Health & Fitness

Long COVID, also known as long-haul COVID, chronic COVID or long-haul syndrome, refers to symptoms that persist for four or more weeks after an initial COVID-19 infection.¹ Board-certified internist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough discusses potential treatments for long-haul COVID in the video above,² including which tests may be necessary and when to seek emergency medical care.

Many of the symptoms can also mirror those caused by COVID-19 shots, and McCullough details the four categories of COVID-19 shot-injury syndromes that he’s seen in his practice. While anyone can experience long COVID, those who are sick enough to be hospitalized in the ICU are most often affected.

According to McCullough, 50% of this group will have manifestations of long COVID syndrome. “So the sicker someone is, and the longer the duration of COVID, the more likely they are to have long COVID syndrome. That’s the reason why we like early treatment. We shorten the duration of symptoms and there’s less of a chance for long COVID syndrome.”³

Common Symptoms of Long COVID

Signs and symptoms of long COVID, which persist for four weeks or more after you’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19, include:⁴

Fatigue	Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
Cough	Joint pain
Chest pain	Memory, concentration or sleep problems
Muscle pain or headache	Fast or pounding heartbeat
Loss of smell or taste	Depression or anxiety
Fever	Dizziness when you stand
Worsened symptoms after physical or mental activities

These symptoms are a result of damage to the following body systems:⁵

• Pulmonary/lungs
• Immune/allergy
• Mitochondria/energy system
• Heart
• Central/Peripheral nervous system

According to McCullough, a paper presented by Dr. Bruce Patterson at the International COVID Summit in Rome, September 12 to 14, 2021, showed that in “individuals who’ve had significant COVID illness, 15 months later the s1 segment of the spike protein is recoverable from human monocytes.” He added:⁶

“That means the body literally has been sprayed with the virus and it spends 15 months, in a sense, trying to clean out the spike protein from our tissues. No wonder people have long COVID syndrome.”

Be on the Lookout for Blood Clots for 90 Days

If you’ve had COVID-19, especially if it was a severe case, be aware that blood clots and heart problems, including heart attack, can occur for 90 days or more. It’s believed that remnants of the virus remain in the nervous system, the lungs, the heart and other organs.

If the symptoms include major shortness of breath, cough with blood in it or pain on one side when you take a deep breath, it could be due to a late pulmonary embolism or a blood clot going to the lungs. “We’ve seen this on more than one occasion,” McCullough said.⁷

In this case, McCullough recommends a chest CT with contrast and, if a blood clot is found, oral blood thinners for three to six months. McCullough also uses full-dose aspirin — 325 milligrams a day — in almost everyone with long COVID syndrome who doesn’t have a major blood clot, in addition to other medications.

However, a safer and likely equally effective alternative to aspirin is digestive fibrinolytic enzymes like lumbrokinase and serrapeptase. You can alternate between the two enzymes — one day take lumbrokinase and the next take serrapeptase — because you’ll need to be on it for about three months and you can develop a sensitivity to them over time.

Anyone who had COVID-19, especially with significant symptoms, should consider taking digestive fibrinolytic enzymes to be sure you don’t have any clotting. An alternative to determine if clotting is occurring is a test called D-dimer, although it can be pricey. D-dimer is a protein fragment produced by the body when a blood clot dissolves.

It’s typically undetectable or present only at very low levels, buts its level may significantly rise when the body is forming and breaking down blood clots.⁸ If your d-dimer test is low, then you don’t need to take the enzymes. Likewise, if you had a very mild, cold-like case, of COVID-19, you probably don’t need them.

Aside from a CT scan to rule out pulmonary embolism if you’re having symptoms and possibly a D-dimer test, McCullough suggests a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) test, which provides a general index of inflammation. Keep in mind, though, as McCullough said:

“This pursuit of a blood clot is very important. I’ve seen multiple cases now where blood clots have been missed … this is now almost a daily occurrence, particularly within the first 90 days after COVID-19. I think after that period of time it becomes progressively less likely.”

