There is a very troubling phenomenon in the area of pain management in the United States.  In 2006 research published in Pain Physician Journal reported that 90 percent of people seeking pain management were prescribed opiates.  Most research on using opiates for pain management are tracking people on the medication for anywhere from one to four months.  What about a person who has been on this type of medication for years?

In 1996 with the help of Terence T. Gorski and the CENAPS® Corporation I started developing the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System to help people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction.  One of the three primary treatment components is Appropriate Medication Management; the other two are nonpharmacological (without pills) and treating the psychological emotional components of pain. 

Last year I published three brief booklets I called the APM™ Modules and In APM™ Module Three: Understanding & Developing Effective Pain Management, readers can briefly review the core components of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System and then list their current pain management plan.  Next they get to look at the phenomenon of pain flare ups and how to develop an action plan for more effective nonpharmacological (non-medication) pain management.  At the end of this module they have an opportunity to expand their new pain management activities and develop a final plan to improve their ability to manage their chronic pain.

If you want to learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System go to our website at www.addiction-free.com and also go to our Publications page and check out APM™ Module Three.  You can also check out our Articles page to download my free article Managing Pain without Pills to learn more about nonpharmacological pain management.

In my early pain management recovery I often set myself up for setbacks.  I have the personality type of “more is better” and always pushed the envelope.  It took me a while to see how this was self-defeating behavior.  The first thing that often happened after my setback was a feeling of hopelessness and frustration—“I’m always going to be this way.”  This second self-defeating mindset is one of the 12 common denial patterns—Strategic Hopelessness; AKA Diagnosing Myself as Beyond Hope.

For the past 25 years I’ve worked with patients living with chronic pain who also developed coexisting psychological disorders, including addiction, as a result of living with debilitating chronic pain.  One of the tools that I was able to adapt was Terence T. Gorski’s Denial Management Counseling for Addictive Disorders.  I modified his denial management system to work with other coexisting disorders including chronic pain.
 
My first publication in this area is the Denial Management Counseling for Effective Pain Management Workbook.  This workbook was designed for people who have experienced significant problems related to living with chronic pain, but who honestly don’t believe—or don’t want to believe—that their self-defeating decisions and behaviors are undermining what could be an effective pain management plan.  This process is an important component of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System.

If you want to learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System go to our website at www.addiction-free.com and also go to our Publications page and check out my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders or: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System.  You can also check out our Articles page to download my free article From Denial to Effective Pain Management to learn more about denial and chronic pain; including a look at the 12 Common Pain Mangement Denial Patterns.

In 1996 I started noticing that many of the people undergoing treatment for chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addition often relapsed with eating addiction issues. For some of the people they began using food as a coping tool instead of fuel.  For others they used eating as a distraction to their chronic pain.  What ended up happening for many people was they started putting on weight, which in turn sabotaged pain management.  When that happened many people started looking to increase their medication use and ended up relapsing.

In 2000 I co-authored the Food Addiction Workbook and many programs started using it to help stop the relapse cycle for people with eating addiction problems.  I also started recommending that book to programs who worked with people living with chronic pain as a component of their pain management and relapse prevention plan.  In March of this year Dr. Shari Stillman-Corbitt—the clinical director of Sierra Tucson—and I started developing a new workbook which at first was going to be second edition of the Food Workbook.  However, we quickly discovered that we needed to change not only the title but the entire focus of the book  It is now the Eating Addiction Relapse Prevention Workbook, which will be available by early Fall of this year.  Please see a very brief description of the workbook exercises below.

The first six exercises in this book are designed to take you through a series of steps to make sure that you are stable in your recovery. Some of you may already be working a solid recovery program but we believe these exercises can also benefit you.

Exercise 1: Looking at the principles of a Healthy Living Plan from a Biopsychosocialspiritual perspective, then listing your personal triggers in each of those categories and creating your own Healthy Living Plan.

Exercise 2: Learning how to develop your personalized definition of abstinence as an important component of your recovery and Healthy Living Plan.

Exercise 3: Completing the Eating Addiction Problem Checklist to help determine your level of problem (past and/or present) with compulsive use of eating.

Exercise 4: Looking at the pros and cons concerning the way you have used eating in the past and making a decision to stop using eating as a coping tool.

Exercise 5: Creating a craving management plan and an early relapse intervention plan designed to help you avoid relapse in the early stages of your recovery.

Exercise 6: Looking at your presenting problems with eating and personalizing your own Healthy Living Contract.

The last five exercises in this book help you identify and manage high risk situations that could set you up for relapse despite your commitment to your Healthy Living Plan (recovery) and develop an effective recovery plan designed to help you manage those high risk situations.

Exercise 7: Defining high risk situations and picking your own personal high risk situation that you would like to learn to manage.

Exercise 8: Mapping (exploring) past ineffectively managed and effectively managed high risk situations, then using that information to project and explore a future high risk situation.

Exercise 9: Learning to identify and manage personal reactions to high risk situations by exploring your automatic thinking, feelings, urges, actions, and social reactions that drive the relapse process and are triggered when you encounter a high risk situation.

Exercise 10: Developing a personalized recovery plan by selecting and scheduling recovery activities that will help you identify and manage future high risk situations.

Exercise 11: Completing a final evaluation process that asks you to complete a check list to determine how well you believe you did completing this workbook.

If you want to learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System go to our website at www.addiction-free.com and also go to our Publications page and check out my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System or to review the existing Food Addiction Workbook.  You can also check out our Ariticles page to download my free articles.