Vicki's request, Kit's intro, moderator note

May 3, 1998

Hi folks,

Vicki lost something on the list (its those nasty computer bugs, I

supppose). We have a pretty simple way of retreiving anything on the list

from ONElist (if it works, of course) All of our stuff is archived for

people who just want to get header summaries. You just have to log into

ONElist.com, select our list, retrieve archived headers & then retrieve the

particular day's posts (They all come as one piece of text).

Here I am having a pretty poor night myself, and I logged into our list to

find a very moving introduction from Kit that I can particularly relate to.

I don't know for sure that MS Contin or Methadone would liberate either Kit

or me, but the politics of medicine seem to prevent us from ever finding

out. High doses of Methadone have been used routinly for many years with

addicts for maintenance & detox, but we are generally 'spared " the

opportunity so as not to make us addicts. The medical profession seems very

good at ignoring a large-scale, bullet-proof research study published in

the New England Journal of Medicine following (as I recall) about one

thousand chronic pain patients treated with 'addictive' meds for a

substantial timeslice, resulting in a less than 1% addiction rate AND a

finding that those who were found addicted in the study had previously been

drug addicts! If you're a bit lost in data,

this solid study suggests that chronic pain patients given narcotics show a

LOWER susceptibility than the general population, to drug addiction.

Along the same lines, the US TV show 60 minutes (about 2 years ago) did a

documentary on persecution of doctors treating chronic pain with narcotics,

AND astounding successes they had with patients. Because it is unlikely

that people quietly suffering at home are not going to exert effective

political influence, we and those few doctors willing to treat severe &

extreme chronic pain appropriately are made to suffer needlessly.

Perhaps when the collective participation in the several net pain lists

hits 100,000 we will be able to get the public & political/medical

establishments to take our needs and rights to a reasonable quality of life

seriously. (My soap box has been put away for the rest of the day).

Ken

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