Post by Cindy on Mar 17, 2017 12:31:36 GMT -5
We know that the world is heading toward having one man (the antichrist) to lead the world, and we know that this man will be welcomed by the general public as their savior, as someone who will finally bring peace so that they will no longer have to live in fear. It's quite obvious to most of us to see how Satan is causing hate, strife, and division in our country and in the world. We see protests, killing, and terrorist attacks regularly now. Whereas before it was always somewhere else, now it's on American soil as well.
But besides the obvious ways, there are other more subtle ways that this is being achieved. One of the ways this is being done is with drugs. God even warned us in His Word that drugs would be a problem in the end times, and we now know that there is are a huge number of people that are addicted to drugs or alcohol both in our country and all over the world. the word the bible uses is is the Greek word pharmakia and is translated as "sorcery" or "magic arts" generally, as in Rev 21:8; Rev 22:15. It means "the use of drugs." We get our word for pharmacy from that word in the original language. “nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.” (Revelation 9:21) The commentaries say drugs in the ancient world were used to dull the senses and induce a state suitable for religious experiences such as seances, witchcraft, incantations, and cavorting with mediums.
Of course Satan was behind getting the people on the drugs, but now he is also behind what the news calls "the war on drugs". Certainly most of the people who are working to help the addicted really do want to help, but that doesn't change the fact that Satan has his hand in this as well and in more ways than one. First he's got the world telling the addicts that it's not their fault, that instead it's a "disease". Therefore, as a disease there's nothing they can do about it other than to get "professional help" from doctors and those who are trained to deal with their "disease". Satan doesn't want them to know that their addiction stems from sin and that they can in fact do something about it. They can turn to God and repent of their sins and be saved, and then they can submit to Him and allow Him to make them into a brand new creature. This to is the opposite of what Satan and the world tell them. They tell addicts that they will always be an addict, that they cannot be "cured". Yet God says that they can be cured and only He can do it, because once they are saved, they are given a new nature and are brand new. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) By doing this, Satan and the world are not only preventing these people from being saved, but are causing many to disbelieve God's Word, and to believe that God really doesn't have the power to help people with their problems. Obviously, drug addiction itself causes fear in those who are addicted and in those who know and love them. It also sadly causes hate in many cases when the addicted begin to steal and do whatever they have to in order to get their drug of choice.
There is yet another way that Satan and the world are using this to cause fear, division and hate. There are quite literally millions of people living with chronic pain in the US alone, and all the other countries have a large portion of their population that also lives with chronic pain and illness. When we speak about chronic pain, we're not talking about the kind of pain a person has when they twist their ankle. We're talking about really severe pain that doesn't go away or get better. People who live with this kind of pain are often prescribed a narcotic so that they can better manage their pain and be able to function so they can still have some what of a life. Less than 1% of chronic pain patients become addicted to narcotics, and many of that less than 1% who do, are people who used to or still are using illegal drugs. Satan has made sure that the war on drugs has not taken pain patients into consideration. Instead of helping the millions who live with pain - (many more than the number of people who are addicted to drugs through using them illegally) the war on drugs has made life much more difficult and painful for them. Since I live with chronic pain, I'm well aware of this. Most people don't understand that it takes a whole lot more effort for us to do simple every day tasks than it takes them. In the past, before the pain came, these tasks were things we never even thought about, just like most folks don't think about them now. But getting in a car, driving or being driven somewhere, going in a store, waiting in line, all these things and every thing else people have to do on a regular basis, cause us a great deal of effort and a great deal more pain. Because of the war on drugs though, we are now forced to do more and have less pain relief, and for some, no pain relief at all.
One of the things that the media aren't telling us is that the suicide rate for people who live with pain has gone up a lot since this war began, so Satan has managed to literally kill many people, which is his great desire. He must be thrilled with how this war on drugs is working for him! That's the worst of what's happened. It's also caused a lot of fear, strife and division between friends and family of those of us who live with pain because they worry (fear) about us becoming addicted since the media makes it sound like it can happen even if you're taking your medication as prescribed. (which it can't). And we know Satan loves to cause fear, division and strife too. Since many patients who live with pain aren't well educated about narcotics, they too are now fearful that they'll become addicted and now instead of just living with constant pain, they live with constant fear and constant pain. This has also caused strife and division between many patients and their doctors, because the doctors are being forced by the government and the insurance agencies to test all pain patients for drug abuse regularly. This goes against everything our country stands for. We're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. Worse is that the tests are not always accurate and can give both false negatives and false positives. Knowing this causes fear for the patient too since they have no way of knowing if the test they took will come out correctly, and no pain patient is given a second chance. If a test shows the patient is supposedly abusing their medication or taking additional drugs, the doctors immediately refuse to refill their prescription for whichever narcotic they've been taking for pain. This too is inhuman as it can easily cause withdrawals - not because the person is addicted, but because they've been taking it for a long time for pain. Second, it means that this person now has absolutely no relief for their pain. (which is why so many kill themselves). I know, you think they can take tylenol or aleve but those things do nothing for their pain. They do about as much good as taking a drink of water. We would never expect a person with diabetes to live without their insulin medication, but we don't mind letting people live with horrible pain???
