World of Hurt

New research has found that poor Americans hurt more than rich. I personalized the news, as always. "I'm poor. I hurt all the time. Yes! It's true! I'll be your Poster Child of the Marriage of Poverty and Pain!"

[Left: Pained poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (no relation), and typical prescription drug abuser, said, "Opium - opium - night after night! — and some evenings even opium won't do."]

The researchers based their findings on a one day 24-hour reporting from 4000 Americans selected by Gallup as representative. (A sign of just how representative they were: I was not among them.) They analyzed the data looking for possible causes. One cause: Grunt labor is bad for you in terms of resultant pain; desk work not so bad.

They pointed to a disparity in the distribution of pain relievers. What do you know? Rich people in America get all the pain pills they want, and poor people don't!

A Michigan study in 2005 found drug stores in poorer non-white neighborhoods stocked inadequate supplies of prescription pain killers. It didn't explain the finding. I have no choice therefore, but to make crap up.

Here, then, to carry my personalization of these news items one step beyond, is the 2008 Copyright Dr. Wes Browning Study of Racial/Ethnic/Class Disparities in the Distribution and Availability of Prescription Pain Killers.

[Above right: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an educated white man able to pass for rich, had easy access to opiates.]

My study's method consisted of listening to poor people, mostly Real Change vendors plus some bus riders, talking about the troubles they have getting pain killers when they go to ERs or clinics, and from going to ERs and clinics that serve poor people like myself and listening to what goes on.

Here's my chief finding: If you look poor, or you are too dark-skinned, you are suspected of being an addict or a dealer. More precisely, that you either have what they call an addictive personality, or you are a hustler who knows lots of people with addictive personalities and you will sell your opioids to them rather than use them yourself, preferring to eat up your profits in high living and whoring.

I don't know about anyone else, but I can't imagine enjoying a whore while in intense pain. But apparently it's the general consensus of the medical and pharmaceutical community that drug hustlers can either fake pain to get pills they don't need or else have a superhuman ability to endure pain for profit, and to use whores. Oddly though, all drug hustlers present themselves as poor or dark. There aren't any of them capable of faking being rich white people.

[Above left: Bela Lugosi, another typical suit-wearing white morphine addict.]

My study includes the following analysis of my central finding. I find that as poor people and the dark-skinned have less access to pain killers to start with, it therefore comes about that when they do have to ask for them they are reduced to pleading. And people who plead are seen as overly needy. Whereas, rich people never have to plead for pain killers, because they know they have the resources to "shop around."

So what we get is a vicious circle. The poor don't get the pain treatment they need, so they need it more, so they are believed less and their motives are impugned more.

The vicious circle turns into a reeling outward spiral when the poor realize that the only option they have left is to self-medicate. They do, and they get caught doing, and the next time they go to the ER they have a record that confirms the addictive personality assessment that was only a guess originally.

It's a mess. The drug war needs to be lifted just so we can sort out who really needs what.

[Right and righter: Typical rich white present day prescription drug addict.]

Bonus Reeling Activities

1. Do you personalize news? What you most likely thought when the FLDS was raided: a. "I'm safe because the Constitution was made for sweet conformists like me." b. "I couldn't be a polygamist. I have never fantasized about a three-way." c. "Tomorrow, cops will beat my door down."

2. Annoy a friend at random. Pick something they like, like chocolate, lying around, sudoku, whatever, and use it to accuse them of an addictive personality. It's fun and easy!