February 21, 2018
Page 17
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O PINION
‘Toughing It Out’ Doesn’t Work for Severe Pain
We need access to
the drugs that help
J ill r iCharDson
Recently Attorney
General Jeff Sessions
gave Americans suf-
fering severe pain
some advice: “People
need to take some as-
pirin sometimes and
tough it out a little.”
As someone who has suffered chronic
pain for over 20 years, his remarks make
me very angry.
Sessions was responding to the opioid
epidemic. I agree that something must be
done. I lost my brother to an opioid over-
dose nine years ago. I miss him every day.
But I also use prescription opioids re-
sponsibly myself, and I rely on them to
help control my pain.
Imagine severe, throbbing head pain —
combined with nausea, vomiting, and visu-
al disturbances. Light and sound hurt your
by
head, so you are in a dark room. If you can
fall asleep, great. Sleeping can make mi-
graines go away sometimes.
But sometimes you aren’t tired, or it
hurts too much, and you just lay there hurt-
ing.
Now imagine doing this several times
a week, every week, for over 20 years.
That’s my life.
“Tough it out” is what you do when the
pain is temporary and when there’s an end
to it. It’s what you do when the pain isn’t
too severe.
But what if the pain is severe, and noth-
ing makes it better, and there is no end in
sight When it hurts that much, every sin-
gle day, there’s no more joy in life. There’s
only pain.
Fortunately, I’ve found two drugs that
work. Just two: oxycodone and marijua-
na. And apparently Jeff Sessions thinks I
shouldn’t take either of them.
Medical marijuana is obviously the
better of the two. It’s less addictive and
it won’t kill you. Gaining access to legal
medical marijuana has changed my life.
It’s also helped me drastically cut down on
opioid use.
I’ve taken Oxycodone regularly and re-
sponsibly for the last decade. I make sure
to take it seldom enough that I don’t devel-
op a tolerance for it, and I never increase
my dose. I try to take it once every two
months, and I will not under any circum-
stances take it more than once a week.
I reserve Oxycodone for the most severe
pain. It’s such a relief to have an option
that will treat my worst migraines. I “tough
out” the less severe ones, including the one
I have right now.
Why do I use these two controversial
drugs instead of something else? Because
literally nothing else works. I’ve tried
about 20 different over the counter and pre-
scription medications, herbs, meditation,
acupuncture, and even Botox injections.
Nothing. Else. Works.
Not everyone can take opioids safe-
ly. My brother couldn’t. He was my best
friend and my only sibling. We need to do
something about opioid addiction in this
country.
More broadly, we desperately need
universal health care — including mental
health care.
In the end, it was mental health care that
my brother and I both needed — him for
his addiction, me for my migraines, and
both of us for trauma and anxiety.
I’ve finally found a wonderful mental
health therapist and I’m making progress
in healing my trauma. My migraines seem
slightly less severe. But the therapy costs
thousands of dollars a year, and so many
people don’t have thousands of dollars a
year. Especially people whose ability to
work is limited by illness.
While we work toward a better mental
health care system, those of us who suffer
chronic pain need to be able to access the
drugs that help us stop hurting. For those
who can use them responsibly, opioids and
medical marijuana are truly lifelines.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson
is the author of Recipe for America: Why
Our Food System Is Broken and What We
Can Do to Fix It. Distributed by Other-
Words.org.
Re-circulating Your Dollars into the Black Community
Rewarding those
who help and
support us
P hilliP J aCKson
Once and for all,
let’s get this straight.
America has gotten
out of the black peo-
ple business!
No
help is coming from
Washington,
D.C.
No help is coming from state government.
No significant help is coming from city and
county municipal governments. No useful
help is coming from foundations and cor-
porations. We, black people, are on our
own. And, really, for centuries, we were
always on our own.
Most jobs that blacks once had in Amer-
ica are now done by computers, machines
and robots. Many of the other jobs that
we used to have are now taken by immi-
by
grants or have grown beyond our collec-
tive skillsets. Black leadership is still us-
ing protest tactics and methodologies from
the 1950s to address 2018 economic prob-
lems. Those tactics won’t work. There is
no more cotton for black people to pick,
and but our leadership teaches us to have
a have a cotton picking and sharecropper
mentality.
Even if black people continue acquiring
wealth at our present rate and white peo-
ple stop acquiring any additional wealth,
it would take 228 years to close the racial
wealth gap. As of 2013, white households
had $116,000 in median household net
worth and black families had $1,700 of me-
dian household net worth. Regardless, it is
projected that by 2053 black median house-
hold net worth will be at zero dollars. Black
people’s net worth will be at the same level
as when we came out of slavery in 1865.
The good news: Black people in Amer-
ica have a gross national income of about
$1.3 trillion. The bad news: Only 2 percent
or about $26 billion of those $1.3 trillion
are re-circulated in the black community.
If black dollars were more re-circulat-
ed in black American communities, black
dollars would produce black companies,
help hire black employees, support black
families and rebuild black communities.
Instead, our $1.3 trillion income makes
other people rich including whites, Arabs,
Koreans, Pakistanis, Indians, Latinos, Chi-
nese, Polish, even blacks from the Caribbe-
an and the continent of Africa.
Black people need a simple plan to alter
our trajectory. Here’s a plan: Join with The
Black Star Project in the “Circulate Black
Dollars in Black Communities” campaign
and receive a “Black dollar stamp.” You
can stamp all of your paper money with this
stamp (legal according to Title 18, Section
333 of United States Code and Title 18, Sec-
tion 475 of United States Code) and make a
conscious effort to spend your dollars with
black people every time you use cash.
If 43 million black people consciously
move their spending efforts from 2 percent
with black people to 4 percent with black
people, $26 billion more will be infused
into the black economy. If black people
can move their spending habits from 2 per-
cent to 10 percent with black people, an
additional $104 billion will be generated.
Theoretically, $104 billion would produce
between 400,000 and 750,000 new jobs
and geometrically accelerate black finan-
cial and social well-being.
As black spending becomes more inten-
tional, our social and economic issues will
disappear. We won’t have to wait for others
to give us financial permission or support
so that we might fix our own problems. We
will declare a new freedom and help take
control over the lives of everyone in our
communities.
Your dollar is your most potent weapon
in a capitalistic society. We must learn to
use our dollars to reward those who help
and support us, and to punish those who
don’t. Circulate black dollars in black com-
munities!
Phillip Jackson is founder and chair-
man of the Black Star Project in Chicago.