Let’s make a dope deal.

My brother in law and I joke around about my seeds. Everyone acts like I am a dope dealer. So he jokingly asks if those are dope seeds. I always respond the dopest… because I am from Memphis and I think it’s funny.

When I was growing up I got my first Cheech & Chong cassette tape. I remember hearing them do a skit about a game show called Let’s make a Dope deal. Where contestants are set up by the cops.

As I sit here going over a contract my pain management doctor wants me to sign… It got me thinking. Due to an auto accident I have gotten this far without signing what they make everyone sign. In short I am unable to sign it. I need help though and I  am absolutely not refusing care… which makes this a chess game where its already in the rules that I lose.

I am not scared. I have been a victim of Non treatment 20 out of the last 30 years. I will walk into a hospital with no primary, no pain management, no medicine… Have an eight hour long surgery and walk out of the hospital three days later with 60 Norco 5s and survive. I know because I have already done it once. So I have my principles and I know my rights and theirs. Game on…

Now to explain to people who are not in pain management to get care you have to sign a contract that says you only have these certain rights and then it lists out all the offices privileges they insist on for them to accept you as a patient. Whether you need medicine or not. The contracts have us enter into a lifelong probation system where we recieve care on par with most prisons.  They also serve as NDAs.

So to get medicine you have to first be in very bad pain for months because you don’t meet anyone with the authority to prescribe hydrocodone until you have gone to three or four appointments. They typically operate under a fail first policy where they start you off on Midol… I mean tramadol. While pushing their physical therapist, their injections, ablations, stimulators, and pain pumps. So you do not meet the real doctor until everything the PA has the authority to do has tried and failed or if they sell you an injection on the first two visits…

Now before all that though typically people are forced to sign away rights by agreeing to limited rights. At the same time the doctors are claiming as much authority over you as legally possible. It’s more like committing yourself to an asylum that you can come and go from than it is going to the doctor with a cold and getting cold medicine. You can not go to the doctor any longer and expect to get pain medicine for pain. Addiction is the affliction affecting the public over pain so our healthcare individually puts Addiction ahead of pain.

We have a legal right to not incriminate ourselves in the court of law. When that doctors office door closes however a different court is in session. You have no representation and you are not legally entitled to care. The doctor listens, deliberates, then passes final judgment. The result can end with a person’s pain being controlled. It can also end in a person going home and killing themselves. They operate by policy under the law. They do not act through the law. That is what Mr. DEA’s Diversion is on.

They act according to policy so they are not bound like law enforcement. Law enforcement can not stand in between you and your medicine unless you disclose all recreational drug use history. They can not take your medicine away if you do not disclose your social behavior… A cop can not legally take your medicine and refuse to ever let you have it unless you pass a monthly drug test. A cop can not force you to tell them about your relationship with your spouse.

When I think about the Let’s make a dope deal game I think it’s funny how much things have changed. I am a man who tries to live like Jesus. Always have been. When I was a kid though if you smoked pot you had to worry about the cops putting you on probation. Today however the cops are not the ones who can force so much pain on you you kill yourself.

That is Pain Management probation at its worse. There are only privileges. For you and the doctors but it means something completely different for them. What it means for us is sign or dont sign they don’t care… good or bad treatment they don’t care you signed what equates to a NDA… For us it means take it or leave it Healthcare.

I believe I am going to be forced to leave it and accept no Healthcare treatment as the standard of my care… and ill be better for it.