People who have read me for a while know that for years I’ve been warning of prescription drug shortages or even stoppages. Well, now we have one that’s large enough to have made headlines:
Some patients say the announcement was a belated acknowledgment of a reality they have faced for months — pharmacies unable to fill their orders and anxiety about whether they will run out of a medication needed to manage their daily lives.
Experts say it is often difficult for patients to access Adderall, a stimulant that is tightly regulated as a controlled substance because of high potential for abuse. Medication management generally requires monthly doctor visits. There have been other shortages in recent years.
“This one is more sustained,” said Timothy Wilens,
Now, it may be possible to move to generics, and a lot of the reason for this is how regulated amphetamines are as part of the war on some drugs. Back in the 60s it was possible to buy pure amphetamines over the counter just as at one time one could buy cocaine, morphine and codeine OTC.
That said, supply lines are under pressure and those pressures, though they will fluctuate, are going to get worse over the next years and decades.
Going off Adderall can be nasty, but there are other drugs where it’s downright hell, including SSRIs and Benzos. I know one guy whose careful titration of Xanax took a year, and when another friend’s was without for two days because of a prescription problem his body started just moving and speaking on its own. (GABA is what allows you to not do things, and benzos crush your bodies natural production.)
Then, of course, there are drugs people need because without them they will die or become seriously ill.
As we go forward, all of these things will be subject to the possibility of supply shocks and shortages. I would say, indeed, that more drug and medicine shortages and supply shocks are inevitable.
It’s hard to say what to do about this, because you can’t build up a supply of your own: doctors can’t let you have a 6 months buffer, say, of benzos (which if you take them every day, is about what I’d guess you’d need to have enough to safely take yourself off them with small reductions over time.)
But be aware of this issue and see if you can figure out a way to protect yourself. And remember, even without shortages, there will be future “insulin situations” — where those who have a drug people must have jack the price up so high many people can’t afford it.
Plan ahead if you can, and be well.
Update: Someone who wants to remain anonymous offers the following suggestions:
If your on a script then it might be a good idea to see if you can start pushing a day or so early to get it refilled to try and see if it gets filled early, If it does then maybe you can slowly start to build up a very small reserve of even just a day, this can then over a small amount of time build up larger stocks which can give you a lifeline. If this is possible or even if it isn’t, look into other ways of meeting your stock and med needs. It might be even worth checking local triage procedures to see where in the totem pole you’d end up in a ration type situation. At the extreme ends it might even be necessary to procure stock through “other” means as safely as possible. Right now that’s all I can think of: my morphine for now has PRN/as needed dosing so I have some leeway of supply but SHTF situations are, as ever, dependent on a “see what happens” approach.
Joan
When I was in college in the mid-late 2000s, come exam time it seemed like everyone was on either Adderall or Xanax, and people drank caffeine and smoked like crazy. Our campus was technically smoke-free but thankfully facilities staff put flower pots everywhere for finals week so people at least had ash trays.
It seriously felt like I was the only one going through it all sober, though I escaped really hard into fiction as a coping mechanism from childhood. All this is to say there’s a ton of people on Adderall, probably at least double the number of those who have a prescription.
Soredemos
For whatever it’s worth, and this is entirely anecdotal, but I was on SSRIs for years until about five months ago, when I simply stopped taking them and went cold turkey (mother died and left me with an estate mess to sort out; I simply didn’t feel like bothering with renewing prescriptions). I felt, and continue to feel, completely unchanged. Which is pretty damning of the notion that they actually do anything. Despite being in what you would assume would be an especially depressing period in my life, I’m not particularly depressed.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone emulating me, but at least in my case simply stopping them had apparently no ill effects.
Z
Speed Queen Nancy P and Let Them Eat Shit Mitch may have their differences but I fully expect them and the rest of Congress to feverishly work together in a bipartisan fashion to resolve the Adderall shortage.
