People dealing with opioid addiction, pain, depression, anxiety and other conditions should see a health professional to get a prescription for FDA-approved treatments, Hays said.
There’s a reason so many people don’t go the approved route, and instead try self medicating. It’s because our healthcare system is run by insurance and pharmaceutical companies, who care only about maximizing profits.
Seeing a health professional in the US means first getting insurance, which can be its own baffling ordeal, then finding an in network doctor, then spending an hour waiting for the doctor so you can spend 5 or 10 minutes with them (probably being lectured), then, assuming they take your mental health concerns seriously, they’ll just prescribe you a drug anyway. If it’s between that and going down to the gas station and getting a bottle of momentary relief, I get why many people choose the gas station elixir.
Addiction and rehab are a crazy example how much the US is different then other first world countries. I battled with addiction ten years ago. I’m not from the US. Went to my doctor and got send to the hospital, spent three weeks in detox, a year in rehab and another year in some assisted living program. So over two years treatment in total. Cost me 30 bucks, I think, as a surcharge for the stay in the hospital and that was that. Even got social Security payments the whole time which enabled me to live a fairly regular life besides beeing in those institutions.
Way better solution then getting some cheap heroin copy from a gas station…
I forgot all about Erowid. Anyways they say this stuff sucks.
