Bitter Debate Vilifies Physicians Who Prescribe Narcotics.

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An ER Physician breaks his silence, and explains the subtle influences that forces the hand of many doctors to inappropriately prescribe powerful narcotics, like Morphine. Doctors have a ethical obligation to reduce or remove suffering, so when a patience who is in “Pain” or claims to be doctors find themselves at an impasse.

Since pain can’t be measured, it can be almost imppossible to figure out with absolute certainty whether the patients Opiate Needs are legitimate or simply just a ruse - intended to feed an addiction. This conundrum has caused many doctors to become scene as villians, victims of the under/over opiate prescription dilemma.

  • Carol

    Physicians ARE villians when it comes to prescribing pain killers. And you can throw Dentists and Pediatricians in the fold too. When CNN Headline News broke the story about Broward County FLorida cracking down on Pill Mills today (August 1, 2009), I wanted to jump for joy. A proposed National Drug Monitoring System is the only way we are going to get this Thing, this Destroyer of Lives, this National Epidemic fixed. My adult daughter got hooked on Vicodin within 3 weeks from a “retired anesthesiologist” who set up shop in a mall in Elgin IL. She wrenched her back on a coffee table and a neighbor referred her to this guy. Around the same time, her husbands testicular cancer came back and with 3 very young children and a house in arrears, she depended on Vicoden to help her cope and good old Dr. Malters kept giving them to her like candy. By the time we found out, she had doctor shopped her way through most Illinois pharmacies to support her 30 pill-a-day habit. She even took her husband’s morphine while he was dying. Now, 8 years later, after her husband’s death, and her incarceration for writing prescriptions on pads idiotically left for the taking in doctor’s offices, we are all living with her illness. She has been on Suboxone for the last 5 years and it has made her into an 85 lb. non-functioning vegetable who feels no pain, no hot or cold, no bitter or sweet, no right or wrong, no nothing. Suboxone is 100 times stronger than Morphine and that’s the Cure! Florida is behind 23 other states who have imposed drug prescription monitoring, maybe because all the doctors hightailed it there when things got hot, just like Dr. Malters did when Walgreen’s said was the biggest prescriber of opiates in Kane County IL. Maybe Michael Jackson’s death has brought the drug monitoring movement to light. If that’s the case, I want to award him the Medal of Honor posthumously. Suboxone and Methadone have to be on the list of monitored narcotics though because thanks to George Bush and his DATA 2005 legislation, any doctor with 8 hrs. of video training can now have up to 150 patients on these drugs. How ironic that John Walters, the Drug Czar under Bush is now speaking about the national monitoring system when his own boss has enabled the problem to spread to epidemic proportions. I have witnessed the parade of zombie’s just like my daughter in 4 different Doctor-Donor offices pick up their prescription without ever having seen the doctor. For now, watch out Dr. Malters, the Broward County dogs are coming for you.
    Carol

  • Relapse Prevention

    Its a difficult problem because addicts have figured out how to manipulate doctors into getting these prescriptions for heavy narcotics and there’s no way for the doctors to really determine whether they are genuinely inpain or just lying to get some drugs.

  • Robin

    I am looking for info on how I can do something to stop these doctors. My son had an emergency visit and I had to watch them like a hawk. We told them he was an addict and could not have opiates. Still tried to give him morphine. I made it through the emergency room watching their every move. He was admitted and was going to take a look in his stomach and remove appendix. Left for the night thinking he was safe and came back in the morning just in time to see the nurse about to give him morphine. I asked her why she was giving him morphine when it distinctly said in his chart from the er that he could not have opiates. She said”Well the dr ordered it and we already gave him some at 6am.” I am so sick of this. We went back to er next day after he was released for muscle spasms. Distinctly told the er dr when he was prescribing a muscle relaxer that it could not be a benzo, narcotic, or opiate. He looked right at me and said this is fine. Filled the prescription for generic brand of soma and he overdosed on them. Looked it up on the internet and says right in black and white do not give to a drug addict. If anyone can tell me how to stop this prescription pushing arena please let me know. As far as I am concerned the er dr should be held legally and financially responsible for what he did!

  • Crystal Thomas

    I hate it when people look at one extreme case and make a broad judgement on a subject. This woman became addicted to drugs. She had a 30-a-day habit. The doctor did not twist her arm and make her take all those pills. People have to be responsible for themselves. The same way you can buy a bottle of wine and know that you should not drink this whole body and go out driving, you should know that you should not take narcotics like candy. If you do, your tolerance will increase, you will need more to relieve the pain, it becomes expensive, etc.
    Government should not be this involved with pain management. It needs to be a decision that is made by responsible patients and their doctors. Dependence on an opiod can be managed. There are plenty of options. But we should not just deny any and all pain patients the relief they need. People should make an educated decision – and like anything else in life, if you make a bad decision, there are consequences and you deal with them.