Z
Ché Pasa
Have to empathize with and largely agree with Soredemos. I was hospitalized and in extreme pain most of September. Opiods were prescribed — same was true of my roomie. He was given morphine then oxycontin; I was given oxycontin, then Tylenol with codeine when I said I didn’t want the oxycotin.
Well guess what? My roomie said the morphine he was given didn’t do anything. He was still in extreme pain; the oxycontin, he said, seemed to work, but he noticed the pain was still there. He just didn’t notice it as much. In my case, the oxycontin didn’t do much, the pain was as bad as ever, but I was slightly euphoric; the Tylenol with codeine barely masked the pain but it was enough to allow me to sleep.
When I went to refill the prescription for Tylenol with codeine, I saw a different doctor as I was then out of the hospital but still in considerable pain. He said, “You know, opioids don’t actually do anything for pain. Not even morphine or stronger. What they do is trick your brain into thinking you feel good instead of in agony, but the pain is still there under all that euphoria.” Then like a good Buddhist practitioner, he said, “Pain may be hard to bear, but it is actually good for you. Lean into it. It’s telling you something about your body you need to know.” Then he wrote the scrip and had me sign all kinds of controlled substance control forms — I’m not going to give it away or sell it or go to another doctor for another prescription on top of the one I already got or falsify my own condition, etc.
And you know what? I haven’t taken any since. Not that I haven’t had pain. Just that it didn’t seem necessary to take a drug that let me pretend it isn’t there.
Ian Welsh
Spent plenty of time in agony. Morphine definitely works.
But it depends on the pain and the dose.
1) the pain goes away.
2) the pain is there, but you don’t care.
3) it’s not strong enough and you’re still in agony.
Been at all three.
There may be some people it doesn’t work for, but they’re a minority as best I can tell.
Ché Pasa
That was my belief as well. My mother -in -law was given morphine for pain in hospice, and her relief was essentially instantaneous. When I was waiting at the ER, a woman came in in excruciating pain. She was given a morphine injection in the waiting room. Out like a light, and when she woke twenty minutes later, she felt no pain, could sit and stand and carry on an animated conversation with her daughter who’d brought her in. And I’ve heard from a number of friends that morphine was literally a lifesaver when they were in such pain they wanted to end it all.
First time I heard it didn’t work was from my roomie in the hospital, and I told him so.
I think the point of what my doctor said about opioids not doing anything — directly — for pain was to reinforce the idea –that I’ve heard more than once in a Buddhist context — that pain is there for a reason, We need to pay attention to it and understand why we are suffering. Don’t try to hide it or run away from it. At the same time, don’t prolong it or wallow in it. Medications can help. Use them. But there are also other ways of dealing with suffering. Explore them, use them.
As shortages of medications people have come to depend on intensify, alternatives will be needed. There are some, but we’ll definitely need more.
anon y'mouse
i spent the first 20 years of my life around people on, or coming down from speed. my mother was also a daily meth user for 15 years (quit cold turkey shockingly, but then took up boozing instead).
it gets pretty ugly and people start lashing out at each other, when they aren’t crashed out or holed up picking at skin conditions erupting.
watch out. if the millennials and younger are crashing from their addiction, it may have a measurable effect on the rest of society. remain extra cool, if you can.
the schools may want to lay on extra counseling. if there are budgets for that kind of thing.
bruce wilder
I think the effects (and “side” effects) of drugs are among the features and options of modern life people have the most difficulty talking sensitively or informatively about. It is as if our culture does not and cannot give us useful context let alone useful content. Maybe it really is that what little knowledge and advice we can get is strained thru one-size-fits-all mass-advertising salesmanship. Or the myths of addiction, for example, simply overwhelm our ability to converse sensitively about the dynamics, physical as well as psychological, of either habits or addiction-dependence.
I was prescribed Ritalin for a time to treat a condition that might be considered difficulty focusing. It solved my problem and I just naturally wean myself off it as I gradually and progressively found my dose unpleasantly high.
