Strange Math: methadone? = God

Strange math: methadone? = God; Alex DeLuca; War on Doctors/Pain Crisis blog of the Pain Relief Network; 2007-08-24. Source

See also:
Jesus Implicated in ‘Prescription Drug Addiction’
Red Flags! - the CME Course
Bounds of Medical Practice & the Standard of Care

I’m guessing that X=God in this related equation:

What is interesting about Answer to methadone is God, the Letter to the Editor (LTE) reprinted in full below, is that the writer, a nurse, is describing behavior that any reasonable person can imagine, and would excuse, a chronically undermedicated person with severe chronic pain for displaying.

The writer makes no distinction between people, takes no account of variation in need and resources. It’s not about people (with rights, protections, due process); it is all about the drugs; not about how adequate pain relief is, but is all about counting pills, and interpreting any patient expression of distress as “medication seeking” (which it is, the patient needs more medicine) which equals “addiction” which equals criminal sinner.

Note also the amazing power of the words ‘disease’ and ‘addiction’ in the minds of the prohibition-addled. They are like mnemonic wildcards for a prejudicial categorization of bad people we are entitled to treated worse than stray animals. Here is the psuedocode:

Select group = drug user;; Apply label = disease::addiction;;
Demonize(group label)!!

Now you can force them to register, control their medication dosages by legislative fiat, deny them access to medical care by defining any doctor who would treat them as ‘outside the bounds of legitimate practice’, and so on. Feel superior to them even if you are professionally, if not criminally, ignorant. Works quite well, actually.

Think of this LTE that follows as a primitive, demented version of Red Flags! - the CME Course.

(I promise to publish a serious essay on the study by Dr. Fleming et al., Substance Use Disorder in Primary Care Chronic Opioid Therapy, Journal of Pain, July 2007 very soon. We have been discussing this article, and the larger issue of ‘red-flags’ in the law and medicine of opioid pain medications, on this blog recently and I highly recommend the reader Commentary found especially below these blog entries: Red Flags - CME and Red Flags Uber Alles.)

Ok, on with the show.

(Not kidding about the ‘hazardous’ part - continuing to read this means you’ll have to parse sentences like this one without running amok and maybe hurting someone: “Drug addiction is not a disease, as the clinic wants people to think; it is an addiction.” - you have been warned.)

The Clanton (AL) Advertiser, 2007-08-23, unedited Letter to the Editor:

Answer to methadone is God

Dear Editor, The Advertiser,

I don’t think that we need a methadone clinic here in Chilton County. The only good comments that have come out in the letters about the clinic have come from the people who own or work at the clinic. I am a nurse and have a different opinion about the methadone clinic than the other nurse that wrote in. I have dealt with patients that were addicted to lortab, percocet and methadone. They are very friendly and wonderful people as long as you supply them with their drugs. Let them run out, however, and you will see a different person. Count their medication as a nurse should, and make sure they don’t misuse it and see how nice they are.

Tell them that they can’t get another prescription because it’s to early and the anger comes out. They can’t control their anger. Drug addiction is not a disease, as the clinic wants people to think; it is an addiction. To respond to the people who use the clinic and read the comments in the paper, I do feel sorry for you and I want you to be able to kick the habit. The only person who can do that is you. You have to want to help yourself, and it will be hard and you will have to deal with it every day, but replacing one drug with another is not the answer.

The answer is God. Life isn’t going to a bed of roses with God, but you will have someone to help you through the hard times and give you strength to resist the temptation. Drug addiction is the same thing as alcohol addiction. I know a lot of alcoholics that have given it to God at the alter and never taken another drink. Chilton County is a dry count. We continue to vote against the county going wet over and over again. Give us a chance to vote on your clinic and it will not be coming to Chilton County. To the patients of the methadone clinic I will be praying for you.

God and a church body to help you through this is the only clinic that you need. Everyone was a church within 10 minutes of their home. We don’t need your methadone clinic in Chilton County or Shelby County.

– Chanda Griffin

[END]