Heart Problems and Neurological Issues Are Common

Inflammation around the lining of the heart — pericarditis — and the lining of the lungs — pleuritis — may also occur in long COVID. “The virus can set up inflammation and the spike protein is in the body, it’s triggered inflammation and, importantly, that’s really a clinical diagnosis,” McCullough said.⁹ He prescribes steroids and colchicine, an anti-inflammatory drug commonly used for gout to reduce high uric acid, in such cases.

There’s a real risk for heart attack or stroke to occur without warning in long COVID, so McCullough warns those recovering to “be on your guard,” especially if you have a heart stent or carotid stenosis.

Neurologic syndromes in long COVID also occur, although they aren’t well described. Symptoms include joint and muscle pain, headaches, brain fog and tinnitus (ringing in the ears). Some people also have changes in the autonomic nervous system, such as elevated heart rate, and sensory neuropathies, including numbness and weakness in the legs.

McCullough’s host in the video, Dr. Al Johnson, recommends using a foam roller on your back, three to five times a day, to relax your nervous system, as well as to relieve rib pain from all the coughing. McCullough has had some success treating neurologic symptoms with an older SSRI called fluvoxamine.

Supplements That Play a Role in Long COVID Syndrome

Dr. Johnson recommends several supplements to support healing from long COVID. Among them:

• Vitamin C, because it helps calm down inflammation
• Vitamin D, for both prevention and long haulers
• Glutathione, because it helps calm down inflammatory processes
• N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a precursor to glutathione

McCullough, an enlightened allopathic physician, recognizes the role that dietary and integrative therapies play in helping people recover from long COVID:¹⁰

“As an allopathic doctor, I’m not skilled in understanding how to use vitamins and supplements like our integrative, holistic and naturopathic colleagues, but they’ve played a big role in COVID-19. I’ll just make the observation that COVID-19 is an enormous catabolic strain … the weight loss is tremendous.

It is such a strain on the body … we want to avoid sugary foods. When someone has acute COVID-19 and moves into the long COVID, post-COVID syndrome, we want to stay away from sugary foods … the sugar seems to feed the virus. It seems to feed inflammatory processes.”

McCullough has also referred some patients to chiropractors in his area, noting that “long COVID syndrome, out of all the illnesses we face, is one for collaborative care, for integrative care. There’s a lot of elements to it.”¹¹ Likewise, Johnson suggests a combination of physical therapy and exercise — but not overexercising — to get back normal function of your musculoskeletal system.

Support a Healthy Microbiome

Research by Dr. Sabine Hazan has shown that your microbiome plays an incredible role in COVID-19.¹² According to McCullough, she’s figured out that one reason why certain people within the same household don’t develop COVID-19 while others do comes down to the gut. A healthy microbiome score is protective against developing COVID-19. Bifidobacterium, McCullough notes, is among the leading bacteria that appear to fight off COVID-19.¹³

“COVID-19 is clearly a GI syndrome,” he said. SARS-CoV-2 collects in your nose and mouth, and as you swallow it’s introduced to your GI tract. According to Forbes, Li Tongzeng, deputy director of the respiratory and infectious diseases department at Beijing You An Hospital, cited research that SARS-CoV-2 survives longer in the anus and feces than in the respiratory tract.

Due to this, an anal swab may be able to more accurately detect mild or asymptomatic cases than a nose or throat test.¹⁴

Staying away from irritants to the GI tract is important, and Johnson recommends eating a clean diet with organic food and glass-bottled spring water, if possible. Eating fermented foods, or taking a high-quality probiotic, is also essential for gut health, as is avoiding unnecessary antibiotics usage and processed foods.

Chronic Fatigue and Sleep Disturbances

Chronic fatigue is a major problem for many with long-haul COVID, and for this Johnson recommends hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). One of the reasons I'm fascinated by HBOT, in particular, is because of its ability to improve mitochondrial function.¹⁵ As Johnson explained, “Toxins affect the mitochondria … the little engines in our body that create ATP, which is our energy system.”¹⁶

HBOT protects against mitochondrial dysfunction,¹⁷ speeding up the mitochondria and ATP production, which helps increase energy while decreasing brain fog and fatigue. Further, Johnson added, it helps heal body tissues like your lungs, heart and muscles while decreasing inflammation and lessening symptoms.