Right now I am in the third week of pain from a kind of sciatica. It can be agonizing at times, but I am learning (I hope) to manage it thru self-care until it passes. One of the stranger things (to me) that is very effective at night when the discomfort seems to intensify and interfere with sleep are caffeine drinks. I down a Monster(tm) and within 45 minutes I am asleep. In the recent past, having a caffeine drink like that after 11 am could keep me up at night! Go figure.
I have had the experience of “pain-killers” merely aiding dissociation from pain. Maybe that is enough or the best that can be safely done in some circumstances and the fault is with us for using the wrong labels or being given false expectations.
I have been treated for dysthymia, a very common form of depression — probably the most common form though I am not sure how such a thing could be measured accurately. SSRI’s are commonly prescribed to dysthymics, but the evidence for their effectiveness is doubtful. Placebo effect is very high in dysthymia, because dysthymics are people-pleasers who want to fulfill the expectations of their doctors or therapists. That is inherent in the disorder apparently.
Ian Welsh
I wonder about how much pain some people have experienced. I’ve had pain so serious I screamed when someone touched me. Other times, so serious I couldn’t even move myself in bed. I’ve spent days screaming, and that’s not an exaggeration. Pain can go far beyond the levels that are “useful”. (Visit a burn ward to see this.)
And I’ve done a ton of meditation. There are a bunch of meditative tricks that help with pain, but most don’t work against the most serious pain.
VietnamVet
The Adderall scarcity is reported to be due to a labor shortage on the packaging line. This is very likely a result of the endemic coronavirus making workers sick. Reportedly four million Americans are incapable of work due to long-COVID. Joe Biden says that the pandemic is over. So, ending the pandemic and replacing the missing workers is simply impossible. There are no working public health systems anymore (except in China). Insiders have decided that healthy schools and workplaces are too expensive. In the long term, perhaps, replacement immigrants can be trained and protected to do any corporate jobs left over after the collapse of the Western Empire and hyperinflation.
The current neo-liberal order also has decimated government. The shelf-life of a head of lettuce is longer than ex-PM Liz Truss. The West is incapable of rationing or taxing windfall profits. Soon, vital items will not be available or at an exorbitant price like Insulin is now in the USA. More tax cuts won’t work. Interest rate hikes on top of austerity will “buzzkill” jobs.
The World War between Ukraine/NATO and the Russian Federation after eight months is steadily escalating without talks and absolutely no diplomacy. All the energy, food and commodities from Russia are embargoed in the West. German industry is shutting down. Shortly there will be no goods or components to be imported from Europe. The only way Europe can reopen is an armistice and opening the Nord Stream 2 pipeline left undamaged in the attack against the European Union’s energy supply by unidentified state level operatives.
“On the q.t.”, Joe Biden has declared an economic war on China by curtaining its semiconductor manufacturing access and technology plus firing Americans working in the field there if they want to remain US citizens. All the drugs, goods, and components manufactured in China are at risk of being cutoff if there is retaliation. There are hints that this includes airplanes which will make Boeing a North American zombie corporation.
This is all hitting the fan right now before the mid-term elections. Afterwards, about the only thing worse that could happen with these “Keystone Cops” in charge is a nuclear war.
Kfish
This is exactly why I got off Zoloft. St. John’s Wort can kinda-sorta work as a substitute, but you get photosensitivity as a side effect.
At least people self-medicating with booze or weed can brew / grow their own.
bruce wilder
Infant formula shortages shocked me, but the nonchalance of the Biden Administration showed the key role of Dunning-Krueger level incompetence at the top. They really do not know how their political economies work and have no interest in making them work better. That is the message, too, in the catastrophe the Tories made of Brexit and the EU created with their Ukraine sanctions.
Feral Finster
anon y’mouse wrote: “i spent the first 20 years of my life around people on, or coming down from speed. my mother was also a daily meth user for 15 years (quit cold turkey shockingly, but then took up boozing instead).”
Kvestion (feels weird talking to a mouse): which was worse?
different clue
Pain beyond a transmission-of-information point has no purpose and no reason if it can be relieved back down to a point-of-useful information.
