Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Clearly a one-sided view replayed over and over and over...., January 23, 2005
I have read and heard so many negative things about Oxycontin that I can't keep silent about this any longer! I am a chronic pain patient who was on Oxycontin for many years. I also participated in one of their early drug trials for chronic pain, so I have personally contributed input to Purdue about how this medicine affected my body and mind. It was truly a lifesaver for me at the time, as it allowed me to return to work on a full-time basis. (When I say full-time, I REALLY mean FULL-TIME! I had two full-time 40 hr./week jobs plus I designed a bi-monthly magazine on a free-lance basis. I have several inoperable conditions which cause me to suffer constant, intractable pain on a daily basis.
I tried all natural alternatives such as chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, meditation, herbal diets and others for several years before finally applying to Purdue's clinical trial for chronic back pain, in which Oxycontin was being used for pain relief. By the time I started the trial I could hardly sit in my office chair for more than 15 minutes. I had tried other medications new to the market at the time including Trazadone, which put my heart into severe arrhythmia for days after taking only one dose. Other drugs had intolerable side effects; Oxycontin did not. Instead, I received a steady dosage of pain relief medication which did not make me 'high', sleepy nor nauseated. I was overjoyed to have my quality of life returned to me!
After being in the 3-year clinical trial for a year and a half, I was told that the trial was being suddenly halted due to the bad press that Oxycontin was receiving. The company which handled the clinical trial for Purdue did not want to be involved so they just dropped all participants, leaving us with only a few pills on hand and no referral to a pain management doctor, as they had initially promised. I was fortunate to find a doctor at the 11th hour who would accept me as a pain patient.
Without getting into all the details of 'life afterwards', it should suffice for me to mention that Oxycontin can be a worthwhile and helpful drug in the hands of a chronic pain patient. A person in pain does NOT get 'high' from opiates. Instead, the medicine is used up by the pain receptors in the brain and never reaches the 'pleasure centers'. Pain patients feel ONLY RELIEF FROM PAIN.
I sincerely wish this bad press would stop as it is doing a great injustice to the chronic pain patient. If a person wants to get 'high', they can take Oxycontin or they can take a slew of other drugs OR they can simply turn to alcohol, which is not only legal but is also widely available! I can guarantee that more young people are killed by the effects of alcohol than by Oxycontin. And yes, they can still sniff glue or smoke pot or take any number of synthetic substances such as Ecstasy and get their buzz that way. Oxycontin and Purdue are not the villains here; instead, we need to look to ourselves for responsibility and sometimes to the parents for their lack of responsibility. And ultimately, the person taking the drug is the one who has the REAL responsibility -- not only to themselves, but to everyone around them who might be affected one day by their bad decisions.
Let's put the blame where it belongs and STOP punishing the chronic pain patients, who are only trying to have some quality of life. Thank you for listening - now won't you please help us by spreading the word that we deserve to have our dignity restored and the quality of life returned to us - even if that means we have to take Oxycontin in order to be able to live?
Thank you.......KO
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
One-sided, at best..., January 29, 2004
Pain Killer is an interesting book in that it describes the circumstances surrounding the rise in Oxycontin abuse, particularly among America's rural poor, but it tends to be a bit one-sided and heavy handed in casting Purdue and its employees as heartless villians in this story. There can be no doubt that Oxy abuse has led to heartbreak for addicts and their families all across this country. And Purdue probably did emphasize too much its use for the treatment of moderate pain that would be just as well treated by other drugs with less potential for abuse. But at the same time, this book practically ignores the countless numbers of patients whose intractable suffering has been eased by proper use of Oxycontin. Their stories are not told, their voices are silent, their suffering is unacknowledged. As much sympathy as I have for the addicts in this book, I would venture to say that the large majority of them never had to get involved with snorting or shooting up Oxy. But chronic pain suffers and those in the end stages of terminal diseases don't have the option of saying no to pain. I'd bet if you talked to them, Purdue and its employees are heroes, not villians. I would have liked to have heard some of their stories. My other dissatisfaction with this book is that basically it is little better than an Atlantic or Harper's magazine article padded out to book length (with a larger font and lots of white space to increase the page count). There is a lot of repetitive info in here, and many times, the chronology of events gets a bit confusing. Sometimes, I had the feeling I was just re-reading the same 40 or so pages over and over. At some points, I just skimmed. The story of Oxycontin and its abuse is definitely a cautionary tale, but I would have liked to have had both sides of the story.
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25 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHRONIC PAIN PATIENTS, October 8, 2003
Chronic pain sufferers will find no useful information in this book. As a chronic pain patient successfully being treated in a medically supervised Pain Management program that includes the use of the prescription medication OxyContin, one thought kept running through my mind as I read Barry Meier's book, "Pain Killer"...something's missing?! There is by no means any lack of endless, often chronologically confusing, FDA,DEA,medical examiner or lab research reports. There's even a story inter-twined throughout all these mind-numbing statistics about a teenager and her family, whose lives are forever altered by the daughter's downward spiral into drug abuse, crime and eventual unwanted pregnancy. What is sadly lacking in this combination of shock journalism and re-printed office memos, is the obvious lack of interviews with successfully treated chronic pain patients; a total and complete lack of understanding and empathy on the part of the author towards people, like myself, who suffer with pain everyday; whose only wish is to live a relatively pain-free existance...to be a good wife and mother.
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