archives for information about pharmaceutical companies.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured out sooner what was going on. He’d spent more than twenty-five years as a pharmacist, meaning he had lived through an entire sea change in narcotics prescribing practices and never questioned it. Or even realized it.
It embarrassed Golbom, and it made him angry. If he’d been fooled, along with most other pharmacists and doctors, what chance did the average person have?
Through his research, Golbom discovered that humans have known about the wondrous substance inside opium poppies since before the dawn of recorded time. It’s not hard to extract. Just before the plant’s seed pod ripens, scratch its smooth, blue-green skin and catch the tears of whitish milk that leak out. Dried until it’s a sticky yellow residue, opium contains the elemental ingredients for the vast array of illegal and legal opioid narcotics made today, from heroin to oxycodone.
Opioids subdue pain. They work beautifully, blocking electrical and chemical signals before they can leap the synapse from one nerve cell to the next. In six thousand years, we’ve never found another painkiller that works as well. They don’t cure anything; they simply mute sensations. They also change the way the brain perceives the nerve signals. Suddenly, pain doesn’t cause as much panic or stress. It becomes tolerable.
But opioids produce a number of additional effects. They slow the pump of heart and lungs. Bowels grow sluggish too, causing constipation. They galvanize the brain’s pleasure centers, causing joy.
Another thing about opioids: Nerve cells become desensitized to them more quickly than any other group of drugs. Higher and higher doses are necessary to produce the same impact.
They’re also addictive. Severely. Profoundly. And quickly. Withdrawal symptoms can be detected at the cellular level after a single dose of morphine. Administer opioids long enough, and the patient will become physically and psychologically dependent, terrified that the supply will be cut off, willing to go great lengths to forestall the nibbling panic of early withdrawal. That dread is felt more frequently as the body builds a tolerance to the drug, always needing more. Long-term users become physically dependent. Addicts go a step further and crave the drug psychologically, love the euphoria and seek more of it.
American doctors have known about the dark side of opioids for a long time, at least since hundreds of thousands of Civil War veterans became morphine addicts after that drug was administered liberally to wounded soldiers. Around the turn of the previous century, opium and other narcotics were available in a number of snake-oil elixirs, including baby-soothing formulas. Over time, the medical establishment came to the firm conclusion that heavy-duty narcotics were best prescribed sparingly, to patients in such bad shape that the risk of addiction seemed a laughably minor menace, such as cancer patients with tumors gnawing at their bones, or to someone in agony in a controlled, hospital environment. Almost by definition, opioids were not considered to be acceptable treatments for long-term chronic pain, because long-term use meant dependence. Doctors generally agreed you didn’t simply send people home with a big supply of the stuff and hope for the best.
It was often hard to tell who was in pain. Pain is personal, subjective. It is influenced by mood, psychology, upbringing. It’s cultural too. The Irish were less likely to voice pain than the Italians, according to a 1950s study at a veterans hospital in San Francisco. Pain had a randomness, an arbitrary nature that didn’t sit well with doctors, who were, after all, scientists looking for something to measure.
Over the decades, pharmaceutical companies developed and released an ever-expanding lineup of narcotics of different strains and mixtures and strengths. Vicodin, a mix of hydrocodone and acetaminophen.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured out sooner what was going on. He’d spent more than twenty-five years as a pharmacist, meaning he had lived through an entire sea change in narcotics prescribing practices and never questioned it. Or even realized it.
It embarrassed Golbom, and it made him angry. If he’d been fooled, along with most other pharmacists and doctors, what chance did the average person have?
Through his research, Golbom discovered that humans have known about the wondrous substance inside opium poppies since before the dawn of recorded time. It’s not hard to extract. Just before the plant’s seed pod ripens, scratch its smooth, blue-green skin and catch the tears of whitish milk that leak out. Dried until it’s a sticky yellow residue, opium contains the elemental ingredients for the vast array of illegal and legal opioid narcotics made today, from heroin to oxycodone.
Opioids subdue pain. They work beautifully, blocking electrical and chemical signals before they can leap the synapse from one nerve cell to the next. In six thousand years, we’ve never found another painkiller that works as well. They don’t cure anything; they simply mute sensations. They also change the way the brain perceives the nerve signals. Suddenly, pain doesn’t cause as much panic or stress. It becomes tolerable.
But opioids produce a number of additional effects. They slow the pump of heart and lungs. Bowels grow sluggish too, causing constipation. They galvanize the brain’s pleasure centers, causing joy.
Another thing about opioids: Nerve cells become desensitized to them more quickly than any other group of drugs. Higher and higher doses are necessary to produce the same impact.
They’re also addictive. Severely. Profoundly. And quickly. Withdrawal symptoms can be detected at the cellular level after a single dose of morphine. Administer opioids long enough, and the patient will become physically and psychologically dependent, terrified that the supply will be cut off, willing to go great lengths to forestall the nibbling panic of early withdrawal. That dread is felt more frequently as the body builds a tolerance to the drug, always needing more. Long-term users become physically dependent. Addicts go a step further and crave the drug psychologically, love the euphoria and seek more of it.
American doctors have known about the dark side of opioids for a long time, at least since hundreds of thousands of Civil War veterans became morphine addicts after that drug was administered liberally to wounded soldiers. Around the turn of the previous century, opium and other narcotics were available in a number of snake-oil elixirs, including baby-soothing formulas. Over time, the medical establishment came to the firm conclusion that heavy-duty narcotics were best prescribed sparingly, to patients in such bad shape that the risk of addiction seemed a laughably minor menace, such as cancer patients with tumors gnawing at their bones, or to someone in agony in a controlled, hospital environment. Almost by definition, opioids were not considered to be acceptable treatments for long-term chronic pain, because long-term use meant dependence. Doctors generally agreed you didn’t simply send people home with a big supply of the stuff and hope for the best.
It was often hard to tell who was in pain. Pain is personal, subjective. It is influenced by mood, psychology, upbringing. It’s cultural too. The Irish were less likely to voice pain than the Italians, according to a 1950s study at a veterans hospital in San Francisco. Pain had a randomness, an arbitrary nature that didn’t sit well with doctors, who were, after all, scientists looking for something to measure.
Over the decades, pharmaceutical companies developed and released an ever-expanding lineup of narcotics of different strains and mixtures and strengths. Vicodin, a mix of hydrocodone and acetaminophen.
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