Tom Petty died of an accidental overdose

Somehow makes me sad all over again. And Prince ... and Michael Jackson ... etc. etc. etc.

I had a bad medical event last May, and got a lot of drugs in the first 24 hours of my emergency treatment. A long time ago, I took a well-above-average amount of drugs, and thought I knew what 'high' was. Nope. That shit was ... unreal.

And now every third person in our country is taking some.
 
“The statement was posted moments before the Los Angeles coroner’s office issued its official findings, which confirmed that Petty had a mix of prescription painkillers, sedatives and an antidepressant. Among the medications found in his system were fentanyl and oxycodone.”

Either he had an irresponsible doctor or he was doctor shopping like Prince did.
 
During my emergency, I had fentanyl, propofyl (sp.), versid, dilaudid, and several other things (which, when given in combo nearly suffocated me due to depressed respiration). Between hours 3-5, I was no longer life-threatened, and instead just a poor bastard in an ER bay, out of my mind on this shit. I mean, I used to mix things on purpose, serious things, and this was .... just another ballpark.

I read about how these people had these things on the regular, and I just don't know it's possible.
 
The US prescribes more opiates than any other country on Earth (calculated per million residents, so it isn't the size of the population at play). The rate of opiate scripts is 3x that of Switzerland, and twice that of Germany. Even if one takes Canada, perhaps the closest country to the US in terms of culture and such, the US rate is nearly 2x that of Canada. I also read a study recently that doctors trained at tier one medical institutions are far less likely to write opiate prescriptions, and when they do they write for shorter durations, relative to doctors educated at lesser institutions. This suggests a clear educational problem in medical schools, particularly on the lower end of the quality scale, in education on addiction, pain management and the like. One can add in irresponsible drug companies actively marketing drugs with deceptive practices to these physicians to the equation. And let us not forget the shit doctors and fake pain management clinics that were all the rage a few years ago before everyone switched to Chinese fentanyl and heroin after the government finally responded to pill mills. Add to all this the general malaise of American life with wage stagnation, a recession with an unequal recovery, and a heap of other social issues and you wind up with a real powder keg. Botton line, don't fuck with opioids for fun, and if you find yourself taking them all the time on label (EDIT: meaning as prescribed), it might be time to get a second medical opinion from a good doctor. This shit will literally kill you.

There is no other class of medication that has both reduced and caused so much human suffering.
 
Last edited:
Well I always make that assumption when I hear about someone who died
1) is a celebrity, music or otherwise
2) dies suddenly
3) cause isn't immediately known

Not sure why they're more susceptible to using drugs to address all kinds of issues. Possibly evolution is purging us of musicians, or rather musicians that need a lot of attention.
 
There is one certainty: of the people who have had drug problems in their lives, the vast majority of those who say that they don't do them anymore still do.
 
Tragic and unsurprising.

This is why I hate hardcore pain meds and cut myself from taking them long before the supply runs out. With all of my horrific injuries and surgeries, I've been through the gammit of big gun opiates, and I'm not a fan. Each time, it gets harder to handle that cut off as my body keeps craving it.

I probably have enough left over Oxycodone to buy a nice car at street value. No joke. I need to remember to take it and have it properly disposed of. That shit is relentlessly addictive, but not even in the same league as Fentanyl. I'm not sure why Fentanyl is even available as an outpatient treatment option. The addiction and subsequent mortality rate is properly insane.

I watched that shit kill my mother in law. She had gotten to a point where 1/8 of her daily dose would literally kill me or anyone else that hadn't been using it for far too long. Her decline as that shit consumed her was horrifying and tragic. The worst part was knowing there was no way to stop it and expecting the inevitable.

It's too easy for average Joe to get sucked into that rabbit hole because Doctors are too easily swayed to giving in to patients demands. When a celebrity is is involved, all sensibilities on behalf of their Doctors goes out the window entirely.

And this is very different from people who choose to self medicate with street drugs and end up Junkies or dead. These are people who experienced some form of bodily trauma or medical condition being led down the path of destruction blindly by their trusted Doctor that swore to first do no harm. The onus is not on the victims in these cases.

We need take a good hard look at the FDA and this exploding crisis and ask for some form of rationality. "Good" drugs are continually pulled from the market because of a minute risk associated with it for a small percentage of those taking it while known killers don't get a second glance. It's madness. In fact, many of the people getting hooked on this shit only wound up there because a fantastic drug that WORKED was pulled from shelves. When I first started to really struggle with my arthritis, I was given VIOXX, that stuff was a miracle. It didn't make you high, didn't knock you out, didn't do anything beyond a brilliant job of managing the ONE thing it was intended for. Outside of the relief it offered, you wouldn't know you'd taken anything. But, soon after I began using it, the FDA pulled it because a tiny fraction of a percent of users that had other serious medical conditions unrelated to arthritis had coronary events. Rather than change the guidelines for eligibility, they just took it away. Many similar drugs in that class suffered the same fate, and the result was a massive increase in opiate prescriptions to the people that had been taking them with great results.

We suck as a global leader.

Just sayin'
 
And it gets worse...I was watching one of the drug doc things on Netflix and they were talking about something 100 times more potent than fentanyl. It is an elephant tranquilizer called carfentanil.

F'n crazy. Sometimes the druggies do a shot of coke afterward so they can do anything at all... they look like real zombies on this stuff.

I just don't know how they find their addictions. It is all quite scary and very sad at the same time.
 
It's outrageous to me that there isn't a central database of people's prescriptions with a gatekeeper to make sure this kind of shit doesn't happen.
I also can't figure out why this shit is so overprescribed. I had major abdominal surgery a year-and-a-half ago, where they cut out a chunk of my kidney. I was on some good stuff while I was in the hospital, but when I went home I immediately switched to rotating Tylenol and Advil--no opioids.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top