Tom Petty died of a drug overdose

Still need a 3 part script every 30 days , but once I drop it off at the Pharmacy in KS or MO and TX as of 2008 no need for ID to pick it up!
The thing that pisses me off about the dosage limits is the folks at the American Cancer Society Susan B Coleman (the folks who made a color intellectual property) and every specific cancer group lobbied for and got an exemption! Politics at work !
I sent a day with a guy who's job is finding alternative pain therapies and he couldn't wrap his head around a 2 basic concepts.
1 Acupuncture and the like really don't work when most of somebody's nerves are damaged .
2 distraction techniques are great if you have a centerd and one type of pain but when it truelly is the entire body and your dealing with, nerve tisssue damage, muscular and joint pain, you just can't find your fucking happy place and focus away from the Carpal tunnel in the one "normal" hand when suddenly you have shooting like electrical shock in your foot and ache in your hip!
Did I mention at one time or another every organ but the Brain heart and lungs shut down? And with Fentynal normal Kidney & liver functions?

You say that as if I haven't been thinking and planning for the contingency for over ten years  and/or that I'm stupid.


Well, maybe it's because you're supporting a campaign to take away one of my basic rights - to live a functional life as free of pain as possible without the meddling of uninformed and/or unscrupulous politicians.

And because you essentially don't know what you're talking about.

You are not my mommy. Neither is the federal government.


Yeah? So I can have my studio in an assisted living facilty?

Somehow I doubt it.


To reiterate - I've been thinking about this and making plans for over 10 years - since I first was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.

In other words the government is tyrying to force chronic pain patients onto street drugs.

That's what I've been saying. And the support of well meaning but ill advised people like you is helping them do it.

You mentioned cannabis - don't you understand that the people who are pushing the anti-opioid hysteria are the SAME PEOPLE who are trying to keep cannabis illegal? And for the $ame rea$on$?


First, Jerry was a junkie, not a chronic pain patient.

Second, the people pushing for a crackdown on the availability of prescription narcotics are PROMOTING the use of street drugs, not discouraging their use.

Third, the major cause of fatal overdose among users of street drugs is inconsistent quality control - people get hold of a batch that's stronger than what they're used to getting and they die, because there's no way to tell. The second greatest cause is people who have just gone through an abstinance based program and "relapse", unaware of just how much their tolerance has been reduced.

I think it's significant that Tom Petty had street Fentanyl in his system in addition to prescription stuff. Obviously if he had been reeceiving an adequate supply of prescription drugs he would not have been forced to cop on the street and would probably still be with us today.


We are not children, no matter what you might think. And we don't need the pious moans of those who don't understand, or the propagandists who would use us for their own ends.

in early 2016 I had a severe attack of pulmonary edema, which was excrutiatingly painful - not as bad as a broken back, but still really bad. I  was hospitalized for nearly a week. when I checked in I brought my codeine with me but in their infinite wisdom the poeople in the hospital would not let me use it - instead they insisted on giving me a relatively high dose of oxycodone. Well, it certrainly was effective, gotta give them that. Then after the second or third day I found myself having weird dreams and nightmares and waking up with the sweats and shakes. At that point I said to myself "OHO, I know what THAT is, those FUCKERS! They're getting me hooked!" and insisted that they stop giving it to me.

According to your theory I should have been begging them for more, but I'm not STUPID. SOME people might be, but that's their problem, not mine.

According to you my "senses should have been distorted" so I couldn't exercise control over myself and my envireonment. You couldn't be more wrong.

Instead I started asking them to check me out - it took another three days or so and a visit from my lawyer to accomplish this.

I left the hospital with a prescription for rat poison (sodium warfarin, used as a blood thinner - former active ingredient in D-Con and still used in other brands, sold as "coumadin" to humans for blood thinning) and an oxygen machine with 3 tanks (0ne big, two small). and two black and blue arms from the hospital monkeys ineptly attenpting blood draws ever 4 hours.

Of course you are. If you weren't you wouldn't be campaigning so hard to take away my, eric's, and thousands of other people's RIGHTS to proper medication to serve the ends of a bunch of career politicians and members of the prison, legal, law enforcement, pharmaceutical, medical,  and intelligence industries, all of whom rake in billions of dollars from anti-narcotic prohibition.

Don't be a hypocrite.

If that's what you want don't support repression, support proper medical oversight, without government meddling that forces peope on to deadly street drugs.


That's not consistent with your position.


"Inherently"? Who are you trrying to kid?

NO drug is "inherently" illegal - the laws are man made by politicians. Opiates break no natural law. If you're a religious person there's a clear argument to be made the whatever god(s) you believe in put opiates on this world to alleviate pain and suffering. If you're not there's an equally strong moral and philosophical argument to be made.

You're no better than the people who stand against stem cell research that could save thousands of lives out of trumped up "morality" when in fact it's really a matter of control of the lives of others.