Any Buddhist Teacher/Guru who says differently should volunteer to demonstrate by offering to step on a stonefish and massage himself/herself with leaves of the Gimpie-Gimpie tree. And then cover himself with live irakundji jellyfish.
https://fishkeepingfolks.com/stonefish/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/gympie-gympie
https://www.newsweek.com/nightmare-irukandji-jellyfish-sting-painful-victims-ask-die-invading-australia-778128
And take no anesthetic. Zero. None.
And get back to us after a month with his / her report.
anon y'mouse
Feral: it depends upon which parameter you’re asking about.
her addiction was tied into being in an abusive relationship, and having leftover ptsd from being physically, mentally & psychologically abused by her own father growing up.
the boozing took more of a toll on her physical health.
none of these things enabled her to live a fruitful life. nor a long one.
mago
I’ve lived with joint, nerve and muscle pain for years, and don’t even take aspirin. But when severe dental pain struck I took prescription Tylenol with codeine and was relived that it masked not only the tooth pain, but joint pain as well. However, side effects such as constipation and a grumpy attitude the day after made me abandon them. Still have some in my kit just in case.
My ex wife went cold turkey after a year on Adderall and her ensuing rage and psychotic episodes almost put the final nail in the marriage coffin. (Other causes drove that nail home.)
Not a believer in pharmaceuticals, but there’s something to be said for a low dose quick release cbd/thc combo to help check pain and jitters. Depends.
I’d go for opium if chronic pain from a terminal illness were present. Maybe.
There are natural remedies available for some types of pain, like pee on jellyfish stings, but generally speaking it’s bandaids on a chainsaw wound.
I’m clueless, so until faced with unmanageable pain I’ll live with it just as I do with tinnitus.
Additional observation: a shortage of pharmaceutical palliatives spells social fractures—along with myriad other causes of course.
Dependence/tolerance/withdrawal. What can you do?
Z
As our politicians can attest to, one thing about pharmaceutical speed is that though one might think it would speed up your heartbeat and hence shorten one’s lifespan, it apparently does not and may even increase it.
Z
BC Nurse Prof
SSRI’s are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. You make your own serotonin. It is broken down and reabsorbed. SSRI’s interfere with the re-absorption so more of it sticks around.
In depression, people have overworked themselves and decreased production of serotonin. You can give your body the components to make more. Take 5-HTP. And it’s cheap.
For pain, opium poppies are easy to grow, even in Canada. Papaver Somniferum grows REALLY well in Afghanistan. If we bought their entire crop there would never be another shortage of morphine and the country would thrive on the proceeds. But we can’t have that, can we?
In order to make morphine from poppy seed heads, you need to have the correct variety, and follow the correct procedures. Check Youtube. No one should be in intractable pain. I keep seeds for just such shortages. When that happens, I will be able to treat my neighbours. Or myself.
Jason
They built a narrative around “serotonin” that simply isn’t true. There are no accurate measures of serotonin, and even if there were, there is no agreed-upon “proper” level of serotonin.
Are you “depressed” because you don’t have “enough” serotonin, or is your serotonin “low” because you’re “depressed?”
If we reduce all the various manifestations of “mental illness” to their simplest denominator, they seem to be an escape of various degree and consequence into what are, for we sufferers, the much safer confines of our own skulls. The degree/consequence of said “escape” is often every bit as dependent on outside/environmental factors.
There may be a small percentage of the human population that will always be “born crazy” no matter the circumstances. Maybe. But nobody is born “mentally ill” in the way that the modern pharmaceutical/medical establishment would have us believe.
The pills they tell us are rectifying various brain deficiencies that they’ve identified are in fact doing nothing of the kind. They are in some way changing what goes on, but not in the specific manner they sell it as. This is why something along the lines of “the exact mechanism of the pill you are taking is unknown” has to be included legally in the fine print of every prescription.
