The Drug War and Me

My wife has degenerative disc disease. Specifically, the L4-5 and L5-S1 discs in her back are severely herniated and impinging directly on the corresponding nerve tracts, which enervate her right leg. This impingement causes her to experience burning sensations in that leg; in her words, she often feels as if her leg is on fire.

Fortunately, her pain is easily treated. She has nothing wrong with her leg; the nerves are simply sending bad signals due to the discs impinging on them. Medications that act directly on the nerve tracts, such as opioids, work wonders for her. These medications are derived from a flower, the poppy, and the only side effects of therapeutic use are itching, nausea, drowsiness, and constipation. Even more fortunately, my wife experiences none of these side effects to any significant degree. My wife and I are lucky; her condition is easily controlled.

Or it would be, if our government did not interpose itself between the physician and his patient, deciding what drugs are okay and what drugs are suspect. But since our government, in its wisdom, has decided that drug availability must be controlled, my wife and I have been repeatedly forced to go begging for medications, and we have repeatedly been stonewalled by doctors who fear the almighty DEA. Patients on opiate therapy do develop a tolerance, you see, and so what was an adequate dose will eventually become useless. This phenomenon is not addiction; the only 'cravings' my wife experiences are for pain relief, not for highs. She doesn't get the shakes, she doesn't start vomiting, she shows absolutely no signs of physical addiction. The phenomenon of tolerance is well understood; the receptors to which the opioid binds become adapted and require larger amounts of the substance to trigger the same response.

Sometimes we hear concern that she will become 'dependent.' What does that mean? I take naproxen for a bad back, with the occasional Norgesic if I get a muscle spasm. If I don't take my naproxen, and if I am without my Norgesic when my back spasms, my mobility can be limited- I have even been bedridden, although not in many years. My grandmother takes a whole panoply of medications for her blood pressure, her cholesterol, and so forth. Magic Johnson will die without his antiretrovirals. All three of us are 'dependent' on certain medications to live a normal life. My wife too is dependent. She depends on opioids for pain relief. Why is her 'dependence' a moral failing and a criminal matter while mine is handled over the phone or even over the counter?

But none of these arguments help us with the doctors, who fear the DEA. We have been told outright by one doctor that the amounts he was prescribing had drawn 'attention,' although he did not say what sort, and that he was therefore hesitant to prescribe more. This same physician finally refused to refill my wife's medication just before Easter, and when the crippling pain finally forced her into the ER, she was treated with incredible disdain, a disdain that only slightly softened when the physical origin of her condition was confirmed.

As angry as we get at the doctors and nurses, they aren't our real enemy. These men and women have invested substantial time, energy, and cash in acquiring their skills and the licenses required to use them, and they understandably fear the consequences if they should run afoul of the DEA. And those consequences are severe. As Reason has repeatedly reported (see especially here), doctors face severe penalties for 'overprescribing.' Who decides if a given doctor is overprescribing? Why, the federales, of course. Our government masters decide for themselves what your needs are, how bad your pain is, and how much medication you need.

In the real world, what chemicals one ingests is an entirely personal decision. But even in the statist fantasy world we inhabit, surely we can see the problem with this policy of intimidating doctors and forcing patients to suffer. My wife is not a drug addict. She is a caring mother of two who has had her entire life derailed- not by her pain, but by the government's efforts to keep her from getting treatment. Surely even the most arrogant, hard-hearted statist thug can see that keeping her from pain relief is simply senseless cruelty, a cruelty that deprives me of my wife, my children of their mother, and my wife of her very life. Why do we continue this way? Why do we tolerate it? When will enough be enough?

My wife's story has a happy ending, fortunately. We saw a P.A. who prescribed her a drug typically used as an antiseizure medication. The drug is a prescription drug, but is not monitored by the DEA, and her pain is, finally, under control. But there are millions who are not so lucky. Why must they suffer? How long must this go on?