I'm not sure what linking is permitted, I no longer have the discussion link, I'll post it if I find it.

Articles I just found or have links to:

Are Prescription Opioids Driving the Opioid Crisis? Assumptions vs Facts
https://academic.oup.com/painmedicine/article/19/4/793/3583229
AMA: Patients Being Harmed by Rx Opioid Crackdown
https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/11/12/ama-patients-being-harmed-by-opioid-crackdown
Overzealous use of the CDC’s opioid prescribing guideline is harming pain patients
https://www.statnews.com/2018/12/06/overzealous-use-cdc-opioid-prescribing-guideline/
Good News: Opioid Prescribing Fell. The Bad? Pain Patients Suffer, Doctors Say.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/health/opioids-pain-cdc-guidelines.html
In my case, I had, for 15 years+, an undiagnosed Seizure problem. Benzodiazepines, such as Valium, Klonopin, etc., are used to treat seizures, Antidepressants can cause them, infrequently. Doctors are seemingly taught antidepressants are the cure-all, and tranquilizers are to be avoided. But as the situation would arise to try to get a prescription for one of them, over those 40 years, most significantly the 15 undiagnosed seizure years, doctors would try the antidepressant route, and I would have seizure symptoms, i.e. profound Deja Vu and I'd have transient memory disruptions during the seizure.

Despite me telling doctors antidepressants were making me worse (they were exacerbating the undiagnosed seizures), they wouldn't listen.

Benzodiazepines are used to treat seizures, it's no wonder I preferred them, and I'd take one at the beginning of my symptoms, it seemed to shorten the episode.

After 15 years, after several neurologists, after being thrown out of my neurologist's office because he looked at the latest MRI and said nothing was wrong with my brain. I consulted another neurologist, God bless him. Having yet another seizure, I phoned him, but was still a new patient. He was at a formal party, and there he was, listening to my symptoms. He said it sounded like seizures, and within a few days, ordered a 24 hour EEG. He said I had seizure spikes from the minute they installed the multiple leads. I left the hospital with multicolored wires glued to my head. In a little over 24 hours, turned the unit in, and shortly was told I was having seizures. He prescribed Phenytoin, and 15 years of misery went away almost over night.

The previous neurologist tried to collect for my last visit to him, his wife was his business manager. As she pushed the demands for payment, my wife informed her that they threw me out of the office, having seizures, and another doctor correctly diagnosed and successfully treated them, and that she's lucky we weren't suing her husband. That was the last we heard from them, many years ago now.

Pain, and anxiety, the govt is doing harm by thinking that America's Drug problem is largely defined by responsible doctors giving responsible patients such medication.These actions, against people with chronic problems, especially pain, are forcing them onto illicit drugs, too stringent of enforcement may be making the problems worse.

I've been taking Benzodiazepines in small amounts for 40 years now, but suddenly, I'm not to be trusted? That's ludicrous.

Best regards.