what you wish, but it is real, it is earnest, it is wonderful and it can at times be tremedously rewarding! One need only reach for health, for strength, for involvement and suddenly life is BEAUTIFUL!!
posted by Leah PettePiece | 9:22 AM
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