There is certainly a large group of patients who require opiod pain medications for their chronic issues. Those patients should not be denegrated or looked down upon because of that, or be subjugated to intense scrutiny because they use the services of a pain clinic.
As a surgeon, prescribing pain medications is a daily part of my job. In my state, I'm only allowed to prescribe one post-op script for pain, no matter how serious or complicated the surgery. That's how severe regulations have become in many states. It's not that most physicians are unwilling to prescribe, it's that their hands are tied! That being said, there was a full front page article in the Providence Journal last year, I used to live and practice in RI, that highlighted, unfairly in most cases, the top prescribers for opiates in the state!! So of course, some physicians, even in blue states, are hesitant to prescribe opiate pain meds.
That being said, the opiate "epidemic" is two pronged in my mind and experience. On the one hand, you have folks that become hooked on Percocet and Vicodin outside of the usual medical route and, at least in RI, it was well known that when folks couldn't afford to buy those drugs any longer on the street, that heroin was the next step because it was cheaper. The dirty heroin is one of the major causes of death from opiate overdose right now....this ain't your daddy's heroin from the 90's! The second group of patients are those who started out with a serious condition and were started on opiates and their body becomes "dependent" upon the meds. That doesn't mean that they are addicts or using the meds to get high, it means that their particular make up is more sensitive to opiates than others and they need the medications to alleviate their pain and their requirements for pain meds go up and up because the bodies natural response to being exposed to opiates is to down regulate the opiate receptors at the cellular level, thus requiring more meds. This group of patients are those who end up being prescribed more and more meds and have accidental overdoses because of lack of oversight into how much they are taking.
Sadly, the administrative and legislative response to these issues has been to smack down on docs and prescribing without actually digging into the root cause for why people are having problems with these meds in the first place.
My thoughts go out to you as you struggle with your own issues....I'm glad you have a reputable pain clinic to help you!
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