Next the war on drugs has also made it much more difficult for us to get our medications and has also caused us to have some of our meds taken away from us already. Many chronic pain patients are given two narcotics. One for long term control and one for break through pain. The war on drugs has insisted that doctors can now only give us one medication, so those who were taking two, have had their break through medication taken away. Our prescriptions can no longer be faxed or sent online to pharmacies. Instead we must pick them up in person and show an ID to prove who we are. Even in rural areas where the doctor has known you all your life as has the pharmacist!
There have also been a great number of reports of pharmacists being very rude and hurtful toward pain pain patients and even refusing to fill their prescriptions! I've experienced this myself and was very hurt by the way I was treated by a person who didn't know me at all. We are also forced to get our prescriptions and have them filled only when we are within a day of being out of our medication. I can remember one month when I had the flu (the kind where you throw up) and had no choice but to get in the car, get my prescription, go to the pharmacy which was another half hour away, stand in line and wait to get it filled. I remember my husband had to pull over so I could throw up during the drive there. I was running a fever and felt awful, and this was on top of the pain I'm always in. My choice though was to live with the pain and wait till I was better to get my prescription or go get it then. Since I can't function at all with the pain, there really was no choice at all. Of course another way we're hurt is when the pharmacy is out of our medication. Then we have no alternative but to wait until they get it in since they won't transfer it to another pharmacy. Oh, I forgot to mention that we are only allowed to use one pharmacy, it doesn't matter if it's always convenient or not.
Now I hope you can see how this has caused a great deal of emotional, mental pain and anguish for many people, as well as fear. People who live with pain are treated like drug addicts even though they aren't, so it also causes hate, strife and division as I've already shown. Lastly it has also literally killed many of us. All things that are trademarks of Satan, and all designed to get the world ready to open their arms and their hearts to the antichrist when he promises to make all things right again.
I'd like to also share a very good article written about this. Hopefully more people will then understand what's really happening.
Opioid Restrictions Versus Patient Needs
By Kelly Young, president, Rheumatoid Patient Foundation, Cocoa, FL, USA
The thinking behind recent opioid restrictions
There are two sides to arguments behind recent efforts at opioid restrictions in the U.S. However one side has been dominant in the last couple of years. State and federal governments have enacted opioid restrictions in an attempt to reduce misuse of prescription medications. Options for patients with severe pain have not been the focus of these campaigns.
The U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has made a call to action over what he calls the “addiction crisis in America.” Dr. Murthy addressed the “public health problem” in a recent podcast interview with the British Medical Journal. He said that prescription painkillers “feed into” the heroin epidemic and he called for a broad culture change in approach to drugs. For this reason he initiated the Turn the Tide Campaign in 2016. Murthy also highlighted the role of clinicians in addressing the problem by “sharpening prescribing practices” to prevent overdoses.
In the podcast, most of Dr. Murthy’s comments were directed toward legal issues, overdose and addiction treatment, and stigma attached to drug misuse disorders. While prevention and treatment of addiction are important problems, I wondered at how little he spoke of the problem of severe pain that opioid medications are manufactured to address in the first place.
Thankfully, BMJ published a patient opinion as well, providing balance. Below is an excerpt to the article by yours truly.
The dark side of opioid restrictions
In 2014, Florida began a severe crackdown on pain medicine. I encountered pharmacist technicians afraid to handle my prescriptions. They insisted I deal with the pharmacist in person, and even refused to tell me whether my prescription had refills. They refused to transfer a controlled prescription when I moved to another county, even though all my others were transferred.
There have been times others humiliated me in their attempt to comply with the law. One practice I had never visited before demanded I urinate in a cup upon arrival. I knew it was unwarranted because I had no prescriptions there, so I refused. Once I told an intrusive pharmacy technician, “You have no idea why I need that medicine. It’s not your role to approve or disapprove.”
