Good Article From Current Player on Drug Use

[grampahol]

Well look..pain is subjective. What feels overwhelmingly painful to you might feel like a minor irritation to someone else. Walk into the doctors office and tell them your leg (or any body part) hurts and you might get prescribed opiates,but you might just as easily be told to take aspirin.
I'm no stranger to the opiate controversy. I was at one time addicted to heroin to deal with pain that went untreated for a very long time, but I couldn't find a doctor willing to treat my pain because I had no medical insurance so my only option at the time was to go to the streets to self medicate and by doing so was labeled a criminal. Had a doctor prescribed it I would have been perfectly legal.
I even told people at the ER that they were forcing me to do things that were illegal and their response? Do what you have to do, but we're not going to prescribe opiates. My injury at the time was a broken eye socket and several screws to hold my head together, but for some reason I wasn't going to be allowed to treat the pain legally.
I'm to the point anymore that I simply don't believe anything I read or hear in the news about opiates. According to the news people are dying at the rate of a total out and out war because of opiates which simply isn't true. If it were true everyone who ever took a pain pill would die, but they don't..
What is true is that opiates are addictive, but so are many perfectly legal substances and some are even deadlier such as cigarette smoking.
I have no qualms about medical marijuana or marijuana use by anyone for any reason they see fit, but it's not the cure all to end all cure alls. I've used both opiates and marijuana and opiates knock out pain much more effectively. The problem isn't really with the opiates, it's with the way our society is consistently mislead and lied to.
Remember needle exchanges? We were told that needle exchanges would only encourage more people to use heroin and forget that it could save lives by preventing preventable diseases because anyone using heroin probably deserves to die anyway. That was the kind of thinking that gets people killed.
The truth of the matter is that you can't outlaw everything that might kill you. Taking a bath might kill you if you slip and drown, but nobody is talking about outlawing taking a bath nor should they.
So we're at this point where it's ok for entire football teams to be addicted to opiate pain killers,but if you get addicted by either prescribed medication or even street medication you might as well consider yourself a criminal and your morals will always be suspect.
I've struggled with addiction on and off for many years and at this point in my life I pretty much know how much is ok to take and how much is too much, but even openly talking about it can make me a suspect that I may be engaging in illegal activity.
My father, 87 years old is prescribed a lot of opiate pain medication and he watches the news every day so much so he's convinced himself that he's a junkie and the police will be breaking down the door any time now. Forget that it's all precribed by two highly respected doctors. It's "dope" in his mind and his morals are all flawed despite the fact that he suffers from severe spinal stenosis.
Is it ok for football players to be handed out opiates like candy just so we can all be entertained on Sundays while others are locked up in prisons for treating their own pain without the consent of their doctors? Of course it isn't, but welcome to the world of hypocrisy to the extreme.