If sleep disturbances are an issue — and they often are for long haulers — McCullough recommends avoiding alcohol for at least a month, as “just one drink in 28 days will destroy sleep architecture.” The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (FLCCC) has a management protocol — I-RECOVER¹⁸ — for long haul COVID-19 syndrome that includes melatonin, which can also help with sleep disturbances.

Shot-Induced Myocarditis Is Worse Than COVID’s

McCullough detailed the non-fatal syndromes that are occurring after COVID-19 shots, which cause symptoms similar to that of long COVID in many cases. The shot-induced syndromes fall into four areas, the first being cardiac.

Myocarditis is a recognized effect of both COVID-19 and COVID-19 shots, but they’re completely different, McCullough said. “A child is more likely to be hospitalized with myocarditis after a Pfizer or Moderna [shot] than actually being hospitalized with COVID-19,” he said. Further:¹⁹

“The myocarditis in COVID-19 is mild. It’s inconsequential. I don’t want anyone to think that the myocarditis we’re seeing with the natural infection is anything like what we’re seeing with the [shots] … there are studies suggesting the lipid nanoparticles actually go right into the heart, the heart expresses the spike protein, the body attacks the heart.

There are dramatic EKG changes. The troponin, the blood test for heart injury with the vaccine myocarditis, is 10 to 100 volts higher than the troponin we see with the natural infection. It’s a totally different syndrome. When the kids get myocarditis after the vaccine, 90% have to be hospitalized … so vaccine-induced myocarditis is a big deal, and in children it’s way more serious and more prominent than a post-COVID myocarditis.”

In addition to myocarditis, atrial fibrillation in young people and pericarditis can also occur post-COVID-19 shot. The second category of shot-induced syndromes is neurologic, which causes neurological symptoms similar to those among COVID-19 long haulers, as well as additional, more serious, effects. This includes Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can be fatal, bell’s palsy, seizures, persistent headaches and blood clots in the brain.

The third category is immunologic, which includes suppression of lymphocyte count and reactivation of other viral syndromes, including Epstein-Barr virus and shingles. The fourth category — hematologic — occurs about two weeks after the shot and describes vaccine-induced thrombocytopenic purpura.

Signs include bruising all over the body, bleeding from the gums and nose and dark urine. If you notice these signs in the weeks after receiving a COVID-19 injection, get to a hospital immediately.

“What happens,” McCullough says, “is the [shot] tricks the body and gives excessive antigenic presentation of platelets to the spleen, the spleen produces an antibody that actually pins platelets against blood vessel walls … and that’s what drives vaccine-induced thrombocytopenic purpura.”

For those suffering from these shot-induced syndromes, FLCCC’s I-RECOVER²⁰ protocol for long-haul COVID syndrome has been used to treat shot-induced symptoms with similar success. The protocol can be downloaded in full,²¹ giving you step-by-step instructions on how to treat long-haul COVID syndrome and/or reactions from COVID-19 injections.

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This story is about money and an alarming paper by Biden's nominee Saule Omarova. For quite a while, we've been all discussing different aspects of the Great Reset and the treacherous plan to use the "happy" language of "public good" and "sustainable development" to push through an all-encompassing power grab by the largest institutional investors and the richest people of the world.

The end result of the power grab would be a fully mechanized society where the citizens' bodies and minds are invaded by tech, managed by AI, and ultimately serve the financial and emotional interests of the self-appointed mad priests of the new normal. (And yes, they are mad.)

To our chagrin, the great resetters want to control our existence completely. They want to control our diets, our thoughts, and our sexuality. They want to control our feelings and relationships. And sure as hell, they want to control our money. The financial component of the Great Reset is at the foundation of how they hope to get from here to their mechanical dystopia.

