I put the book down and laid back on my bunk staring out the sliver of window carved out in my cell wall. The part of the sky I could see was gray, much like mood. It began to rain. It was as if the heavens had opened pouring tears on the compound to match those streaming down my face. I wept. I wept for my son, my family, my friends; but mostly for the 50 million Intractable Pain Patients left alone to fend for themselves in this country we call home. I wept for those lost to suicide as the only solution to pain and suffering. I wept for my fellow colleagues locked up across this nation of ours due to their advocacy for pain management. I wept for those clinicians who have died either by their own hand or by the stress incurred from fighting for themselves and their medical decision making. I wept because someone gets it and someone was saying it. The agony I was feeling was sadly yet succinctly described in the book I had just finished — American Agony, by Dr. Helen Borel.
American Agony
In the book, American Agony: The Opioid War Against Patients in Pain, nurse and now doctor of psychoanalytic studies, Helen Borel RN PhD eloquently and passionately describes the opiahysteria surrounding the “Opioid Crisis”. She methodically explains pain and the best treatment for chronic pain, the pain assessment protocol, and what pain patients suffer. She precisely points out the peril and painful dangers of the 2016 CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.
Scarily accurate are her characterizations of the American Police State we currently find ourselves in and the Gestapo style actions of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that destroy clinicians careers and lives thereby leaving pain patients to languish in the dangers associated with under-dosages, forced tapering, and sudden cessation or “cold-turkeying” of their life saving medications.
With a palpable heaviness she diagrams the ominous overreach of the Department of Justice leading to patient’s suffering, clinician incarcerations, and suicides of both patients and their providers.
She meticulously delineates the difference between patients needing pain relief and drug addicts seeking a “high”. Highlighting an undisputable fact that patients on opioids for analgesia don’t experience a “high”, just simply pain relief; that patients requiring prescribed opioids for pain have zero to do with drug addicts who “choose” illicit substances to get “high”. Further making the point and well established fact that less than 1% of drug abuse or addiction is via prescription narcotics and that NO ONE overdoses from taking prescription opiates “as prescribed”, and the majority of drug overdoses and deaths are related to heroin and/or adulterated forms of Fentanyl being shipped from China and Mexico and readily available on our streets and the internet.
Her exposé goes on to reveal the real perpetrators, as always, a confederacy of ignorance and greed. She exhibits the truths behind “The Suboxone Hoax” and provides evidence demonstrating the hidden agenda of the anti-opioid proponents — follow the money.
She decries the “Wrong Arms of the Law”: State Attorneys General, DEA, and DOJ, and then celebrates the heroes and heroines for pain patients’ rights. She also provides specific solutions for getting government intrusion out of opioid prescribing villainizing the true victimizers by name and solemnly commemorates the real victims in this “Crisis”.
Finally, Dr. Borel summarizes the essential actions needed to end the opioid war against patients in pain, freeing patients to receive life sustaining medications and liberating political prisoners such as myself and over 1200 other imprisoned clinicians across these United States.
Clearly Dr. Borel, despite her advanced degrees and potential personal peril by embarking on such a task as exposing the TRUTH behind the “OPIATE CRISIS”, never forgot the Florence Nightingale of her initial training in which patient advocacy and compassion are paramount.
I, Jeffrey W. Young II MSN FNP APN-BC, a castaway of the Constitution, incarcerated in a federal detention facility in Tennessee awaiting trial, denounce the lies against me and other compassionate healthcare providers facing or currently in federal prisons. I implore, compel, and highly recommend you read American Agony by Dr. Helen Borel before you or someone you love becomes the next victim of this “Crisis”.
Addendum from Doctorsofcourage:
Jeffrey Young, PA, had a 4 day trial March 27-March 31, 2023. He, his friends, and supporters thought that the Supreme Court decision US v. Ruan would work to acquit him. He spent almost 4 years in jail pre-trial. As I keep warning people, the District courts don’t pay any attention to SCOTUS. It’s all about the money. Jeffrey was convicted on Mar 31.
If you want these abuses of the law to stop, you must join Doctorsofcourage, learn the truth–that no drug causes addiction–and share that everywhere so we can offset the government propaganda that is putting innocent people in prison so government agents, DOJ, and law enforcement can make money off of the backs of compassionate medical providers.
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