The Problem of Pain and Drugs

This one is dark, so you’ve been warned. In my post last week on drug overdoses, I noted the great increase in drug overdose deaths during the pandemic, and I address the issue of drug addiction and its relationship with physical pain. Sometimes, there are no good choices.

Medical Dispatch or Doctor Doubledose Killing Two Birds with One Stone, 1810, Thomas Rowlandson

Episode Links (Updated)

Matt Bivens, M.D. piece:

A Deep Dive into the Opioid Crisis

Drug Overdose Death Stats

Dashboard of U.S. Population Mortality — Opioid Deaths

Dashboard from the Society of Actuaries

SOA Research page: U.S. Population Mortality Observations – Updated with 2021 Experience

Historical Items

Laudanum: is a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight (the equivalent of 1% morphine).^[1] Laudanum is prepared by dissolving extracts from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) in alcohol (ethanol).

Innumerable Victorian women were prescribed the drug for relief of menstrual cramps and vague aches. Nurses also spoon-fed laudanum to infants. The Romantic and Victorian eras were marked by the widespread use of laudanum in Europe and the United States. Mary Todd Lincoln, for example, the wife of the US president Abraham Lincoln, was a laudanum addict, as was the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was famously interrupted in the middle of an opium-induced writing session of Kubla Khan by "a person on business from Porlock".^[14] Initially a working class drug, laudanum was cheaper than a bottle of gin or wine, because it was treated as a medication for legal purposes and not taxed as an alcoholic beverage.