The Financial Aspect of The Great Reset

This topic of finance in the light of this attempted reform has been explored by a number of great researchers and investigative journalists who have spoken and written about it very eloquently over the years. For example, here is a great conversation between Whitney Webb and John Titus called, "COVID-19 and Central Bank Digital Slavery." Both of them have done pioneering research on the topic.

A core expert on the financial aspects of the Great Reset is Catherine Austin Fitts who was recently interviewed by Mercola on this very topic. In the interview, Catherine Austin Fitts pointed out that the aggressively promoted vaccine passports are connected to the attempted financial restructuring:

"If they get the passports, then I would argue, as a practical matter, we lose our ability to stop the Central Bank Digital Currencies. So, whatever we do, we need to stop the passports. The passports give them the kind of control they need of the digital and financial transactions that then leads into the CBDCs." I also recently wrote about the Digital Financial Complex and Ernst Wolf:

"Wolff points out that currently, entities like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Corporation hold more financial power than many governments — and hence, they have the ability to dictate their will to governments convincingly.

According to him, the destruction of the traditional Western social fabric and small businesses is intentional, and the purpose of the destruction is to create enough momentum in the form of desperation and impoverishment that when the central banks roll out the new financial system, the citizens will see it as a solution to horrible problems — as opposed to a new system that somebody wanted to roll out to begin with."

"Per Wolff, the desired end result of the financial reform looks like this: Cash is out. Banks are we know them are out. All money is digital and transparent. Central banks generate digital money at will, as much as they want. Every citizen has one and only bank account, which is an account with a central bank.

Money is programmable, and our spending is not free-form, i.e. certain chunks of our money can be assigned for specific purposes, or we can only spend it in certain places, or we may be allowed to only buy certain types of food, etc. etc. Taxation's easy. Censorship is easy. Fining people for bad behavior is easy."

Very interesting analysis titled, "The Great Reset is a Social Carbon Credit Economy!" was published by Joseph Gonzalez, a game developer and a combat veteran with a lot of knowledge about blockchain and its role in the 4IR model.

"In this system, what you buy, consume, perform, etc., will be decided by your carbon footprint. You'll be given a maximum allowance of carbon credits on your carbon credit crypto wallet. Each time you perform any action that has a carbon trace, carbon credits will be deducted from your carbon crypto account on the blockchain. What you can buy and do is decided by crypto/blockchain smart contracts, also known as programmable money."

An Alarming Paper by Biden's Nominee Saule Omarova

In that context, it is critical that we pay attention to the striking legal paper published last month in the Vanderbilt Law Review by Saule Omarova, Biden's nominee to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

What is OCC? The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury that charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. They are the "primary regulator of banks chartered under the National Bank Act and federal savings associations chartered under the Home Owners' Loan Act."

Who is Saule Omarova? Saule Omarova is a Kazakh-born Cornell University law professor who on November 2 was formally nominated to lead OCC by the Biden administration. Prior to 2014, Omarova was an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

And before that, "she worked for the corporate law firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell, in their Financial Institutions Group. In 2006-2007, she served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Special Advisor for Regulatory Policy to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance."

The paper is provocatively titled, "The People's Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy." It starts with the following intro:

"The COVID-19 crisis underscored the urgency of digitizing sovereign money and ensuring universal access to banking services. It pushed two related ideas — the issuance of central bank digital currency and the provision of retail deposit accounts by central banks — to the forefront of the public policy debate.

To date, however, the debate has not produced a coherent vision of how democratizing access to central bank money would — and should — transform and democratize the entire financial system.

This lack of a systemic perspective obscures the enormity of the challenge and dilutes our ability to tackle it. This Article takes up that challenge. It offers a blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance.

Focusing on the U.S. Federal Reserve System ("the Fed"), the Article outlines a series of structural reforms that would radically redefine the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy — the People's Ledger."

