Yes, and without digitalin those patients may die, thus the risk is worth the saving of the lift.

Let's say someone breaks their collar bone and goes to the hospital. They get all fixed up, but obviously are still in pain so the doctor prescribes some oxycontin (or other opiod).

This is a case of short term pain relief. It doesn't risk the patient's life, and will likely go away over time, naturally.

So the moral question is whether the effect of the opiods (short term pain relief) is worth the risk (potential dependence on opiods).

For people like me, the answer is very clear. I've seen what opiate addiction looks like. What a lot if people don't understand is that opiods are long term pain medications. They are best used to mitigate pain that lasts for the rest of someone's life or at least a long time. For cases such as these the dependency is worth it as opiods allow these patients to maintain some level of enjoyment.

But at some point, really starting in the late-80s and early-90s doctors started to say fuck it, opiods can also work as short term pain management solutions. The problem is that opiods, while effective painkillers, quite frankly sick as a short term solution. The high potency all for physical dependence means it is easy for patients to slip into dependency before they even realize that is a danger, and then after the short term period is up and their script runs out, they have to either Bulls hit their way to a new script or go to the streets.

Furthermore, because for so long opiods have been touted as being effective in the short term, medical research has fallen behind in terms of actually looking for other short term pain solutions that are not addictive. Why spend limited research $$$ on a problem that most medical professionals consider fixed with opiods?

The fact is that sometimes life sucks and you have to grit your teeth to the pain. Hopefully, in a decade we will have found better short term pain relief, but until then some might just have to deal with it.