The negative consequences more than double when patients undergoing chronic pain management experience both addictive disorders and pain disorders.  Addictive disorders lead to one universe of biopsychosocial problems, and the pain disorders lead to a different set of problems.  1 + 1 no longer equals 2, rather 1+ 1 now equals 3 or more.  This is called synergism.  Synergism is a condition where the combined action is greater in total effect than the sum of the individual effects.

In 1996 I conducted research to begin developing the first clinical skills training for Addiction Free Pain Management®.  What I looked for was information on people who had chronic pain and co-existing addiction.  What I found was disturbing.  There wasn’t much there! 

What I did find was a large amount of data on people with addiction and an abundance of information about people who had chronic pain.  But I couldn’t find much that addressed someone who suffered with both conditions. 

During my research I also surveyed addiction and pain programs to find out what happened to these people when they tried to seek help.  What I discovered was when they went into an addiction treatment program the entire focus was on the addictive disorder.  Unfortunately, their pain was not adequately addressed.  The addiction programs really struggled with what to do about the chronic pain management. 

Now if that same person went into a pain clinic for chronic pain management, the entire focus was on the chronic pain, and maybe the physiological pain.  On the other hand, the pain clinics struggled with what to do when people were acting out with the addiction.  I realized that the focus needs to be on concurrent treatment for both pain and addiction. 

Addiction treatment programs cover about a third of the problem (the Addictive Disorder Zone) when dealing with a chronic pain patient.  The pain clinics cover a different third of the problem (the Pain Disorder Zone).  Each of the above modalities when implemented independently misses about two thirds of the problem.

Sometimes addiction treatment centers recognize the need to refer a patient to a pain specialist or the pain clinics refer a patient to an addiction specialist.  This is definitely an improvement.  Now about two thirds of the patient’s needs are being addressed (both the Addictive Disorder Zone and the Pain Disorder Zone).  But what about the third zone?

The third area is what I coined the Addiction Pain Syndrome Zone™.  This is why I developed the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System; so treatment providers can learn how to effectively deal with both conditions concurrently.

To learn more about this synergistic phenomenon and how it impacted one of my chronic pain management patients—Mary—please check out my article Understanding the Addiction-Pain Syndrome™ that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, 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 purchase this book please Click Here.

To learn about two skill trainings coming up in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people undergoing chronic pain management who also experience coexisting disorders including addiction please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, 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.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.