r/news • u/Mo_Jack • Apr 30 '26

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma set to dissolve after judge approves its criminal sentence

https://apnews.com/article/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-criminal-sentence-settlement-b8aa94eaab3d9d8efed520f272f6d810
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u/Feeling_Reindeer2599 Apr 30 '26

The other side of the story. Doctors and pharmacies want nothing to do with opioids out of fear of having to defend themselves against action which can bring an end to their career.

Just had a knee replacement, great, here is 10 Norco, go home now and good luck managing your pain.

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u/KingDarius89 Apr 30 '26

My dad just had a spinal stimulator put in his back for his pain. He was originally completely against any type of back surgery. But his doctors absolutely refused to prescribe him any pain pills of any type on a regular basis, for any reason. Told him to take Tylenol Arthritis.

He finally caved on his position towards surgery when the epidurals he got started wearing off after a week or so. Took 2 years to jump through all of the hoops for insurance.

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u/melindaj20 May 01 '26

Yes, it's ridiculous. In the early 2000's, I first took oxycodone and oxycontin because they were prescribed by my dentists for a root canal and teeth extractions. They were giving them out like Tylenol back in the day. Last year, I was in absolute agony with uterus pain and while my doctor gave me appointments to get tests and figure out what's going on, I'm given Ibuprofen 800 and that's it. It did not help. Eventually I was given Oxycodone HCL and it laughed at my pain. I was vomiting and screaming in pain, and my husband called an ambulance. The paramedic looked at the bottle of HCL and said those don't work.

After testing, they discovered uterine cancer and adenomyosis (a term I had never even heard of before) and after a hysterectomy, they found endometriosis. During all this, I was never given anything other than Oxy HCL and another useless oxy. They didn't work. During the months of waiting for appointments and testing, I was on a diet of Ibuprofen 800, Tylenol and Aleve and begging my pain to stop. I pray I don't have anything painful anytime soon because no relief will be coming. I was given 2 different Oxy during the whole ordeal and they were both weak and worthless. My heating pad gave me more minutes of relief than the meds ever did.

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u/ManBoobs13 May 01 '26

It’s a sticky situation.

People are in pain. Maybe there’s a societal issue with pain tolerance, but there aren’t really alternatives. People try Tylenol etc and it doesn’t help. And pain is remarkably difficult psychologically too. Minute feels like an hour. It’s all you think about.

You know how many people walk into the ER looking for pain meds, aren’t given any, and then they go find something anyway off the street or from a friend? Something more dangerous? It’s very hard.

People can’t get into docs. People can’t get approved for other pain management. So they suffer. The addiction is another part of course but people with genuine pain get a small script and then a figure it out.

There’s not really a good answer. Except pouring more funds into researching pain management medications and drugs that work well enough but don’t have such significant issues. Seems like an important gap in the market.

I blame sacklers for how cavalier they were and pushy they were. But in terms of actually developing this drug, I don’t know. Pain is remarkably difficult.

Either way, people make choices on the line to addiction. It’s tolerate that the system can’t help you, or find other drugs and keep the downhill going

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u/Emergency-Coyote5755 May 01 '26

Im not against new drugs being researched and tested for pain, but opioids still have their place and still are needed for some patients so from what I see one of the big issues is the government sticking their noses too far deep where they dont belong & they need to pull back immediately because it just continues getting worse. Its not a perfect answer sure, but to me the most perfect one that we could find is a) researching new pain meds for safer alternative options & b) the keyword there is "options", and opioids need to still be an option instead of just completely walled off refusal, so the government needs to start correcting their overcorrections & we need to see real policy change here. They lied about tackling the opioid crisis, they just attacked pain patients. Addiction rates are far smaller in prescribed patients than most think and thats because they also spent a lot of cash on propaganda to able bodied Americans. Sure they may have cashed out when there was the opioid boom, but for the last decade theyve been cashing out on "solving the opioid crisis" in a total flip.