Stephen knelt down quickly pressing his beaten hands to his sides. To think of them beaten and swollen with pain all in a moment made him feel so sorry for them as if they were not his own but someone else’s that he felt sorry for. And as he knelt, calming the last sobs in his throat and feeling the burning tingling pain pressed into his sides, he thought of his hands which he had held out in the air with the palms up and of the firm touch of the prefect of studies when he had steadied the shaking fingers and of the beaten swollen reddened mass of palm and fingers that shook helplessly in the air.
— Get at your work, all of you, cried the prefect of studies from the door. Father Dolan will be in every day to see if any boy, any lazy idle little loafer wants flogging. Every day. Every day.
The door closed behind him. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it! And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they were destined to last for ever ... To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dread torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! ibid.
Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it would stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there were no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm. George Orwell, 1984
It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace. George Bernard Shaw
For most people happiness is the absence of pain. But for a few agony provides a way to Nirvana. Pain can be a means of salvation, and for some a by-product of a dangerous obsession. Sacred Rituals s1e7: Masters of Pain, H2 2016
Flagellation movements swept across Europe. ibid.
‘I don’t feel pain.’ Incredible Medicine: Dr Weston’s Casebook III, BBC 2017
‘People had not expected that a single gene can control all pain sense in humans.’ ibid. doctor
There are two kinds of pain in this world, pain that hurts and pain that alters. The Equalizer II 2018 starring Denzel Washington & Pedro Pascal & Ashton Sanders & Bill Pullman & Melissa Leo & Sakina Jaffrey & Jonathan Scarfe & Adam Karst & Kazy Tauginas & Garrett Golden & Orson Bean et al, director Antoine Fuqua, McCall to baddy
Tonight: Britain’s silent epidemic: are we a nation hooked on painkillers? The warning of powerful opioids and a looming public health crisis. Is it time to put the stopper in the bottle and rethink how we handle pain? Tonight: Britain on Painkillers, ITV 2018
We are among the biggest consumers of opioids in Europe. ibid.
Experts are warning when it comes to chronic long-term pain the drugs often just don’t work. ibid.
Worrying ourselves sick: is searching for symptoms online turning us into a nation of cyber-chondriacs. Or is digital diagnoses just the start? But does it mean NHS GP practices are being left behind? Tonight: Dr Google: Do DIY Diagnoses Work? ITV 2018
The daily misery of back pain experienced by millions. Why sitting down could be dangerous for your health. Why surgery is probably not the answer. And the treatments that could make a real difference. Tonight: Back Pain: Britain’s Unseen Crisis, ITV 2019
Up to 80% of us will be affected. ibid.
Britain’s back pain crisis: has lockdown made things worse? Just how big is the problem? And what can we do about it? Tonight: Back Pain: Britain’s Hidden Crisis? ITV 2022
Insite is North America’s first legal supervised injection site. Painkiller: Inside the Opioid Crisis, 2018
‘People are dying of drug overdoses in unprecedented numbers … We have contamination of the illegal drug supply with a drug called Fentanyl.’ ibid. Dr Daly, Vancouver
‘The war on drugs has been a war on people.’ ibid. Dr Morhaim
1 in 5 people prescribed an opioid will become a long-term user within 10 days. ibid. caption
‘In one day alone at peak time I responded to 22 separate overdoses in one shift.’ ibid. paramedic
‘The number of people who are dying in British Columbia alone are a hundred die a month, and in the worst months more like a hundred and fifty. It’s a terrible crisis for young people in the prime of their lives.’ ibid. Dr Wood, director BC Centre on Substance Use
The Almighty tests our faith through pain. That’s right, God is love. Gomorrah s4e5: Episodio V, Donna Benedetta to Patrizia, Sky Atlantic 2019
Patrizia: I’m pregnant … What kind of mother would I be?
Young gangster: The worst in the world. ibid.
Since 2000, more than 500,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses. Millions of Americans have become addicted. Every 25 minutes a baby is born with opioid withdrawal. The US government estimates that the cost of opioid abuse is over $1 trillion. We call this ‘the opioid crisis’. But a crisis is something that just ‘happens’. What if we discovered that the opioid crisis was caused by businesses seeking to profit from pain? What if behind the crisis there was a spectacular crime? Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
No American family has profited more from controlled substances, from Valium and Oxycontin, than the Sacklers. ibid.
In the 1960s Sackler became incredibly rich by expanding the market for addictive tranquillizers. ibid.
Controlled-release Oxycodone, or Oxycontin, would be the drug that triggered what we call the ‘opioid crisis.’ ibid.
Johnson & Johnson also genetically altered the nature of the plant to create a super-poppy … Soon 74,000 acres of Tasmania were devoted to opium. ibid.
Blinn was taking the equivalent of 200 hits of heroin a day. He kept the prescription bottle for 20 years because he felt something was not right. ibid.
A nationwide criminal conspiracy that included Fraud, Pills Mills, doctors trading drugs for sex, false statements to Congress, and attempts to target key officials of the Bush administration … The FDA was used to falsely and fraudulently market Oxycontin. ibid.
None of them would spend a day in prison. ibid.
Lifetree Pain Clinic prescription: 60 x Amitriptyline 50mg; 30 x Celexa 40mg; 224 x Oxycodone 30mg; 112 Percocet 10/325mg; 60 x Requip 1mg; 60 x Xanax 1mg; 60 x Zanaflex 4mg. ibid.
Starting in 2013 a powerful synthetic opioid surged in popularity: Fentanyl. It’s a 100 times more powerful than morphine. Rather than reckoning with its dangers, companies sold it as aggressively as drug cartels. But instead of gun-toting dealers on street corners, men and women in suits and lab coats pushed opioids and cash bonuses and power-point presentations at pain management jamborees. Flush with campaign cash from Big Pharma, Congress would look the other way. ibid.
‘40 people every day die from Prescription overdoses.’ Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century II ***** news
‘The opioid crisis started with prescriptions, prescriptions and patient care. This idea that we weren’t adequately treating pain. Drugs like Oxycontin … began to preach the gospel of the opioid … They developed new medical terms like pseudo-addiction … As you get stronger drugs, it’s more expensive. ibid. Joe Rannazzisi, insider whistleblower gives evidence
Fentanyl byproducts is killing a lot of people … It was a natural progression … Overdose deaths is under-reported, we know that for sure so we don’t know really how many people died. We started seeing massive amounts of death … prescriptions: 250 million. ibid.
An onslaught of pills, hundreds of thousands of deaths. Who is accountable? ibid. The Washington Post online article 20 July 2019
Some of America’s biggest pharmaceuticals were not only profiting from the opioid crisis, they may have been manufacturing it. ibid.
We have had many run-ins with the Sacklers lately. The crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Their man point of contention is that they did not ignore the opioid crisis single-handedly. Whether you believe that or don’t believe that, there is voluminous evidence the crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Purdue [Pharma] led the charge. ibid. Bernstein, Washington Post