Messages patients sent me corresponded to tragic stories on local television news about people living in terrible pain. People could no longer get their prescriptions from their doctors, but were forced to visit specific pain clinics, an added expense for people with chronic diseases who already pay high costs. Prescriptions were limited to 30 days, requiring additional visits for refills. Click here to keep reading Kelly’s article on opioid restrictions in the British Medical Journal.
Do opioid restrictions work?
My argument was simply that opioid restrictions often punish the wrong people. While several patient groups have spoken out against the recent prescription crackdowns, other institutions have begun to examine whether the opioid restrictions are actually effective.
The jury may still be out but doubts are being raised:
One story in the New England Journal of Medicine says they are not: “Adoption of controlled-substance laws was not associated with reductions in potentially hazardous use of opioids or overdose among disabled Medicare beneficiaries, a population particularly at risk.”
A paper discussed by the Cato Institute found Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP’s) have “no statistically significant effect on a key medical outcome: opioid poisoning incidents.”
An in-depth article by Dr. Josh Bloom at American Council on Science and Health found one harmful result of opioid restrictions is an increase in heroin use, overdose, and death, according to NIH data. He also writes about suicide: “There is no question that many people have been impacted by their inability to get the drugs that they had used responsibly for years. Both individuals and organizations have called the new rules Draconian.”
Do people with rheumatoid disease really need pain medicine?
People with #rheum disease have repeated severe acute pain and legitimate need for pain medication.
On a personal note: Eleven years of full-blown RD and I still think I’m tough. I’ve survived five (long) home births with no pain relief; the nurse midwives don’t even allow a Tylenol or a sip of wine. I’ve lived with a bulging torn disc in my spine since age 20. Endured several radiofrequency ablations while awake. Three times I’ve had a fever of 105F. For years, I’ve watched one doctor and nurse after another marvel at how I sit and breathe while needles are put deep into my finger, wrist, shoulder, knee, ankle or toe joint, and I don’t flinch. I believe I have lived through enough kinds of pain to have a fair opinion of severe pain.
On rare occasions, I use opioid pain medications myself. So yes I’m biased toward patients and I’ve written over 60 articles on RD pain and pain tolerance. And I believe that people with rheumatoid disease live with repeated severe acute pain and have legitimate need for pain medication that it is wrong to deny. Stay tuned for more on the topic of opioid restrictions.
Posted with permission (go to link to see the other links in the article above):
rawarrior.com/opioid-restrictions-versus-patient-needs/
But besides the obvious ways, there are other more subtle ways that this is being achieved. One of the ways this is being done is with drugs. God even warned us in His Word that drugs would be a problem in the end times, and we now know that there is are a huge number of people that are addicted to drugs or alcohol both in our country and all over the world. the word the bible uses is is the Greek word pharmakia and is translated as "sorcery" or "magic arts" generally, as in Rev 21:8; Rev 22:15. It means "the use of drugs." We get our word for pharmacy from that word in the original language. “nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.” (Revelation 9:21) The commentaries say drugs in the ancient world were used to dull the senses and induce a state suitable for religious experiences such as seances, witchcraft, incantations, and cavorting with mediums.
Of course Satan was behind getting the people on the drugs, but now he is also behind what the news calls "the war on drugs". Certainly most of the people who are working to help the addicted really do want to help, but that doesn't change the fact that Satan has his hand in this as well and in more ways than one. First he's got the world telling the addicts that it's not their fault, that instead it's a "disease". Therefore, as a disease there's nothing they can do about it other than to get "professional help" from doctors and those who are trained to deal with their "disease". Satan doesn't want them to know that their addiction stems from sin and that they can in fact do something about it. They can turn to God and repent of their sins and be saved, and then they can submit to Him and allow Him to make them into a brand new creature. This to is the opposite of what Satan and the world tell them. They tell addicts that they will always be an addict, that they cannot be "cured". Yet God says that they can be cured and only He can do it, because once they are saved, they are given a new nature and are brand new. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) By doing this, Satan and the world are not only preventing these people from being saved, but are causing many to disbelieve God's Word, and to believe that God really doesn't have the power to help people with their problems. Obviously, drug addiction itself causes fear in those who are addicted and in those who know and love them. It also sadly causes hate in many cases when the addicted begin to steal and do whatever they have to in order to get their drug of choice.
