But at least for someone like me, who has few to no pain management options (NSAIDs do basically nothing to me, ditto any narcotics before 2xOxy 7.5s every few hours) the recognition that there was a problem with the mandatory inclusion of acetaminophen in a compound where it had nothing to offer me was vindicating. If only I’d had the finding to browbeat my doctors into giving me better treatment when I needed it.

I didn’t come up with that, actually! It’s a pretty common description and I’m not sure of its origin. So, certainly, use away ;)

Another way of putting it is that an addicted person uses a drug to escape from life, whereas a dependent person uses a drug to get on with their life.

Can I borrow this? I’ll link back to you if you want, this is bar non the simplest, clearest way i’ve ever heard anyone explain the difference.

So far when you mention the control by others of the painkillers you take, the emphasis is always on the fear of addiction. I think that sometimes there are other concerns, for example saving money or simplifying things for doctors or the system. I don’t know if similar stories happen in the USA, where the healthcare system is different, but here in Spain, pain management is a nightmare for my mum.

My mother has depression, anxiety, a stressful job (she’s a doctor), chronic pain, and obesity. In this country, pain + woman + over40 + depression = a fibromyalgia diagnose. The treatment by default are triclycic antidepressants. She once had a very nasty argument with a traumatologist she was referred to, because she tried to make him understand that she was already on the only antidepressant in the market that didn’t make her anxiety or her glaucoma worse (triclycics are specifically forbidden for glaucoma sufferers; she could end up blind). The traumatologist told her literally “all you’re going to get from me are tricyclics and a referral to a dietician”.

Now, she needed a traumatologist because her usual antiinflamatory was giving her side effects she wanted to avoid. I can’t remember its name. It had nothing to do with narcotics and it doesn’t cause addiction. She kept taking it and with stomach pains, and that was all until one day, I went to the pharmacy as usual, with her prescription, and the pharmacist told me that this drug can only be prescribed by traumatologists because the government in its wisdom had decided it was only going to be used in short-term, post-surgery treatment.

My mother knew enough of the inside of the healthcare system to know that this was a movement towards making ibuprofen the universal anti-inflammatory drug. It’s just simpler (and cheaper) for the system if everyone with the same symptom takes the same drug. Ibuprofen has no effect on my mother, at any dose.

It has taken me months of reading disability blogs to realise that my mother is not one unlucky individual with a very unfortunate collection of incompatibilities in her medication, but one of the many victims of “one size fits all” medicine, even from her own colleagues.