By PractitionerLet me start by apologizing in advance to any reader I might offend with the intensely personal nature of this article – my rationale is recounting what I’ve been through is the best way of communicating my thoughts on an issue that has wider public health ramifications.By the time you would have read this article, I should be in hospital somewhere overseas.? Over the next couple of days, I will be struggling with a personal medical problem that has hounded me for too many years than I’d care to recount – chronic back pain.I’ve written about this issue and – more importantly – the attendant dependence I’ve developed on the painkillers used for treatment about twice over the past two years.? The first article, I wrote generally on the issue of pain management and the second one had more to do with my reaction to the rife and completely inaccurate speculation of my hospitalisation last year.This time, I wish to write more directly on the issue, not just the larger picture, but bringing as well some of the unique perspective that I possess.? Dependency, addiction, in the larger connotation of it, has almost many manifestations as there are things people can do.Some people are addicted to gambling, others are addicted to sex.? I remember reading one news story a few years back,Cheap Air Max 95 Sale, one I showed to my son as hint, where a young man was so addicted to a videogame that he played it several days non-stop before collapsing and dying in front of his computer.Some people are addicted to shopping, although admittedly (and I expect some repercussions from my wife for saying this) it’s hard to tell if many women are actually addicted to shopping or if it’s just a regular weekend.That said, chemical addictions, or substance dependency, constitute the most widespread and critical forms of addiction.? According to a recent report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta that I saw on CNN, there are some 23 million Americans currently addicted to one substance or the other – alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, illegal drugs,Cheap Jerseys China, prescription medication and even glue.The actual order of primacy of abuse, the top three addictive drugs are, in descending order, alcohol, marijuana and prescription painkillers.? The latter, accounts for 1.9 million of those addicts.I’ve had two major back surgeries in my life – intended to relieve the chronic back pain I experience – and each necessitated the use of very strong prescription painkillers for my recovery.? And I, quite frankly, have struggled with a clear addiction to them. There is a serious and sad irony attached to the use of powerful painkillers: while they work well to relieve pain at the onset, very often, with the real pain gone, the body (or brain, rather) becomes so addicted to their effects that coming off them makes you feel much worse than the pain they helped to relieve in the first place.Coming off a strong prescription painkiller is a living, walking nightmare of craving for the drug, body chills, insomnia, anxiety attacks, depression – one minute you’re delirious, the other you’re irritable and no one can talk to you.? All these are things I’ve experienced and it is no picnic for me.The thing is, it isn’t a picnic for others either, as with any addiction, particularly chemical ones, the addict doesn’t suffer in isolation.? The drugs alter your personality so subtly but so significantly at the same time that although you most likely won’t notice the difference, the worst of it – the alienation, the irritability, the lack of communication – is felt by those closest to you.I’ve spent a long time thinking hard on how this thing has impacted upon my life and I can tell you, that time has been personally enlightening for me with regard to my perspective on substance dependency.? For example, you see the typical drug addict,Wholesale Cheap Jerseys, the typical junkie, walking on the street and your view of that person is somehow subhuman.To satisfy his or her addiction, the cocaine or marijuana addict’s life is one of great personal compromise – humiliating and arduous manual labour for little compensation; being treated with indignity and scorn by almost everyone they come across.? I’ve been witness to one ‘junkie’ disparaging another – equally ragged, equally homeless – because the former would only smoke marijuana and drink rum, while the latter was a full blown cocaine addict.At a fundamental level, prescription pain medication dependency is the same thing, the same sacrificing of personal standards, granted to a much lesser degree.? This sort of medication is difficult to come by, and while I’ve personally never checked, I am sure that it is far easier to get a joint of marijuana or a gram of cocaine than it is to procure, say, a couple Vicodin tablets, or a syringe of some other