The Other Opioid Epidemic

By HANS DUVEFELT, MD “I made myself a hypodermic injection of a triple dose of morphia and sank down on the couch in my consulting-room….I told her I was all right, all I wanted was twenty-four hours’ sleep, she was not to disturb me unless the house was on fire.” – Axel Munthe, MD, The Story of San Michele (1929) When people in this country mention the opioid epidemic, most of the time it is in the context of addiction with its ensuing criminality and social deprivation, and the focus is on opioids’ medical complications like withdrawal, overdose and death. But that is only one of the opioid epidemics we have. Far greater is the epidemic of largely compliant patients who take their modest three or four daily doses of opiates for pain that was originally described as physical, but which in many cases is at least as much psychological – not imagined, in fact often quite severe, but nevertheless without a physical explanation or available cure. Stimulation of opioid mu-receptors in the central nervous system induces euphoria more reliably than it reduces pain. In fact low dose opiates have been shown to sometimes lower pain thresholds but at the same time allowing dissociation from the pain experience. People who smoked opium in antiquity didn’t all have intractable pain to begin with; many had miserable lives, just like many of my countrymen today with health problems, low income, poor education, lacking social supports and limited prospects for even a sustai...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs