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▲ tpmoney 6 hours ago

This sort of panic about people who have been on a controlled dose for long periods of time or just straight up panic discontinuations of doses is the same crap that exacerbates opioid problems too. Too many stories from family members about their loved ones who were prescribed high doses of ${addictive drug} and then suddenly some other doctor (or sometimes the same doctor) suddenly decides this was all a mistake and cuts them off completely. Soon those family members who maybe did need to come down from where they were are seeking illicit sources of their drug. And it's near impossible to get out from under a doctor if you do think they're overprescribing because of just this.

My own family had a similar problem. The family member was way over-prescribed a drug by a doctor who clearly wasn't helping treat the underlying issues and frankly barely remembered the patient from month to month (for a person they were seeing every month). It still took us nearly a year to find a doctor we could switch to because everyone we called was so freaked out by the dosing the prior doctor had prescribed that half of them wouldn't even touch the case at all, and the others wanted to just stop everything cold and start all over again. The problem with that being that the underlying reason they were getting prescribed these medications was still an issue. Asking someone who does need the medication in question (or similar treatment) to not only suffer without it for a few months but also just stop their escalated doses cold turkey is just needlessly cruel and harmful. We were lucky to finally get a doctor who accepted helping us get things under control, with a pre-made plan of action and a "sole-prescriber" contract, both of which was fine, we just needed someone whose plan didn't start with "and now you stop everything you're taking to treat your condition and we wait until you're detoxed before we try anything else".