There is yet another way that Satan and the world are using this to cause fear, division and hate. There are quite literally millions of people living with chronic pain in the US alone, and all the other countries have a large portion of their population that also lives with chronic pain and illness. When we speak about chronic pain, we're not talking about the kind of pain a person has when they twist their ankle. We're talking about really severe pain that doesn't go away or get better. People who live with this kind of pain are often prescribed a narcotic so that they can better manage their pain and be able to function so they can still have some what of a life. Less than 1% of chronic pain patients become addicted to narcotics, and many of that less than 1% who do, are people who used to or still are using illegal drugs. Satan has made sure that the war on drugs has not taken pain patients into consideration. Instead of helping the millions who live with pain - (many more than the number of people who are addicted to drugs through using them illegally) the war on drugs has made life much more difficult and painful for them. Since I live with chronic pain, I'm well aware of this. Most people don't understand that it takes a whole lot more effort for us to do simple every day tasks than it takes them. In the past, before the pain came, these tasks were things we never even thought about, just like most folks don't think about them now. But getting in a car, driving or being driven somewhere, going in a store, waiting in line, all these things and every thing else people have to do on a regular basis, cause us a great deal of effort and a great deal more pain. Because of the war on drugs though, we are now forced to do more and have less pain relief, and for some, no pain relief at all.
One of the things that the media aren't telling us is that the suicide rate for people who live with pain has gone up a lot since this war began, so Satan has managed to literally kill many people, which is his great desire. He must be thrilled with how this war on drugs is working for him! That's the worst of what's happened. It's also caused a lot of fear, strife and division between friends and family of those of us who live with pain because they worry (fear) about us becoming addicted since the media makes it sound like it can happen even if you're taking your medication as prescribed. (which it can't). And we know Satan loves to cause fear, division and strife too. Since many patients who live with pain aren't well educated about narcotics, they too are now fearful that they'll become addicted and now instead of just living with constant pain, they live with constant fear and constant pain. This has also caused strife and division between many patients and their doctors, because the doctors are being forced by the government and the insurance agencies to test all pain patients for drug abuse regularly. This goes against everything our country stands for. We're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. Worse is that the tests are not always accurate and can give both false negatives and false positives. Knowing this causes fear for the patient too since they have no way of knowing if the test they took will come out correctly, and no pain patient is given a second chance. If a test shows the patient is supposedly abusing their medication or taking additional drugs, the doctors immediately refuse to refill their prescription for whichever narcotic they've been taking for pain. This too is inhuman as it can easily cause withdrawals - not because the person is addicted, but because they've been taking it for a long time for pain. Second, it means that this person now has absolutely no relief for their pain. (which is why so many kill themselves). I know, you think they can take tylenol or aleve but those things do nothing for their pain. They do about as much good as taking a drink of water. We would never expect a person with diabetes to live without their insulin medication, but we don't mind letting people live with horrible pain???
Next the war on drugs has also made it much more difficult for us to get our medications and has also caused us to have some of our meds taken away from us already. Many chronic pain patients are given two narcotics. One for long term control and one for break through pain. The war on drugs has insisted that doctors can now only give us one medication, so those who were taking two, have had their break through medication taken away. Our prescriptions can no longer be faxed or sent online to pharmacies. Instead we must pick them up in person and show an ID to prove who we are. Even in rural areas where the doctor has known you all your life as has the pharmacist!
There have also been a great number of reports of pharmacists being very rude and hurtful toward pain pain patients and even refusing to fill their prescriptions! I've experienced this myself and was very hurt by the way I was treated by a person who didn't know me at all. We are also forced to get our prescriptions and have them filled only when we are within a day of being out of our medication. I can remember one month when I had the flu (the kind where you throw up) and had no choice but to get in the car, get my prescription, go to the pharmacy which was another half hour away, stand in line and wait to get it filled. I remember my husband had to pull over so I could throw up during the drive there. I was running a fever and felt awful, and this was on top of the pain I'm always in. My choice though was to live with the pain and wait till I was better to get my prescription or go get it then. Since I can't function at all with the pain, there really was no choice at all. Of course another way we're hurt is when the pharmacy is out of our medication. Then we have no alternative but to wait until they get it in since they won't transfer it to another pharmacy. Oh, I forgot to mention that we are only allowed to use one pharmacy, it doesn't matter if it's always convenient or not.
Now I hope you can see how this has caused a great deal of emotional, mental pain and anguish for many people, as well as fear. People who live with pain are treated like drug addicts even though they aren't, so it also causes hate, strife and division as I've already shown. Lastly it has also literally killed many of us. All things that are trademarks of Satan, and all designed to get the world ready to open their arms and their hearts to the antichrist when he promises to make all things right again.
