“You don’t chase a market. You create it.”
I’m three episodes into the eight episode Hulu show “Dopesick”, and with each episode, I get closer to throwing something at my TV.
I keep saying to my wife “now do Covid vaccines!” Every single episode so far has been absolutely loaded with the same exact plays from the same exact playbook that Purdue Pharma used to create and perpetuate the staggering opioid crisis of the late 90s into today.
Lax FDA policies and procedures which are fraudulent and created to push drugs through, and highlighting the executives who move between the FDA and the pharma companies.
Creating new terms and conditions (literally using the term “breakthrough pain”) to convince doctors and patients to use the product). “Breakthrough infections” anyone?
Advanced and intentional marketing campaigns aimed at doctors and patients, including the use of the now familiar “pain scale” with the happy to sad faces that anyone who’s been in a hospital has seen (create a market)
Creating “experts” who went on tour, recruited doctors, and convinced everyone to “trust the experts”. This included directly funding or wholesale creating a web of pain authorities to relentlessly pimp the drug, and when doubts arose, everyone could say “an authoritative organization of experts has spoken” and you’d be a fool to try to disagree. These included organizations such as:
Upping or extending dosages (boosters for life!)
Ignoring, misrepresenting, and outright lying about side affects and adverse events
And behind it all? Pharma owners who put greed and ambition before real human cost.
I dunno, seems familiar. Maybe someone should look into that’s going on with a certain vaccine?
Funny thing. Six years ago I had a little household accident and ended up with five fractured bones in my foot, a sprained ankle and a split-open forehead. Spent the night in the emergency bay in the hospital, was given one of those dinosaur boots, had my forehead stitched up and was sent home with a prescription for Tramadol which I was strongly urged to fill, and did. Tramadol is regarded as the least-dangerous maybe-not-quite-real-opioid that one can take for pain.
I didn't take it at first, but by the second day I was in very serious pain, so I took it only at night so I could sleep.
But I don't like drugs; further, opioids may work on pain but do nothing for inflammation, and the dinosaur boot, throwing off my gait, was leading to inflammation, pain and swelling of the knee on the other leg. (First week I was told not to put weight on the fractured foot so used a walker and this was quite rough on the other leg leading to the inflammation and swelling.)
So I started taking, instead, the highest one-time dose of regular aspirin (325mg x 3) every six hours as label allows, and that was the magic trick.
I also sometimes get migraines and nothing, nothing, not even that aspirin regimen helped.
Until I discovered that extra-strength back-and-body aspirin 500mg x 2 did the trick perfectly. Note that's only a 25mg increase over the regular aspirin for the maximum one-time dose.
I'll bet pain-management doctors don't even think of experimenting with good old aspirin, because you know it might cause stomach bleeding, or something.
You gotta use common sense of your own because few professionals you encounter will have any. And it's not in the healthcare industry's interest to talk about the cheap reliable stuff.
I watched this last winter, and you're completely correct that it's the same people doing the same shit. "You're not REALLY addicted, you just need to double the dosage!"