Omarova's thinking about finance is on the radical side. She seems to dislike Wall Street — which is fair — but then she also seems to believe that the central banks are our saviors. And while I agree with her assessment from an earlier interview that banks are "a**holes," I also believe that her proposed solution to give all the control to central banks would hand the power not to the people — but to even bigger "a**holes," while making a weird assumption that they are serving the people.

The "a**holes" theme comes from a documentary called, "A**holes: A Theory" (see this livestream with Omarova being interviewed at 34:16). What is also very enlightening to the understanding of her paper is a comment by her colleague at Cornell University, Professor Robert Hockett, who talks about "a**hole behavior" in finance and then states that central banks can be a "collective agent" to "regulate" it.

I think one has to have a lot of imagination to imagine central banks as protectors of peasants but that is none the less the belief they seem to espouse.

This kind of linguistic juggling — sincere or not — is a method that I am very familiar from my former homeland, the USSR. And no, I am not saying that the Great Reset is "communist," or that Omarova is — I think that the entire thing is not about isms at all, and Omarova might mean well, albeit in a weird and dangerous way.

What I am saying though is that my former Soviet homeland has greatly perfected the method of masking abusive state practices with the fuzzy language about "the dignity of all workers," and that I am alert to it. And just like the language of "worker dignity" was a lie in my Soviet childhood, it is an obvious lie in the context of the Great Reset.

What I suspect is going on here on the psychological level — I am merely guessing — is a combination of traditional opportunism and a sincere, deep, Soviet-rooted moral desire for theoretical "justice."

Does she sincerely believe in the "sustainable rhetoric" or does she merely say what needs to be said to move ahead in the current insane and somewhat Soviet-like environment? I don't know, but I would like to repeat what I said back in January, and stress that it applies to all bankers, including the central ones:

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

For all those reasons, I find her recent legal paper completely horrifying as it pretty much describes the mother of all conspiracy theories — the conspiracy theory saying that we are currently going through a reform whose true purpose is to move all our money to central banks, make it digital, and allow the central banks to freeze people's accounts.

The paper is 69 pages long. It was written about in detail by Wallstreet on Parade, which pointed out that Omarova's proposed reform includes the following:

(1) Moving all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve;

(2) Allowing the Fed, in "extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates," to confiscate deposits from these FedAccounts in order to tighten monetary policy;

(3) Allowing the most Wall Street-conflicted regional Fed bank in the country, the New York Fed, when there are "rises in market value at rates suggestive of a bubble trend," such as with technology stocks today, to "short these securities, thereby putting downward pressure on their prices";

(4) Eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insures bank deposits;

(5) Consolidate all bank regulatory functions at the OCC – which Omarova has been nominated to head.

And here is what Omarova's paper has to say about freezing people's money in case of an "emergency":

"If and when the Fed injects monetary base into the system, each reserve sub-account would be credited with the appropriate "helicoptered" amount. If and when the Fed seeks to drain money from the system, the appropriate amount would be transferred from the transaction sub-account to the same holder's reserve sub-account, where it would be effectively escrowed until the Fed ends its tightening policies.

These temporarily "reserved" funds would pay a higher interest than the regular interest paid by the Fed on money held in transaction sub-accounts. Importantly, raising this reserve interest rate would enable the Fed to incentivize depositors to move more of their money from transaction into reserve sub-accounts voluntarily.

Strategic use of this tool, therefore, may decrease the need for the mandatory "reserving" of people's money, which would also help to counteract negative perceptions of this policy.142 In effect, the tightening of the money supply would be achieved through a compulsory but economically attractive investment scheme."

For a bit of context, please see this 2018 IBM paper titled, "Programmable Money: Will Central Banks Take the Lead?" The IBM paper states: "The future of programmable money is dawning. While blockchain adoption is still in a formative stage, it offers tremendous potential to revolutionize the global financial system. No place on earth will be out of reach."

For more context, here is the head of the Bank for International Settlements and his notorious speech about programmable currency in which he complains that with cash, they don't know who is using the money and how — while with CBDC, central banks will have "absolute control over the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability and also … have the technology to enforce that."

