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!

Goodbye Carrot-Head

We've got your Real Change right here! Out with the Old! In with the New!

When I started writing this column in the dim past I was beardless and thin and my head somewhat resembled a carrot. Thus "carrot-head man" was born as a self-portrait and we used him to represent me all these years on this page. But I am now bearded, fat, and my head somewhat resembles a bell pepper. Moreover, I can't draw bell peppers. So, goodbye carrot-head man. Hello some photograph, one that we will try to doctor to keep from scaring anyone.

As Real Change marches forward into its brave new future of weekly publication, I find myself pausing to reflect on the past. Mostly when I do this I reflect on my own past because other people's past would be history and I would have to study to reflect on that.

I reflect on poorer days, when I would sell myself to university psych professors and students as an experimental subject. I did so occasionally when I was a homeless college student. It made more sense to me than being a medical subject, because I figured they'd be less likely to do permanent damage. Plus, on my campus, they always paid $5 just for applying, even if they turned you down.

I got turned down once because I knew too much. The experimenters wanted someone who hadn't heard about Milgram's study of obedience to authority. That was the one where Stanley Milgram found that more than 60% of people studied, when told forcefully enough to do so, would administer dangerous and painful electroshocks to innocent strangers, even when it appeared that the victims might die. Since I knew that all I got was $5 that time.

All of this jumped into focus this week when I read an article in the Seattle P-I about a new study planned to find out if believing in God helps you deal with pain.

Now, a lesser-known aspect of Milgram's study and it's spawns were indications that the more religious subjects in such experiments were more likely to obediently torture their victims than were the less religious.

Of course, religious doesn't equate with believing in God. Still, I see a host of ironies rising up to drag me into a fiery pit of flaming sulfurous irony-hell.

In the new study volunteers will submit to pain and experimenters will see whose brains show the most pain activity, those of the believers or those of the non-believers. Then, to make things more interesting, they'll show various religious symbols, to "see if that helps."

What a great idea! Let's show a crucifix to a guy in agony and see if he gets the message! How about a nail or a martyr's knuckle? OK, maybe we should consider other sorts of symbols. How about one of those pictures of a lamb being led by Jesus? That would probably work.

Isn't it just wonderful that religion has now come full circle since the Inquisition? In the Olden Days it was a bitch rounding up heathens for torture. Nobody wanted to hurt. But now everyone wants to be the newest and best Jackass for Jesus.

First, you get paid. All of these kinds of studies pay their "volunteers," who are invariably impoverished college students and poor people living near colleges. Secondly, if you are at all religious, this is your chance to prove to the world that your gospel/doctrine/prophet/or whatever really works the one miracle everyone wants the most: numbness.

This might work: apply, but tell them you're a masochist. Get disqualified, take the $5 and run.