Harvard Gazette: Using chili peppers to burn drug abusers: "Imagine snorting an extract of 50 jalapeno peppers and you get the idea," Woolf says. "On a one to 10 scale, the pain is about a thousand. It feels like a mininuclear explosion in your mouth. It does not harm you, but you never want to experience that feeling again."
Come on, Mr. Woolf. Do you think a little heat is gonna keep people (like Rush Limbaugh, for instance) from getting high?
In fact, I could see it as a new macho cred. You have to suffer before you get the benefit. Snorting OxyContin could become a virtuous act.
On a serious note, I am very concerned and personally committed to making sure that pain management and control is available to all that need it. Doctors in this country largely under treat pain. It's not good to suffer. And many with chronic pain have very few options. I get very worried when the government tries to control access to useful medications for fear that someone, somewhere, will abuse it.
Pharaoh! Let my people grow up!
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11 years ago
1 comment:
Excellent post!
Why are so many people today fixated on "punishing" others, and doing it in such a way that people being treated perfectly legitimately will also be harmed?
I agree about the need for better pain management and pain control for those who legitimately need it. Let's not spend our time and energy on punishing abusers; let's spend it on finding ways to alleviate real pain and on better using it to do so.
An additional note: Capsaicin, the "heat" in hot peppers, has been used (mixed with suitable emollients) for centuries -- possibly even millennia -- as a pain reliever for arthritis. It began, as so many medicines used today have, as a "folk" remedy, and is still an over-the-counter remedy, as it should be. A tube of capsaicin ointment (available in varying degress of "heat") is not expensive by the standards of today's drug prices.
Like any other medicine, it has to be used carefully and responsibly. Don't get it into your eyes or mouth or anywhere but where your arthritis is painful. Wash your hands after applying it, or use a piece of cloth, waxed paper, paper towel, or something else to apply it to avoid getting it on your hands. But if you use it correctly, it definitely can help reduce arthritis pain.
And that leads to what people who are in pain need and want: reducing or ending the pain.
Perhaps the people who are so "prescriptive" about drug misuse haven't been in real pain lately. If they had been, they would understand better that abuse doesn't come out of legitimate pain reduction. If it did, no one could undergo major or even minor surgery without becoming an addict. In the vast majority of cases, that does not happen. If you are honestly trying to solve problems of drug abuse and addiction, look elsewhere.
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