A Pain Patients' Letter
To The Washington Times
Re Article: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030902-121408-9583r.htm
September 2, 2003
This is a terribly sad article written for the Washington Times. It SICKENS me that 99% of the article was spent on the abuse and abusers of OxyContin, while fewer than 30 words were used for the REAL reason OxyContin exists which is pain relief for the MILLIONS of people who live in constant pain.
Until you live with chronic, unremitting pain on a daily basis, with no let-up ever, you do not have the RIGHT to judge those of us who do ! This article makes it sound like there is no socially redeeming value in OxyContin...which is entirely UNTRUE !
I am fortunate enough not to need to use narcotics yet, but I am joining in with the hundreds, nay thousands, of others who are writing letters of protest to you in order to protect my freedom and those of my sisters and brothers in pain. To have had our lives transformed to one of pain and misery, weakness and unrelenting fatigue by numerous and mostly invisible illnesses is a fate almost worse than death. To have the one medication that allows us to function almost normally again taken away because of the abuse POTENTIAL, is cruel and inhumane treatment of law abiding citizens following the written orders of their physicians !!
WHY is so much emphasis being placed on the abuse and abusers of OxyContin when they figure out to be less than 1% (DEA's numbers) of the ones using OxyContin!?!?! What about the 99% who are using it exactly as written by their doctors? Where are THESE stories!?! Where are the stories of the doctors who are afraid to write prescriptions for pain relief because they fear losing their license to practice medicine?!! Where are the stories about the doctors who have been treated like CRIMINALS for writing prescriptions for narcotics for their patients suffering intense life-altering pain?
And most of all where are the stories of lives transformed for the better by this miracle drug? The people who could no longer function on their own who now have a LIFE and can get out of bed and care for their families once again? Where are THOSE stories?! Why did you print such an obviously one-sided and terribly BIASED miserable article about the abuse and the abusers !?!!? They don't deserve ONE INCH of press and yet you gave them all this attention ! You even told how to alter the mdication so it can be abused !
I wish to go on record as to one supporting the LEGAL use of OxyContin for relief of moderate to severe pain, which is why the drug was manufactured in the first place...and let those who abuse it deal with their own misery !
THEY create their own problems ! This drug didn't ask to be abused!� THEY abuse it! I am so sick of this society of people looking for scape-goats and not taking responsibility for their OWN actions and living/dealing with the consequences! We all know if you take drugs in a manner different from what they were made for, you run the risk of running into problems ! If you take a medication that is designed to be swallowed, crush it and inject it...it seems you should expect there might be some difficulty! Of course, this is rational thought and I forgot: drug abusers are no longer capable of rational thought!
We are taught from the time we are little children that drugs are bad for us. These kids/teens/adults who abuse drugs got the same message but somehow they thought they could beat the system. If you take OxyContin off the market because of the abusers then they will have won and the rest of society, which is mostly made of up of good decent human beings just trying to make it though life, will have lost and be left out in the cold without good pain relief.
It is a sad day in this United States indeed when criminals win out over good people.
A Chronic Pain Patient