There is an eminently readable book called “Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche” by Ethan Watters which delves into not only the nonsense surrounding the pills, but also the many problems with “talk therapy” that is promoted to high hell these days. Watters focuses on how the exporting of these Western-based modalities has had horrible results for most of the rest of the world. There are excellent references and source material for further inquiry and understanding.
The drug companies first began ghostwriting scientific papers for university researchers in the 1950’s(!) and by the 1970’s they had taken control of funding the major randomized control trials. By the mid 90’s, over half the studies in the most prestigious journals were being drafted by medical writing companies paid by drug companies, as opposed to by the university researchers themselves.
Today? One shudders to think.
We can be sure Peter Doshi of the bmj is not surprised.
Trinity
We know the health care system in the US is broken, but I also want to talk about the broken pharma system. I don’t mean the financialization, I mean how poorly designed the new drugs are now. I first noticed this in commercials twenty years ago (that itself is also a problem, advertising drugs that always encourage you to “talk to your doctor about …”).
By poorly designed, I mean they target one thing and only one thing in the body, leading to a grocery list of known side effects. Just like the vaccines. Not holistic in any way, shape, or form. Not-holistic is pretty much how everyone in power approaches problems these days. Alongside the financialization issues, this non-systemic approach to problem solving benefits them greatly because they can then “solve” the cascading effects by designing ever more new profitable enterprises.
Then, there are the drug pushers (notably psychiatrists, but there are others) who have pushed the notion that all problems (not just physical pain) can be relieved with a pill. “Better living through chemistry” has been going on for many years, along with the related environmental destruction as well as the breakdown in society. It wasn’t too long ago everyone was searching the Amazon rainforest for the next new miracle drug,
This has all been going on for many years. Instead of solving the problems by other means, people are put on pills, leading to dependence. It’s the opposite of “give a man a fish and he eats once, teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime”. For pharma, it’s about selling the fish to the man every month, year after year. It’s the culture they’ve created for us, and one they aren’t going to help us solve. (So many should be in jail!)
Bruce said: “It is as if our culture does not and cannot give us useful context let alone useful content.” Exactly, we are only sold/given what creates problems for us and profit for them.
Childbirth was very painful, my pelvis was broken, but I did it without drugs. I don’t recommend this, I didn’t know I was going through a natural childbirth until it was over (naval hospital). I had sciatica for several years following, and just dealt with it by mastering what I called the “one cheek sit”. Eventually it thankfully went away on its own, never to return.
I’ve been lucky, my biggest pain was more existential and social, with few instances of physical pain, but I recognize and sympathize with what others have or are going through. When your pain (physical or emotional) is ignored throughout childhood, you have to figure out how to deal with it, one way or another. Sometimes, many times, it led to some detrimental habits (smoking was one). I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to undo those bad habits.
Ché Pasa
Pain seems to me to be largely subjective. Some of us can live quite well, even happily, with what others would think of as excruciating pain, while some feel the slightest pin-prick or the sensation of sunshine on the skin as unspeakable pain. It depends.
I don’t think I tolerate pain very well but apparently I do — at least in some other people’s perceptions, some doctors’, too. Oh yes, I have cried out in pain more often than I’d like to think, but I’ve known so many others whose pain must be objectively much worse than mine — except if it’s subjective, maybe their pain isn’t worse.
I’ve talked to at least a half a dozen people since I’ve been doing physical therapy out of the hospital who have told me shocking stories of what they’ve been through — accidents, surgeries, chronic conditions, etc. — that left them crying in just horrendous pain that nothing seemed able to relieve, or for which no doctor would prescribe anything strong enough. It’s tough in the US because of panic-passed laws and that deep-seated belief that “suffering is good for the soul.” No Buddhist would say that you should suffer(pain), in fact just the opposite. But if you do suffer, as everyone does to a greater or lesser extent, then examine it. It’s telling you something — even if it’s just get your hand off the damned hot stove. Next time, don’t step on the jelly-fish. So many other things that are obvious and not.