This man sounds and looks like a definite friend of the peasants. A poster child for protectors of the working people! We can relax, believe our leaders that the passports are about our health, and entrusts ourselves to people like this… or maybe not? I would like to finish this story with words by Catherine Austin Fitts:

"If we're going to get out of this one, we need to just say no and refuse to go into the box." There are more or us than there are of them. No box for the free people.

About the Author

To find more of Tessa Lena's work, be sure to check out her bio, Tessa Fights Robots.

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This article was previously published November 28, 2020, and has been updated with new information.

The featured 2019 BBC documentary, "Addicted: America's Opioid Crisis," explores the depth of the nation's addiction to opioid painkillers and the role played by Purdue Pharma and other makers of the drug.

As noted in the film, opioids kill more people than any other drug on the market, and it's the only type of drug that can condemn a person to a life of addiction after a single week of use.

According to the BBC, "1 in 8 American children live with a parent who suffers from a substance abuse disorder," and "every 15 minutes, a baby in America is born suffering from opioid withdrawal." Middle school-aged children interviewed also say they have easy access to drugs, should they want them.

Many now blame the drug companies that make these drugs and that have falsely promoted them as safe and nonaddictive for patients of all kinds, including children.

That includes one of the former addicts followed in the film, who says he thinks the drug companies need to be held responsible for their role in creating this epidemic, and made to help pay for the solution.

Purdue Pharma Pleads Guilty and Folds

One of the most prominent drug companies involved in the creation of this opioid addiction crisis is Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. At the end of October 2020, Purdue Pharma agreed to plead guilty to three federal criminal charges relating to its role in the opioid crisis, including violating a federal anti-kickback law, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and violating the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.^1,2

To settle the charges, Purdue is supposed to pay $8.3 billion in fines, forfeiture of past profits and civil liability payments,³ but because it doesn't have the cash, the company will instead be dissolved and its assets used to erect a "public benefit company" that both makes opioids and pays for addiction treatment.

Legal Painkillers Now the Gateway Drug to Heroin

While marijuana was long known as the gateway drug to other illicit drug use, that distinction now belongs to prescription opioids. According to data⁴ from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, prescription opioid use is a significant risk factor for subsequent heroin use.

The incidence of heroin use is 19 times higher among those who have used opioids nonmedically than among those who have no history of opioid use, and 86% of young, urban injection drug users report using opioid pain relievers nonmedically before starting heroin. Overall, nearly 80% of heroin users now report using prescription opioids prior to heroin.

Similarly, data⁵ from the University of Michigan show just under 1 in 3 people (31.8%) who misused opioids during their high school years ended up using heroin by age 35.

When it comes to children and teens, a major source of opioids are dentists, who wrote a staggering 18.1 million prescriptions for opioids in 2017.⁶ Opioids are frequently prescribed when extracting wisdom teeth, even though there's no evidence to support this strategy.

This is especially true if you see a biological dentist who knows what they are doing. Earlier this year I had a periapical abscess and had to have the tooth extracted. I saw one of the best dentists in Florida, Dr. Carl Litano, just south of Tampa. He used platelet rich plasma (PRP) at the extraction site and I had zero pain and no swelling without any medication. Afterward, no one could tell I had an extraction the previous day.

Children are also recklessly prescribed addictive opioids for minor surgical procedures. For example, insurance claims data from 2016 and 2017 reveal 60% of children between the ages of 1 and 18 with private insurance filled one or more opioid prescriptions after surgical tonsil removal.^7,8

Meanwhile, research⁹ shows opioids (including morphine, Vicodin, oxycodone and fentanyl) fail to control moderate to severe pain any better than over-the-counter drugs such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen and naproxen.

An Epidemic Caused by Greed

As noted in the film, this is an epidemic caused by greed within the medical system. Purdue Pharma was exceptionally skilled at marketing its product, cleverly disguising its advertisements as educational material. (The same can clearly be said about many other drug companies and their wares today.)

