Your statistic means nothing. The vast majority of prescriptions for pain meds are short term scrips. Anyone who has a surgery, even a vasectomy, which I'd encourage you to get so we don't have little ones thinking like you, get pain meds to help short term through the recovery process.
The key word is not pain..it's chronic. Chronic means persistent..not going to go away. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if someone truly has chronic pain..they have sought help from a real Doctor, and have records, over a long period of time, showing treatment.
At least, I can't imagine someone suffering from CHRONIC pain, that would'nt seek help...or mention it to freinds...
Already have kids thank you, and they are very intelegent. I can understand why you would not want anyone to have kids that are free thinking, self responsible individuals. Harder for you to control the thoughts of, i understand that. but guess what bob, To fucking bad, My children will be the ones saving YOUR children's asses in another 15 yrs.
I have boney growths on my vertibrea. I ve had it my whole life. Modern Medicines fix then, and how, is to open me up from head to asshole, and use a hammer and chissel, or an 90* angle grinder, and knock or shave off the additional boney growths. Over the last 30 yrs of working, i have shards of bone that have chipped off my vertibrae that are now free floating around my spinal column. very tiny bone fragments that will disolve naturaly over time (bodys way of recycling) if they are small enough fragments. most are. but that doesnt fix anything, as the boney growth on the vertibrae continue to grow. This leaves me in constant dull pain, and when a piece of bone fragment gets in the right place, it binds up my spinal column, and i get sharp stabbing pain. this can go up to a 10 on what is called the Pain Meter (individual analysys as you noted, their is no medical way to identify and verify it, but they are working on a unit, hat measures the amount of electrical impulses the brain receives. Apparently they found the part of the brain the registers pain, and have been tracking the impulses it gets, to relational instances of things that are known causes of pain. Very cool technology, but very young still). It has been like this for me for the majority of my life from the time of being a teenager.
So my pain is constant, i would say around a 3 level, but i daily have instances where my spine locks up, binds and many times, pinches a nerve ending/s until i can get the bone/joint to adjust.
I also have DGD at L5/6, NDGD at L 4/5, severe, cronic subluxations of T 6-12, and SDG at C3,C4 and at the base of the skull.
Now at 14 my options were let the surgeon take a hammer and chissel to me spine, and live on prescribed opiates for the rest of my life, Doc said i would Never be fully out of pain even after surgery, and the surgery (this was in 1980) may even leave me partially, or perhaps fully, permanently disabled, and likey in a chair. Or I could live with it with a lifetime of Prescribed Pain Meds as Again, I would never be pain free. Ofcourse now we have nerve blocks and grinders, but the end result is still the same. I get a scare from my ass to my head, and a lifetime (whats left of it) of Prescribed pain meds...)
I Worked for a living. I didnt drive a desk for my career. I busted my ass, from working on a hey farm as a teen to earn money (yr after my drs visits for the surgery) to running ditch witches plowing line wiring the state for communications, to climbing telephone poles with gaffs for 6 yrs working for the cable industry, to roofing and drywalling and framing, back to the cable industry and then to a wireless communications company where my job was to climb Radio and TV towers to install equipment for High Speed Wireless Internet. Every been 700ft up on a radio tower? It can be Beautiful Scenery, but it can also be brutal work. 5 hrs to climb 700 ft up. pulling 200 lbs in gear up with you and a climbing partner.
I have also been a musician my entire adult life. I started playing guitar at 12, and at 14 picked up the base guitar, and off we went. I have played to shows of 10, up to 10,000, and thru the vast majority of it all, had to be my own roadie with my band...
I hurt through every part of it, and ive smoked cannabis thru it all.
or i could of had surgery at 14 and rolled the dice on being able to walk, but still have the pain ive had while i did the things above. you know, those things MOST people call LIVING responsibly.