I'd like to also share a very good article written about this. Hopefully more people will then understand what's really happening.
Opioid Restrictions Versus Patient Needs
By Kelly Young, president, Rheumatoid Patient Foundation, Cocoa, FL, USA
The thinking behind recent opioid restrictions
There are two sides to arguments behind recent efforts at opioid restrictions in the U.S. However one side has been dominant in the last couple of years. State and federal governments have enacted opioid restrictions in an attempt to reduce misuse of prescription medications. Options for patients with severe pain have not been the focus of these campaigns.
The U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has made a call to action over what he calls the “addiction crisis in America.” Dr. Murthy addressed the “public health problem” in a recent podcast interview with the British Medical Journal. He said that prescription painkillers “feed into” the heroin epidemic and he called for a broad culture change in approach to drugs. For this reason he initiated the Turn the Tide Campaign in 2016. Murthy also highlighted the role of clinicians in addressing the problem by “sharpening prescribing practices” to prevent overdoses.
In the podcast, most of Dr. Murthy’s comments were directed toward legal issues, overdose and addiction treatment, and stigma attached to drug misuse disorders. While prevention and treatment of addiction are important problems, I wondered at how little he spoke of the problem of severe pain that opioid medications are manufactured to address in the first place.
Thankfully, BMJ published a patient opinion as well, providing balance. Below is an excerpt to the article by yours truly.
The dark side of opioid restrictions
In 2014, Florida began a severe crackdown on pain medicine. I encountered pharmacist technicians afraid to handle my prescriptions. They insisted I deal with the pharmacist in person, and even refused to tell me whether my prescription had refills. They refused to transfer a controlled prescription when I moved to another county, even though all my others were transferred.
There have been times others humiliated me in their attempt to comply with the law. One practice I had never visited before demanded I urinate in a cup upon arrival. I knew it was unwarranted because I had no prescriptions there, so I refused. Once I told an intrusive pharmacy technician, “You have no idea why I need that medicine. It’s not your role to approve or disapprove.”
Messages patients sent me corresponded to tragic stories on local television news about people living in terrible pain. People could no longer get their prescriptions from their doctors, but were forced to visit specific pain clinics, an added expense for people with chronic diseases who already pay high costs. Prescriptions were limited to 30 days, requiring additional visits for refills. Click here to keep reading Kelly’s article on opioid restrictions in the British Medical Journal.
Do opioid restrictions work?
My argument was simply that opioid restrictions often punish the wrong people. While several patient groups have spoken out against the recent prescription crackdowns, other institutions have begun to examine whether the opioid restrictions are actually effective.
The jury may still be out but doubts are being raised:
One story in the New England Journal of Medicine says they are not: “Adoption of controlled-substance laws was not associated with reductions in potentially hazardous use of opioids or overdose among disabled Medicare beneficiaries, a population particularly at risk.”
A paper discussed by the Cato Institute found Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP’s) have “no statistically significant effect on a key medical outcome: opioid poisoning incidents.”
An in-depth article by Dr. Josh Bloom at American Council on Science and Health found one harmful result of opioid restrictions is an increase in heroin use, overdose, and death, according to NIH data. He also writes about suicide: “There is no question that many people have been impacted by their inability to get the drugs that they had used responsibly for years. Both individuals and organizations have called the new rules Draconian.”
Do people with rheumatoid disease really need pain medicine?
People with #rheum disease have repeated severe acute pain and legitimate need for pain medication.
On a personal note: Eleven years of full-blown RD and I still think I’m tough. I’ve survived five (long) home births with no pain relief; the nurse midwives don’t even allow a Tylenol or a sip of wine. I’ve lived with a bulging torn disc in my spine since age 20. Endured several radiofrequency ablations while awake. Three times I’ve had a fever of 105F. For years, I’ve watched one doctor and nurse after another marvel at how I sit and breathe while needles are put deep into my finger, wrist, shoulder, knee, ankle or toe joint, and I don’t flinch. I believe I have lived through enough kinds of pain to have a fair opinion of severe pain.
On rare occasions, I use opioid pain medications myself. So yes I’m biased toward patients and I’ve written over 60 articles on RD pain and pain tolerance. And I believe that people with rheumatoid disease live with repeated severe acute pain and have legitimate need for pain medication that it is wrong to deny. Stay tuned for more on the topic of opioid restrictions.
Posted with permission (go to link to see the other links in the article above):
rawarrior.com/opioid-restrictions-versus-patient-needs/