The Opioid Crisis & Why It Matters
What is all the fuss about narcotics, specifically, about opioids? It all starts with pain. Back pain, neck pain, any pain. On the surface, pain seems like a simple sensation. It is the brain’s way of interpreting nerve signals from the body that suggest there is something bad happening to it. Usually, the body is correct, for example when we touch something hot or sharp. This is an example of what we call “acute pain.” Acute pain serves the basic purpose of preventing injury, or if the injury has occurred, then preventing further injury. If you look at it this way, pain is a good thing: it’s protective. It is not surprising then that historically pain was not thought of as necessarily bad; it was thought of as a normal part of recovery from an injury. What changed then? Actually, a lot of things. First, with improvements in nutrition and medicine and a decrease in trauma, people started living longer. In 1900, the average life expectancy was only in the ’40s. As we live longer