According to researched published in Pain Physician Journal as recently as 2006, 90 percent of people in the US receiving treatment for pain management were prescribed opiate medication. Of that number 9 percent to 41 percent had opiate abuse/addiction problems. The research also stated that 16 percent of pain management patients experienced illicit drug use along with their prescribed medication, and as high as 34 percent in other research they reviewed. These numbers give a picture of the overall problem of chronic pain abuse/addiction problems in the general population. What is harder to quantify is the extent of this problem in the recovering community.

Whenever I asked the following question at trainings, “How many of you know someone in long-term recovery who has relapsed over pain management issues?” most of the audience raises their hands. The reasons vary, but more often than not they either take the wrong medication or too much. Others try to tough the pain out and end up relapsing back to their original drug of choice.

Living with chronic pain is difficult for anyone, but especially for someone with coexisting abuse, addiction or other psychological disorders. They can become severely depressed and discouraged. Healthcare providers often become confused and frustrated when their treatment interventions are ineffective and frequently blame their patients.

The problem of managing pain and medication in recovery continues to grow and healthcare professionals are left with the challenge of how to effective address it. Given the biopsychosocial nature of addiction and chronic pain, it is imperative to understand both conditions and implement a multidisciplinary treatment plan.

To check out my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders and to learn how to develop an effective multidisciplinary treatment plan please go to my article Serving People with Chronic Pain and Coexisting Disorders that you can download for free on our Ariticles page. To order this book or my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide please Click Here.

If you want to learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To look for my upcoming trainings please go to our Calendar page. To read our latest Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. To sign up for Chronic Pain Solutions, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.