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.

Today I want to cover the telephone Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) Coaching services we offer.    If you’re not sure if coaching is for you please go to our Coaching  page and click on the Coaching Questionnaire link near the end of the page.  If you’re interested in receiving free information and an overview of these services go our Contact  page and send a request for this information.  Below I want to cover why we believe APM™ Coaching works and the benefits you can receive from coaching.

Why APM™ Coaching Works

The main reason APM™ coaching works is that you’re hiring someone with greater experience than you in pain management and relapse prevention. Your APM™ Certified coach can quickly identify patterns that may not be clear to you. Then your coach can help you devise and implement solutions. When this works well, it’s a very high-leverage relationship. It’s one of the fastest ways to solve challenging problems. Similarly, a good coach will have superior knowledge and experience in the area(s) in which you want to improve.

A coach can use all of this expertise to help you solve specific problems efficiently. This is essentially a variation on the principle of overwhelming force. A pain management or relapse prevention problem that may seem daunting to you might be a fairly simple matter for an experienced APM™ coach.

The real challenge of APM™ coaching is for your coach to help you implement the solutions to your specific problems. Coming up with solutions is easy.  Implementing those solutions is the hard part. That’s where good APM™ coaching really performs.  Your APM™ coach can work as a guide to help you stay on track, leading you safely through the quagmire of mistakes, blind alleys, and delays.

Benefits of APM™ Coaching

Achievement means the delivery extraordinary results and individual goals achieved, strategies, projects and plans executed. It suggests effectiveness, creativity, and innovation. Effective APM™ coaching delivers achievement, which is sustainable.  Because of the emphasis on learning and because your confidence is enhanced (’I worked it out for myself!’) the increase in performance is typically sustained for a longer period and will impact on areas that were not directly the subject of coaching.

Fulfillment includes learning and development.  To achieve the result is one thing, to achieve it in a way in which you learn and develop as part of the process has a greater value - to you and your coach, for it is the capacity to learn that ensures your going quality of life.  Fulfillment also includes the notion that going through coaching you begin to identify goals that are intrinsically rewarding.  With fulfillment comes an increase in motivation.  That the APM™ coach respects you, your ideas and opinions, that you are doing your work in your own way, that you are pursuing your own goals and are responsible - all this makes you much more inspired and committed. 

Joy. Enjoyment ensues when people are achieving their meaningful goals and when learning and developing is part of the process.

These three components – achievement, fulfillment, and joy – are synergistically interlinked and the absence of any one will impact and erode the others.  Learning without achievement quickly exhausts your energy.  Achievement without learning soon becomes boring.  The absence of joy and fun erodes the human spirit.

To learn about the right to quality treatment please go to my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

If you want to learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com. To learn more about how to develop an effective chronic pain management plan please 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.

I just read a very interesting article online by Winston Parris, MD, DABPM, who is Professor of Anesthesia and Chief of the Pain Programs at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.  He was also a founding member and served as President of the American College of Pain Medicine, the American Board of Pain Medicine and the Tennessee Pain Society.

The title of his article was “Challenges and Issues in Pain Management and Anesthesiology.”  I’m going to post some excerpts below but if you want to read the entire article please Click Here.

Pain management is about three decades old, and while significant strides have been made in understanding pain mechanisms, implementing new pain therapies and effectively treating more patients, there are still many obstacles to overcome and various nuances to navigate in order to become the mature medical discipline that it is destined to be…

The swinging of the opioid pendulum from a period of under-use to inappropriate use is occurring and the concept of drug diversion is now a reality. This situation has produced unpleasant interphases between providers and patients who occasionally make inappropriate and aggressive demands for opioids. While this unfortunate development should in no way hinder the effective use of opioids for acute and chronic pain, the prescribing physician has to remain vigilant and perceptive to those nuances that are associated with opioid prescribing and their clinical implications.

In short, the assessment and effective management of pain is a patient right that should be preserved but the support of illicit drug use for whatever purpose should not be facilitated under the guise of pain management. There are a handful of naïve, and an even smaller number of corrupt, physicians who have paid dearly for not recognizing that difference. Like most issues in medicine, there are several grey areas and it is hoped that with adequate clinical experience, sound educational knowledge and good common sense, most of these pitfalls may be avoided most of the time…

To learn more about risk factors with opiate use please go to our News & Research page to review two new postings this month on addiction risks and increasing prescription drug problems.

If you want to read more about prescription drug abuse/addiction please go to my latest article Addressing the Problem of Prescription Drug Abuse/Addiction that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

If you want to learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com. To learn more about how to develop an effective chronic pain management plan please 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.