> The guidelines currently say that if someone is in pain, give them as much painkiller as they want
Can you point me to those guidelines please? I'm struggling to find them.
I can understand the advice if it's relating to short term immediate pain - for example post-operative pain. Addiction is unlikely to result from pain medication use in that example.
I went looking for you. The guidelines appear to have been updated since last I checked, and are no longer as irresponsible as I thought they were. Here's what I found:
It's actually pretty hard for legitimate patients to get opioids in many circumstances. My mother has chronic pain from a surgery and has been on a very low dose of oxycodone for years now (10mg a day, I think), and she regularly is subjected to urine and other tests to prove that she's not an addict. My grandpa just had an operation and later at home ended up in a lot of pain, but he could not get oxycodone for two days -- the first night because he went in after 7:00 PM and apparently Indiana has some law against prescribing them past that time.
Huh, I might be basing my perception on what is high vs. low from knowing some people who abused oxycodone. I believe my mom takes 5mg twice a day, and from what I'm reading that still seems pretty light. Oxycontin pills are minimum 5mg, correct?
Erowid puts that in the "light" category for users with some tolerance, FWIW:
Can you point me to those guidelines please? I'm struggling to find them.
I can understand the advice if it's relating to short term immediate pain - for example post-operative pain. Addiction is unlikely to result from pain medication use in that example.
Here's the English advice: http://www.fpm.ac.uk/faculty-of-pain-medicine/opioids-aware