There can be no doubt that false advertising played a central role in the opioid epidemic,¹⁰ and for doctors, it highlights the importance of staying on top of published research rather than relying on drug company sales reps for their education.

The fraud has its roots in a short letter to the editor^11,12 published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1980. The letter — which was simply commenting on a cursory examination of patient files in a Boston hospital — stated that narcotic addiction in patients with no history of addiction was very rare.

Purdue built its marketing of OxyContin on this letter, for years falsely claiming that opioid addiction affects less than 1% of patients treated with the drugs. According to Purdue's marketing material, featured in the film, "the most serious risk with opioids is respiratory depression."

In reality, opioids have a very high rate of addiction and have not been proven effective for long-term use.¹³ A number of court cases in recent years have demonstrated how Purdue systematically misled doctors about OxyContin’s addictiveness to drive up sales.

As noted by David Powell, a senior economist at Rand, to produce the most lethal drug epidemic America has ever seen "you need a huge rise in opioid access, in a way that misuse is easy, but you also need demand to misuse the product."¹⁴

According to the documentary, Purdue made more than $1 billion a year from its sales of OxyContin. OxyContin's success also quickly led to other drug companies mimicking Purdue's tactics. Other companies being called to account include Allergan, Cephalon, Endo International, Egalet Corporation, Insys Therapeutics, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Mallinckrodt plc and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

In the final analysis, it's clear that unconscionably deceitful marketing tactics have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans; 46,802 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2018 alone.¹⁵ As of June 2017, opioids became the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50.¹⁶

That said, the BBC also rightfully points out that we need stronger regulations and more effective checks and balances to prevent this kind of situation from happening again in the future. Merely making drug companies pay is not enough. 

Purdue Lured in, Then Abandoned Doctors

Steven May, a former Purdue sales rep, also highlights yet another scandal. The company came up with a plan to help doctors to better document their treatment of pain. Sales reps were taught how to instruct doctors to use these tools.

When those same doctors eventually got in trouble for overprescribing opioids, using Purdue's tools, the company walked away and offered no support. Many doctors lost their medical licenses. Some ended up doing jail sentences and some committed suicide. "And they were doing exactly what [Purdue] taught us to teach them to do," May says.

No Remorse

Adding insult to injury, when it became clear that people were dying in droves from opioid overdoses, Purdue launched an extensive damage-control operation that included the suggestion that those dying from opioids were already addicts, and that this wouldn't happen to patients who were not already addicted to drugs. It was basically just a variation on the original lie.

According to lawsuits filed against Purdue, the company knew as early as the 1990s that OxyContin was one of the most abused drugs in the country, yet they did nothing to change their marketing and sales strategies.

That the Sacklers, the owners of Purdue, had no remorse and didn’t care about the societal effects that overprescribing of their drug was having is illustrated in a 2001 email exchange between then-Purdue president Richard Sackler and an acquaintance.

In the documentary, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong reads this exchange, which begins with the unnamed acquaintance stating: "[Drug] abusers die, well that is the choice they made. I doubt a single one didn't know the risks," to which Sackler replied, "Abusers aren't victims; they are the victimizers."

"It's hard to stomach that someone would write that about people who are suffering, people who are in real distress and people who have died," Tong says, "and that is the kind of thing that powered this company during a period and led to deceptive, fraudulent, misleading product development and marketing … [They] made money off people's misery and I think that is what these emails show."

Unemployment and Poverty Fuel Addiction

Many of the opioid and heroin abusers featured in "Addicted" live on the streets. Desperation and despair are evident in all. Several investigations seeking to gain insight into the causes fueling the opioid epidemic have been conducted in recent years.