If, like I have had, and I think Ian has had, you have a chronic condition that leaves you in excruciating pain for extended periods, and nothing really seems to relieve it, and you’ve examined it, even embraced it and it just gets worse, but you learn that there are medications that might help, then take them — if you can get them. In the US it’s tough to get opioids and other controlled pain relievers unless you’re hospitalized or in a pain management program, which is one reason for deadly increase in illicit fentanyl use. Other forms of self-medication, too. Somehow I lucked into(?) doctors who didn’t say “no,” but they’ve got to fill out every form top to bottom and prove to Authority that I’m not some fucked up addict. Well, not yet.
Effective pain medications have been hard to get in the US (legally) for a long time. Insulin and epinephrine among others are too expensive for many who need them. Other useful and effective medications are in short supply and it’s not getting better. We don’t have any choice but to deal with it and hopefully come up with alternatives, as our rulers really don’t care. To them, our suffering is… amusing. If they notice at all.
capelin
@Trinity
“Not-holistic is pretty much how everyone in power approaches problems these days.”
Ain’t that the truth.
–
In regards to the effect of substances on the body, I’ve found that this can change significantly. One may need/not need something for years, and then one morning you wake up and sense your body’s requirements have changed. The trick is to be able to listen, have a baseline understanding of how the body works (sooo complicated), and make sure you’re covering the basics – ie drinking enough good water.
Some of the best pain relief I’ve experienced has been via therapeutic massage – ie manual lymphatic drainage for dental pain (the lymph system – the body’s sewage system – lays just under the skin – gently stroke “with the pressure of a quarter (coin)” – in the direction it would normally flow). The lymph has no inherent “pumps”, it relies on movement. Jumping jacks and inversions help.
If the lymph is plugged, drugs (which the body must process and eliminate) can plug it even further, causing more pain.
That being said, pain beyond a certain level is highly unproductive; nuke it any way that works till you figure out something better.
–
As for the actual subject of this article, I’d say it fits in perfect with the “keep the little people on their back-foot” game all the cool kids, er, elites are playing these days. More feature than bug.
capelin
https://twitter.com/JeffWellsRigInt/status/1583442512424800257
Don’t kill the end users, keep them debilitated and dependent. That’s Pharma’s sweet spot. A lot of people are betting everything that they hit it.
John
Here is another shortage: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/from-gloves-to-dye-for-ct-scans-supply-shortages-continue-to-stress-hospitals/ar-AAY76SO
I’ve been getting ct scans with no high contrast iodine for suspicious spots on internal organs. I’m old, so I can be a bit philosophical about it.
BTW, the Buddhist recognition that suffering (pain) is a pervasive aspect of life does not imply that one should just suck it up and ‘live’ with it. Treatment for the varieties of pain is of prime concern, up to including opiates for physical pain. The sacred opium poppy is endemic to south Asia where Buddhism started and has been skillfully used used by Buddhists for millennia. Cannabis too.
Soredemos
@Ché Pasa
Yes, pain is your body telling you something. Namely ‘hey, you’re doing a thing you shouldn’t be doing. Stop doing that thing.’
But that’s only useful for a while. If it’s something you have no control over, your body screeching at you endlessly isn’t going to change anything. Absolutely there is a place for painkilling drugs. There is pain that no amount of meditation is going to get you through.
Art
Funny how so many people who were pushing the miraculous power of the market to regulate, contain, righteously distribute its products, and even remove bad actors are suddenly sure that government must step in and ‘do something’. Same thing with labor supply and baby formula. Reminds me of fresh out of high-school teenagers and their first apartment. They absolutely don’t want any interference, until something goes wrong. At which time the whole thing falls into Daddies lap.
And always, always. Every detail is used to increase profits to ‘stakeholders’ , executive staff and stockholders, or Corporate. I talk to businessmen who, after a drink or two, will tell you they like it when ‘inflation’ is mentioned in the news. They get to raise prices. Anyone who can read a statement can see that most of the time costs are steady but profits are up. Funny that. It also highlights why tighter monetary policy isn’t working very well to fight this ‘inflation’.
