White people who visit hospital emergency departments with pain are 26% more likely than Black people to be given opioid pain medications such as morphine. This was a key finding from our recent study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. We also found that Black patients were 25% more likely than white patients to be given only non-opioid painkillers such as ibuprofen, which are typically available over the counter.
As someone who was just in the ER with 9 to 10 out of 10 pain, you are totally incorrect. Sometimes you have extreme pain without surgery or impending death. Non-opioids don’t even touch that level of pain.
What was/is causing your pain?
Unless you were stabbed or shot or had appendicitis or pancreatitis or kidney stones or something (all of which qualify as acute to me and are suitable for a short course of narcotics), pain that severe is typically caused by inflammation of the nerves as they leave the spine. Or cancer.
Nerve pain is best treated with steroids, not narcotics.
I’ve been there. It was, by a huge margin, the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. My arms and shoulders hurt so much that I couldn’t do anything but think about the pain. The problem wasn’t in my arms. It was in my neck.
I didn’t know what a 10/10 was until then. All my other pain (even various surgeries) were just 5/10 compared to that.
Edit: I can’t even imagine why this is controversial. Please answer the most important question. Where did the pain come from?
I had an adverse reaction to an iron infusion. They were not able to figure out the specific cause of the pain, but morphine sure helped me get through it.
And this is something that people think is contradictory to what I’ve said?
Narcotics managing acute pain is fine. Narcotics are only for that.
Your initial comment made it sound as though you support it being much more restricted.
Narcotic medications should be far more restricted than they are.
That’s the point.
My experience in the past few years is that they are already extremely restricted. I had a fairly major surgery after which I was not given narcotics, and in hindsight, I would have demanded them, because whatever they did give me did not work.
When you have surgery, you’re supposed to have pain.
It’s always been a tradeoff, and that’s something that lay people seem to have no understanding of. Do I suffer with my problem or treat it?
The fact that people are demanding pain free medical experiences is the problem.
There are no tools that deliver pain free surgery. The closest thing that humans can currently do is drug you out. That’s the problem. Pain and pleasure are so primal, that they’re probably isn’t any way to separate them. Even in principle.
I got offered way more drugs than I needed or wanted in every (more than office visit) surgery I’ve ever had.
There is nothing wrong with giving somebody a week’s worth of narcotics to help them recover from surgery. It takes more than a week to become addicted.
Try passing a kidney stone without opioids
I literally stated this as an example of an acute and appropriate use of opiates.
I think that you think your initial comment was more encompassing of acute conditions than it came across as being.