Among them is a 2019 study¹⁷ in the Medical Care Research Review journal, which looked at the effects of state-level economic conditions — unemployment rates, median house prices, median household income, insurance coverage and average hours of weekly work — on drug overdose deaths between 1999 and 2014. According to the authors:¹⁸

"Drug overdose deaths significantly declined with higher house prices … by nearly 0.17 deaths per 100,000 (~4%) with a $10,000 increase in median house price. House price effects were … only significant among males, non-Hispanic Whites, and individuals younger 45 years …

Our findings suggest that economic downturns that substantially reduce house prices such as the Great Recession can increase opioid-related deaths, suggesting that efforts to control access to such drugs should especially intensify during these periods."

Similarly, an investigation published in the International Journal of Drug Policy¹⁹ in 2017 connected economic recessions and unemployment with rises in illegal drug use among adults. Seventeen of the 28 studies included in the review found that the psychological distress associated with economic recessions and unemployment was a significant factor:²⁰

"The current evidence is in line with the hypothesis that drug use increases in times of recession because unemployment increases psychological distress which increases drug use. During times of recession, psychological support for those who lost their job and are vulnerable to drug use (relapse) is likely to be important."

Another 2019 study²¹ published in Population Health reviewed the links between free trade and deaths from opioid use between 1999 and 2015, finding that "Job loss due to international trade is positively associated with opioid overdose mortality at the county level." Overall, for each 1,000 people who lost their jobs due to international trade — commonly due to factory shutdowns — there was a 2.7% increase in opioid-related deaths.

Trauma Raises Addiction Risk

Abuse-related trauma is also linked to unemployment and financial stress, and that too can increase your risk of drug use and addiction. As noted in The Atlantic,²² when the coal mining industry in northeastern Pennsylvania collapsed, leaving many locals without job prospects, alcohol use increased, as did child abuse.

Many of these traumatized children, in turn, sought relief from the turmoil and ended up becoming addicted to opioids. All of this is particularly pertinent today, as many parts of the U.S. have been shut down for extended periods of time over fears of COVID-19.

Not being allowed to work, being forced to stay at home for weeks or months on end, maintaining an unnatural distance even to your loved ones and not being able to see people’s faces when out in public — all of these things can contribute to fear, anxiety and, ultimately, despair that fuels addiction. Indeed, reports²³ warn that substance abuse is on the rise as a result of pandemic measures, as is domestic violence.²⁴

Struggling With Opioid Addiction? Please Seek Help

It's vitally important to realize that opioids are extremely addictive drugs that are not meant for long-term use for nonfatal conditions. If you've been on an opioid for more than two months, or if you find yourself taking a higher dosage, or taking the drug more often, you may already be addicted. Resources where you can find help include the following.

• Your workplace Employee Assistance Program
• The Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration²⁵ can be contacted 24 hours a day at 1-800-622-HELP

Low-dose naltrexone (LDN), used in microdoses,²⁶ can also help you help combat opioid addiction and aid in your recovery.²⁷ De. Sarah Zielsdorf, who has a medical practice in Chicago, is an expert on this topic, and she gives talks and lectures on how she discovered LDN and the dramatic benefits she has experienced from it.²⁸

Using microdoses of 0.001 milligrams (1 microgram), long-term users of opioids who have developed a tolerance to the drug are able to, over time, lower their opioid dose and avoid withdrawal symptoms as the LDN makes the opioid more effective.

For opioid dependence, the typical starting dose is 1 microgram twice a day, which will allow them to lower their opioid dose by about 60%. When the opioid is taken for pain, the LDN must be taken four to six hours apart from the opioid in order to not displace the opioid's effects.

Nondrug Pain Relief

Many types of pain can be treated entirely without drugs. Recommendations by Harvard Medical School^29,30 and the British National Health Service³¹ include the following.

Gentle exercise	Physical therapy or occupational therapy
Hypnotherapy	Distracting yourself with an enjoyable activity
Maintaining a regular sleep schedule	Mind-body techniques such as controlled breathing, meditation, guided imagery and mindfulness practice that encourage relaxation. One of my personal favorites is the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
Yoga and tai chi	Practicing gratitude and positive thinking
Hot or cold packs	Biofeedback
Music therapy	Therapeutic massage

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