We all experience pain. Who doesn’t? And it’s important we understand the Lethal Dosage (LD) of everything that we take as a medicine. I am a medical marijuana patient and cannot reach the estimated LD for that particular drug.
For those of you who may ever been prescribed an 800mg ibuprofen, your doctor was giving you something that is nearly 25% of the amount it would take to cause an overdose for some people. Accidental overdoses are a cause of death so common in America but for some reason we are only reminded of them when celebrities make the news because of it.
According to a report from the National Forensic Lab Information system (NFLIS), legal drug use sky rocketed:
Nationally, reports of alprazolam, hydrocodone, oxycodone, clonazepam, and morphine experienced significant increases from 2001 through 2008. Alprazolam reports almost doubled during this time, while reports of hydrocodone increased 201%, morphine increased 197%, oxycodone increased 178%, and clonazepam increased 70%. Regionally, reports of hydrocodone, oxycodone, and morphine increased significantly in all census regions from 2001 through 2008. Reports of alprazolam and clonazepam increased significantly in the Midwest, South and Northeast.
According to the Associated Press:
“Thousands of soldiers suffering from PTSD have received the same medication over the last nine years, helping to make Seroquel one of the Veteran Affairs Department’s top drug expenditures and the No. 5 best-selling drug in the nation… Several soldiers and veterans have died while taking the pills, raising concerns among some military families that the government is not being up front about the drug’s risks”
But pain management shouldn’t lead to pill addiction, behavior modification and death…
