Authored by Andrew Hague
Abstract
The only way to be released from pain is to cure the cause of the pain.
Four options:
1. Mask the pain by switching off the brain.
2. Death.
3. Learning to live with it.
4. Cure the cause of the pain.
Introduction
Only the fourth option is acceptable, and this paper will show that it can be done. Unfortunately, the other three options are too common. There are three components in the body that are always found together. If one does not work, the other two cannot work. They are the nerves, veins and arteries. Repairs must suit all three components. Veins and arteries carry blood. If there is no blood at a place in the body, that place cannot be healed. Blood is the life support liquid. In humans even maintaining its temperature is essential.Nerves carry signals to the brain which is the body’s control centre.
Every cell in the body is connected to the brain. The language of the nerve network is pain. From a finger pulling back from a hot surface to the workman stopping to eat, messages flow to the brain and action is taken to keep the body operating. If a message is unable to reach the brain, harm will continue with consequences that can be disastrous. If pain continues and the brain is unable to make a repair, the person suffers. The body’s operating system depends on the requests for help being answered and, like an unanswered telephone, will continue ringing until it gets help. It is that perpetual pain that is the subject of the essay.
Masking the Pain
Drugs can switch off the brain either drastically or slightly. They are never a remedy. Ethanol, a popular poison known as alcohol, has been used by humans since fermentation was discovered by early farmers. Interestingly, reports of animals being allowed to drink alcohol show that the animals also like to be inebriated [1]. If alcohol was originally reserved for celebrations, it eventually became a crutch to carry people through their daily life. Compounding this inadequate answer to a problem is the fact that dependency on the escape or mask becomes addictive.Worse, whatever the trouble the person wanted to avoid becomes more difficult and they enter a downward spiral (Figure 1). [2] Archaeologists investigating the Neolithic ages, 7,000 years ago, found poppy seeds used medicinally. Before the poppy is ripe, the seed pod can be cut to allow a latex to ooze out and be collected. Observe babies, they put everything in their mouth. Little imagination is required to accept that humans discovered the use of the poppy as an anaesthetic. Poppies are the raw material for opium from which heroin, methane, codeine and thebaine are derived and the synthetic forms of oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and other semisynthetic opiates.
The Opioid Crisis
In the American Civil War, the Union Army used 175,000lb (80,000kg) of opium tincture and powder and about 500,000 opium pills [1]. During this time of popularity, users called opium “God’s Own Medicine”. Opium’s anaesthetic and addictive powers were well known by the 20th century. Britain had used it to profit from China by forcefully cultivating poppies in India and militarily pushing them on the Chinese [3]. By 1840 there were 10 million Chinese opium addicts; largely due to illegal British imports. Sales were sustained by the users’ addiction.In the late 1990s, around 100 million people or a third of the U.S. population were estimated to be affected by chronic pain [4]. Lower back pain, arthritis, post-surgery pain and cancer were the usual causes of pain and without a cure the patient wanted escape. Pharmaceutical derivatives of opium were the low cost, highly profitable answer to demand. When the pain relievers were launched, they were claimed to be non-addictive. That was soon found to be untrue. “An investigation by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs detailed the financial ties that exist between opioid manufacturers, advocacy groups, and medical professional societies.
The report exposed patient advocacy groups and professional societies spending millions of dollars to promote messages and policies favoring the interests of the pharmaceutical industry [5].” The patients were addicted to the drugs [6]. Every day, more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the total “economic burden” of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.
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