I was going to say “relatively trivial side effects” but I didn’t want to overload it with caveats. Yes, I’ve temporarily been on medications that were effective at relieving pain but which didn’t make me sleepy or otherwise impair me in any noticeable fashion.
Medications that you would nonetheless consider having potential for addiction? Or is it just that any really effective medication for chronic pain is something that one will ultimately come to “depend” on and have a hard time stopping? (I don’t at all mean to badger you, I’m just curious.)
It wasn’t my judgment that I would become addicted, but the doctor’s. My point was that even if this is correct, that I would become addicted, that “addiction” is extremely benign—far more benign, than e.g. the human “addiction” to food. (You can usefully model humans that way.) It just means that I spend a few extra dollars per year. Big deal.
An addiction is not the end of the world, and when doctors have this hole in their treatment heuristics—where they are constitutionally incapable of weighing addiction against other alternatives—it is a sign to me of shallow understanding on the doctor’s part.
I was going to say “relatively trivial side effects” but I didn’t want to overload it with caveats. Yes, I’ve temporarily been on medications that were effective at relieving pain but which didn’t make me sleepy or otherwise impair me in any noticeable fashion.
Medications that you would nonetheless consider having potential for addiction? Or is it just that any really effective medication for chronic pain is something that one will ultimately come to “depend” on and have a hard time stopping? (I don’t at all mean to badger you, I’m just curious.)
It wasn’t my judgment that I would become addicted, but the doctor’s. My point was that even if this is correct, that I would become addicted, that “addiction” is extremely benign—far more benign, than e.g. the human “addiction” to food. (You can usefully model humans that way.) It just means that I spend a few extra dollars per year. Big deal.
An addiction is not the end of the world, and when doctors have this hole in their treatment heuristics—where they are constitutionally incapable of weighing addiction against other alternatives—it is a sign to me of shallow understanding on the doctor’s part.