I absolutely have ba right to be free from pain. And I have an absoluite, inalienable right to determine the means of doing so and to control my own destiny. If that offends you, tough. It's MY life, not yours. ou can do what you want with yourself.

And opiate drugs only became illegal in the early decades of the 20th century as a part of the "moral" hysteria that also blessed us with prohibition of alcohol and cannabis. So yes, people have had that right - except when it's taken away from them.

The fact is that when such drugs are made legally available withj non-judgemental, non-moralist supervision deaths and crime decrease precipitously. This is proven fact. it is when prohibition and draconian control are imposed that deaths and crime soar - because of the absence of controlled quality and excessive cost resulting from black market economics.

But you're not really interested in that.


You don't have the vaguest idea what you're babbling about. You've never been a chronic pain patient withn an intractible condition that will only get worse.

I'll tell you something else - junkies are not happy people. If they were happy people they wouldn't be junkies. There's a reason they're driven to self-medicate.


I don't have the tatoo yet. You really DO think I'm stupid, don't you.

And I don't have immediate family - I have a personal lawyer (who has been a friend for 35 years, give or take.)


My studio occupies the greater part of an entire house. I have a 24 track Studer, 2 track MCI and a console that's over 7 feet long.

I have at least 15 channels of hardware compression, plus a bunch of other outboard.

I have over 82 mics and DI boxes. and 15 or 20 stands, ranging from little kick drum stands to a medium Latch Lake.

I have a full drum kit, an Ampeg B-18 bass amp, 8 guitar amps ranging from 1.5 watts to 140 watts, 7 acoustic guitars, 9 electric guitars, 5 basses, a Yamaha CP-300 piano, a small PA in the studio live room (what a normal person would call a living room), a larger PA in the garage, along with the electronics test bench and lapidary gear (yeah, that's not musical) and boxes and boxes full of tools. I haven't got the lathe out of storage yet.

The "master bedroom" is the control room and the two smaller bedrooms double as vocal booths and office/storage space.

The only parts of the house that are not involved in the studio are the kitchen and bathrooms.

Do you REALLY THINK my rig would fit in an assisted living facility? Do you really think that they'd put up with noise at any hour of the day or night?

And don't talk to me about downsizing, I don't work that way. I am not an ITB kinda guy, although I do have a computer and 32 channels of I/O I can't conceive of why anybody who knows how to work a console could stand being restricted to working ITB. The computer is useful for offsetting the expense of recording tape, however we usually track serious projects to tape and dump to the computer (as "virtual tape machine").


And I very seriously doubt that an assisted living facility would be very supportive of tracking live bands.


Your very argument implies it. People have a right to live. They also have the right to die.


Actually, no, I don't. But If I chose that path it might kill me if I failed to exercise sufficient caution.

The government is supposed to WORK FOR US. They don't own us.


It's not you good intentions that offend me. But good intentions are the paving stones of the road to hell.

And I assure you that I'm not about to die meaninglessly. For me to fatally OD from the particular weak narcotics that I have I'd need to consume a sizeable portion of a month's prescription. So if I die of an overdose you can be pretty certain that it was intentional because something had gone wrong past the point of any reasonable hope. Not gonna happen anytime soon.

What you don't seem to grasp is that most people who are chronic pain patients don't like to get high on junk and don't view narcotics as recreational drugs. Back in my wild days I was always an uppers guy - I couldn't really understand why anyone would seek to induce a state that I spent a fair amount of time trying to avoid. But I couldn't do that anymore if I wanted to, my heart would kill me and I'm not ready to go yet. These days I mostly just smoke pot and drink (in moderation by rock and roll or traditional country standards - a few shots of vodka a day, mostly at night to get to sleep, since I don't trust the  commonly available sleeping pills they're pushing these days.) Except in February - I don't drink in February, just smoke more pot. And I don't have an addiction to my pain medication - sometimes I don't need it for a week or two at a time. (OTOH several months ago my hips were so bad that I could barely get out of bed to use the bathroom and it felt like my left hip was going to pop out of the socket at any moment.)
You're always talking about your dead friends - I was deeply involved in the SF punk rock scene from almost the very beginning - around 1977 -(and still am tangetially involved in the "geezer punk" scene, which is still alive and shuffling in the Bay Area) - as I mentioned before, I can't count the number of people I knew (some good friends, some acquaintances, some people that I worked with on gigs) who ODed, died from AIDs from dirty needles, etc. And the punks were only one part. It's sad, but it was also THEIR CHOICE to live (and die) like that.

You can't live other people's lives for them. And demonizing their problems makes things worse, not better.

P.S. And yes, since you asked (I'm pretty sure it was you), my avatar is me, all the avatars I use online are, just as my name is. That one's about 3 years old, my current main guitar is a J-200.

P.P.S.  And please lay off the red type. It's hard for my old eyes to read.