05/10/2019
"The worsening opioid epidemic creates unique opportunities and incentives for cooperation between mainstream medicine and chiropractors. The loosening of opioid prescribing standards among doctors in the 1990s has led to a tidal wave of narcotics abuse involving both legally prescribed and illicit street drugs. According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2016, 630,000 people died of drug overdose, with 350,000 of these deaths involving opioids. 1In 2016, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription opioids and illegal opioids like he**in and illicitly manufactured fentanyl) was 5 times higher than in 1999. Around 66 percent of the more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in 2016 involved an opioid. On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. 2
Many addictions begin with the best of intentions; patients go to their primary care physician seeking treatment for a painful injury or degenerative back or joint problem. The physician writes a prescription for a month’s supply of an opioid with the intention of providing short-term pain relief while their injuries heal. At the end of the month, the patient requests a refill because, without the pills, the patient claims that the pain is too intense to work or sleep. The physician agrees to one refill but no more. By the time the second prescription runs out, the patient is addicted and asks for another refill. If the physician refuses, the patient simply goes to another doctor or to a “pill mill” that isn’t as scrupulous about dispensing opioids. The patient may even go to a street vendor for cheaper but more dangerous drugs like he**in. At some point, the patient either enters rehab treatment—voluntarily or involuntarily—or winds up in prison or dead from an overdose."
There is a better way! Ethical chiropractors and educated medical doctors can fix this problem, but how many of those are there?