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In 2012 there were 31 deaths in the UK linked to oxycodone, a fraction of the thousands who die as a result of the drug in the US each year and far less than deaths from Tramadol.Dr. Stannard's concern over a rise in oxycodone prescribing in the UK is not about Britain mirroring the US—rather, it's to do with how a drug is being use to numb people without actually curing them."Most of the rise in opioid prescribing here is for long-term chronic pain, such as back pain, which is part of the human condition. Many people have it. Sadly, however, opioids are neither an easy nor necessarily effective solution to the problem. The failure rate for the treatment of long-term back pain with opioids is about 100 percent."Dr. Stannard told me that prescription opioids such as oxycodone could lead patients "down a one-way street" of using the drugs as an emotional buffer, regardless of whether they are alleviating physical pain. She says the patients most at risk of opioid-related harms are those with mental health or substance use disorders who have greater odds of both being prescribed opioids and getting them in harmful high doses."To infer that an increase in oxycodone prescribing in the UK will lead to an increase in heroin use makes three or four utterly fallacious assumptions. It's a massive leap of very tenuous logic" – Dr. Cathy Stannard
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Cathryn Kemp ran into a wall of opioid painkillers when she was diagnosed with pancreatitis in 2004. After a series of operations she was prescribed morphine, then oxycodone for three years and, finally, fentanyl. "[These things] saved my life because I was in so much pain I was on the brink of suicide. But while they temporarily relieved my pain, I became dependent on them.The root cause of the prescription drug epidemic, especially in the US, was perhaps not back ache or neck pains, but the need to avoid or mollify bad feelings. The drive to become medicalized is not just about opioid painkillers.
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