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    • happybadger [he/him]
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      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Sure, I'd also want the same. Pain sucks. Do you go to a hospital to feel good or to receive the most scientifically valid care under the most strictly developed protocols? A chiropractor will make you feel good and is much cheaper, but there's a reason you hopefully go to a doctor instead of a spine warlock.

      Medicine's goals necessitate the bigger picture both for your health and public health. If the protocol says you get opioids because you want them and they'll mask the pain with significant side effects/addiction risk, sure that Russian roulette might work well for you but every other patient is treated under the same protocol. That's dozens or hundreds per day. Each a personal and public health risk, every day until enough of you die to change the protocol in the obviously sensible direction.

      edit: The counter-example to that is when I went in for a vasectomy. Typical recovery time is like three days with the dull sensation of being kicked in the testicles. The urologist gave me ten hydrocodones without me even asking for narcotics, which I strictly avoid as someone with an addictive personality. Taking that many under the vague assumption that it's the sound medical advice of a doctor is probably enough to get me hooked. I controlled that pain just fine with ice, ibuprofen, and a CBD vape. That's a bad protocol that could get me killed if I didn't come from stricter ones.

        • happybadger [he/him]
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          3 years ago

          That's a more convoluted way of treating COVID with antiparasitics for horses. We don't put medicine in the hands of the public because no matter how competent and informed and ontologically sound you are the idiots driving next to you would have access to the same drugs under the same logic. The authority of the medical system isn't arbitrarily established in this case. That's a decade of schooling and teams of experts and treatment standards informed by external research that's continuously updated. Even if you manage to correctly identify all the elements of your easily visually identified condition and treat it totally appropriately to the standard you'd receive in a hospital, what's that crystal mom in the next car over going to do? She goes into Walgreens, walks to the OTC medications aisle, and everything that used to be behind a glass panel and a PhD is now on the shelf. What's she going to buy and is it going to be the right thing when she's treating abdominal pain?

            • happybadger [he/him]
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              3 years ago

              Both really but I do mean ontology in this case. If your knowledge framework is up to that same standard of an informed scientific worldview, if there isn't some small gap for woo to enter through or some oversight in where your information came from and how it was processed, maybe it will work out just fine and you'll have the same experience you would from a doctor doing their job. Taking in those individual pieces of information is important but how you synthesise them into understanding something as wildly complex as the human body is where you can really fuck up.

                • KollontaiWasRight [she/her,they/them]
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                  3 years ago

                  hence the name essentially meaning “after nature”

                  That's actually just because of the order it comes in Aristotle. It's the chapters that followed the chapters on physics.

                • happybadger [he/him]
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                  3 years ago

                  I never used the words metaphysical nor supernatural, nor did I call ontology either. When I use ontology here it's the materialism/idealism split. The medical understanding is right in the way science in general or Marxism are. Non-medical understandings might be partially right but their social constructions don't result in the same kind of universalised knowledge base that I could cross-reference with other materialistic understandings like chemistry or biology. That's what you're paying for in a hospital. It's constructed out of that observational epistemological standard and then the resulting framework is the least-wrong set of conclusions we can make about the world. If there's a flaw in that framework the result is bad.

      • mazdak
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

        • happybadger [he/him]
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          3 years ago

          I had three after a dental procedure when I was a teen. That was enough to make me think "I like this feeling" and reach for the bottle to continue it in the same way that I'm never quite stoned enough. While I wouldn't jump to heroin after ten, if I still wanted that feeling or still felt the pain and had a cultural expectation/personal desire to not feel that pain I could probably score a different pill. If not physically addicted or mentally dependent, I'd have a positive association with the drug and its effects while knowing it's no big deal.

          • mazdak
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            1 year ago

            deleted by creator

            • happybadger [he/him]
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              3 years ago

              Alcohol can be just as addictive as opiates, in fact there are far more alcoholics than opiate addicts, but you probably don’t advocate for the prohibition of alcohol

              Nor am I advocating for the prohibition of opioids, only their usage held to the same clinical standard any one of you criticising me would readily acknowledge with antibiotics. Alcohol was once prescribed widely and even now I've used medicinal vodka in the emergency room. Is that alcohol appropriate for infant sleeping tonics? Fuck no. Is it appropriate for a patient with a dislocated or broken arm? Nope. Patient seizing because they're a severe alcoholic and there are clinical indications their body needs it? That's a responsible and informed decision which takes their situation into account beyond their feelings on it. It's based on protocols based on current science. Serious painkillers have their uses and they also have a long list of times when they shouldn't be used. Could be used, patient would be thrilled if they were used, but it's not blood on the patient's hands when the next appointment also wants the same drug and has a negative outcome.

              • mazdak
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                1 year ago

                deleted by creator

                • happybadger [he/him]
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                  3 years ago

                  Stingy by what standard though? Indications/contraindications/statistics or the patient's personal goals independent of the reality of their medical situation? I've discharged a lot of patients with narcotic prescriptions and felt totally fine about it. Same risks of addiction, same potential contribution to the opioid epidemic, same self-reported level of pain as the next patient who is denied that drug. They just had the appropriate indications for using those drugs over other drugs. The risks were outweighed by what could be achieved by that drug but not a lesser drug. It's when that isn't met where I have an issue with their usage. Whatever is the most appropriate course of care holds that place for a good reason. Under-utilising them looks and feels bad certainly. Over-utilising them is worse. They're over-utilised where the patient's desires take priority over their clinical state. Necessarily the right level of usage falling below that will fail to meet their desires, even if it's protecting them in ways they don't prioritise or the patient after them who is demographically different but treated under the same protocols.