Anyway, loss of Russian gas isn’t the end of the world. Belts will be tightened, people will huddle for warmth. Germany is not going to be reduced to guys, capit to eyebrow ratio approaching one, wearing hides looking around for woolly mammoths. NG prices are down and the transfer facilities are nearing completion. Even the ‘they will all freeze to death without Russian gas’ crowd has shifted from doom this winter to doom next winter. Early investigation of the busted pipes is being report to look more like a poorly planned and executed attempt to clear a hydrate plug than active sabotage. So, pending more/better information, ‘the Russians did it’ is still the winner.
Long COVID is, can be, bad but most people I know claiming it are showing slow improvement. A couple after getting the latest booster. The local hypochondriac, who claimed she had ‘caught epilepsy and carpal tunnel’ has not, Go figure.
Humankind has always had chronic conditions that lessened output. The stereotypical picture into the 50s of the southern man was barefoot and sleeping. Root seems to be hook and/or roundworms that, by some accounts, infected a third of southerners. Malaria, Chikungunya, Chagas disease, chronic fine particulate air pollution, lead exposure, nitrates in the water, and living under an immiserating economic or government system all lower productivity. Lots of that going around.
Got my COVID bivalent booster and flu shot. I could barely get out of bed to pee for two days. Walking the dogs was an adventure. Dead and face down in a pile of shit isn’t how I want to go. I feel better now.
Life goes on. We will adapt and overcome. It will take time and effort. Some of us won’t make it. Getting old ain’t for wimps.
Z
Art,
There were three pipes that blew in total and they happened at two different times (one at one time and two at another).
Z
dermotmoconnor
“Pain is there for a reason” sounds more Bourgeois than Buddhist. And definitely BS in any case. Broke my wrist in December, and the pain meds were very welcome, thank you very much.
anon y'mouse
i am in physical pain right now. generally, i have pain on a daily basis. occasionally i take a bit of aspirin if it’s a migraine but no over the counter remedies really work for this spine and these hips, and i’m not willing to endlessly pop pills that are only destroying my liver and kidneys. and i’m not very old, so thinking that i will have to learn to endure this pain for another 10-15-20 years or more. it’s like a constant internal noise you can’t really shut down and when you pause what you’re doing, it comes back to you again. so the only real thing one can do is try to get thoroughly mentally involved in something, and keep yourself distracted from the pain.
when i wake up, often i feel as though a small gnome has been striking me with a hammer all night or i was run over by a bicycle in my dreams. it takes a long time to get going after that.
if i could take something that wouldn’t dull me out or damage my organs, i would do that even if it meant taking it for the rest of my life. but there doesn’t seem to be much available except mind over matter. at least it’s not dental pain or childbirth (experienced the former–and you do want to bash your own skull in, eventually).
i am sure there are many people like me out there, and doctors look at you suspiciously if you even mention that you have recurrent pain. they expect you’re trying to get drugs out of them. you can see them tense up. you know, i could get better “drugs” than what they’d give me just by walking down the “right” street and keeping my eyes open, so they should stop letting their power over the prescription pad go to their heads.
Art
Art,
There were three pipes that blew in total and they happened at two different times (one at one time and two at another).
Yes, and the one/few that have been examined in a cursory manner so far look to have ruptured in a manner that suggests mismanagement more than sabotage. The commentary from what I took to be ROV operators, while not conclusive, is highly suggestive.
Give it a few weeks and I’m pretty sure official report/s will be released.
Z
Art,
So, you believe that they blew out one pipe by clearing a hydrate plug, found out that they blew the pipe, and then turned around and blew out another one doing the same thing seventeen hours later?
Z
Ian Welsh
I shouldn’t have let this pipelines conversation happen in this particular thread, but since I did, let me say that anyone with sense always thought the official investigation would blame Russia and sure as hell wouldn’t blame the US.