[shigawire]

It's not religious - it's an overcorrection based on rampant over prescription of pain killers for years.

[matheusmoreira]

Yeah. This overcorrection happened in my country too. We saw what happened in the US and the result was doctors became more afraid of prescribing opioids even when in cases of acute pain where it's warranted. Fear of causing harm to patients due to risk of drug dependence.

And yet benzodiazepines are taken by vast amounts of people as if it was water.

[tempestn]

It might be both. An over-correction made more likely in part due to religious beliefs.

[refurb]

Go to Europe and you don’t get pain medication unless you’re in the hospital.

Is that due to religiousness too?

[jhugo]

> Go to Europe and you don’t get pain medication unless you’re in the hospital.

Where on Earth did you get this idea?

[refurb]

Go look at opioid prescriptions by country. Europe is way lower than the US. Plenty of anecdotes about how hard it is to get opioid prescriptions in Europe.

I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just it's lower than the US, yet less religious, which pretty much blows up OP's thesis.

[jhugo]

But you said "pain medication", many forms of which are sold OTC in Europe just like basically everywhere else. Now that you've narrowed it to "opioids", sure...

[Gordonjcp]

Opioids are only really safe to use in a hospital, by and large.

The exception seems to be fentanyl, which gets handed out to old ladies with dodgy hips who chug it like milk.