  • Aaron

    What about the people that are in truly severe pain. I have a T7 compression and I can barely get out of bed for work because it hurts so bad. Narcotic pain relievers are the only medicine that have worked for me. Am I a Zombie? No. I am only a Zombie when I am unable to control my pain with proper medicine. I don’t condone drug pushers. I don’t condone addicts. But the fact is, when the government stepped in on prescribing methods, many pain patients were left in the cold with “non narcotic pain relievers” that don’t relieve anything. Now, doctors are scared to prescribe because they are worried of the ramifications. Shouldn’t they be more worried about their patients than a DEA raid?

  • Larry

    So the medical establishment didn’t control your daughter’s behavior well enough. They should have made her stop doctor-shopping. Ignoring the well defined directions for use right on the bottle. They should have stopped her from stealing from her own dying husband. Stealing from her own doctor and then using the stolen items to commit repeated felonies. I think I know the source of your daughter’s problem. Parents who never taught personal responsibility or accountability. And before you accuse me of being one of those over-prescribing Docs you’ve got your sights trained on, I’m someone who has also fought the battle. Feining pain to get meds from doctors who were trying to help me. Lying to family. Lying to myself. The problem is your daughter’s; She’s the only one who can fix it!

  • Jennifer

    The prescription addiction problem in Florida is completely out of control. Alot of doctors now are not even willing to treat pain problems at all. These people that doctor shop and lie to doctors about their pain are making it very difficult for people with ligitimate pain to get treatment.

  • judy potts

    i’m sorry, but these people who state these things, i’m sure, for a fact, have never known what it is to be in pain 24-7. i’m sure everyone has suffered a bad toothache or an ear ache at some point in their lives, which are two of the most painful things to have, but they do not go on forever. i have suffered both of these things & plenty of them, but nothing like i go thru now. there is no relief in sight & no quick remedy. i’m desperately looking for a doctor to help me out with some pain meds, but only until i can start to look at options to correct the problems. so unless you know what unending pain is please don’t act like you know what you are talking about & what it feels like, because you don’t know. i’ve always said that if a doctor was suffering like i am, he or she would be giving themselves the best pain meds out there. i understand every case is different, but that is where a doctor should maybe question more or maybe have more tests run. i can hardly walk anymore. it was humiliating the other day to have a woman way older than me ask me if i needed help, i guess with walking. i try to keep a positive attitude & try to joke about it but it’s not always that easy…there’s those times alone when i cry because i cannot stand it & don’t know if i can keep going on. so if there’s a doctor in the grand rapids, michigan area who can help me, please contact me. or if there’s someone out there who has a solution for me to get me the help i need, please contact me. i have three major things going on from the waist down, i have had arthritis in my hips for years now &. although, i haven’t been diagnosed as such, i believe it is in my knees also. i also have a very bad case of vericose veins & have the (i’m not sure how to spell it) sciatic nerve thing in my back, so i have too many things going on & not enough relief to help. i’m from the state of jack kervorkian & i can almost see now why some people contacted him, although, i’m not there yet.

  • http://thenablog.com Carol

    Wow. Just reread my own nablog commment of August 1, 2009.
    It is now 2 yrs. later and I am sorry to say my daughter is hooked now on Suboxone after Dr. Malters, a professed “retired anesthesiologist” gave her all that Vicoden in 2000 until she became addicted.

    Oh how I would love to find him in Florida so I could look him in the eye and thank him for f—ing up my life and my grandchildren’s lives and turning my dauhter into a vegetable.

    Update: at the moment she is making a non-heartfelt attempt to withdraw on her own and get herself on the wait list at the YWCA Recovery Center in South Bend IN. She is facing jail because I had her arrested 12 months ago for stealing my checks to buy Suboxone. She detoxed in jail and now is back on it due to drug court being so backed up. While awaiting trial, she is stealing and pawning jewelry, the kid’s computer, Ipods, bike, anything she can get her hands on to buy Suboxone. She has gone through all 18 certified, waivered pusher/dispensers of this poison within the 10 mi radius of our home. These doctors’ locations pop up on the internet like sex offenders.

    What’s that I hear? Oh yes Mr. Obama DO impose tighter controls on opiate drug dispensing and while you’re at it, yank DATA 2000! Don’t waste your time finding a replacement for Suboxone, the lauded miracle cure for opiate addiction that would result in less arrests, less addicts on the street, less county money to take care of inmates. Take my word for it – IT DIDN’T WORK.

    How about this instead: Take the DATA 2000 doctor certification money and the windfall profits from the makers of Vicoden and Suboxone (Reckitt-Benckhiser) and build some TREATMENT CENTERS for the addicts with no insurance.

    Oh, I forgot, you’re busy trying to give 33 million more Americans health insurance so they don’t have to steal to get their drugs.