Chronic Pain Patients Subjected To Media Torture: Time To Fight Back!

Today's excellent post from painnewsnetwork.org (see link below) puts the case for chronic pain patients currently being stigmatised for taking opioids and other strong analgesics - a situation outside their control and unavoidable due to the severity of their condition. The author calls it 'torture', carried out by the 'anti-opioid zealots' and strong as this sounds...she's absolutely right! You will find thousands of stories all across the internet and social media, demonizing patients who continue to take opioids and demonizing the doctors who are just doing what they're supposed to do - initiating best care for their patients. It's a hype driven by the media and politicians who have no clue what they're talking about but are prepared to jump on any populist bandwagon to garner more votes. Luckily, there are enough people prepared to challenge this view and come out in support of the patients themselves. Read this article - it's worth the effort and helps to restore a bit of sanity to the proceedings.

Stop Torturing Chronic Pain Patients
By Kim Miller, Guest Columnist August 02, 2017

Have you heard the stories about people who suffer from unrelenting pain?

These people, who we'll call "patients,” are trying to have a life whereby their pain is controlled enough to participate in some of life's little pleasures, such as cleaning the house, showering and spending time with family, while understanding that being completely pain free is unrealistic.

These patients are often treated as if they're asking for something unreasonable. They are not typical patients, but their anomalies have little place in the medical community, like other patients with chronic conditions such as hypertension or diabetes.

Chronic pain patients are typically required to visit their medical providers once each month if they are being treated with opioids. Along with these regular visits, chronic pain patients are subjected to signed contracts, random drug screens, reports from their state's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (listing all scheduled medications, dates filled, names of pharmacies and prescribers' names), and random pill counts. Any failure to comply or meet with these specifications can result in the patient being released or "fired" by the medical practice for breaking the pain contract.

Many of these patients have been subjected to abrupt tapering of their opioid medications or had them completely discontinued.

The CDC opioid guidelines, the DEA, misinformed legislators, media hype, and anti-opioid zealots have combined to continually attack the nation's opioid crisis by restricting access to pain medications by legitimate, law abiding patients who are following all of the rules.

This process of restricting medications for patients in need has caused many to suffer needlessly and some to commit suicide. Even patients who have had no negative side effects from opioids -- after taking them for years or even decades -- are now suffering due to no fault of their own.

The worst part of the current situation is that overdose deaths caused by illicit opioids, such as heroin, street-manufactured fentanyl, and fentanyl analogs like carfentenil (elephant tranquilizer) and U-47700, continue to rise. Many media stories, as well as government reports and statements, do not differentiate between prescription opioids and illegal opioids when informing the public about the "opioid epidemic." The misinformed public only hears about opioids causing more deaths, while the picture on the television shows pills in a prescription bottle.

Restricting access to legal opioid medication has no hope whatsoever of curtailing what is an epidemic of non-prescription drugs.

The origins of the opioid crisis may have roots in the overprescribing of opioids, but a growing number of studies have found that opioid medications are no longer involved in the majority of fatal drug overdoses. Deaths categorized as "opioid related" often involve non-prescription opioids like heroin and illicit fentanyl, or benzodiazepines, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine and other substances.

The vast and overwhelming evidence points to dangerous substances NOT prescribed by a medical provider, yet we're left with continued restrictions on medications needed by pain patients to have any quality of life.

This dangerous counter-intuitive trend not only deprives patients of pain relief, but is leading to a silent epidemic of suicide in the pain community. It is time to rethink the media and political hype, ditch the CDC guidelines, and stop torturing chronic pain patients.

Kim Miller is the advocacy director of the Kentuckiana Fibromyalgia Support Group and an ambassador with the U.S. Pain Foundation.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2017/8/2/stop-torturing-chronic-pain-patients