Patients with chronic pain management problems who develop substance use disorders due to taking medication present a difficult challenge to treatment professionals.  Many health care providers see no difference in treatment outcomes when these patients are treated either in a pain clinic for their chronic pain condition or at a chemical dependency treatment center for their addiction issues.  In either case the prognosis ranges from poor to fair at best.  However, it is possible to increase the probability of a more successful treatment outcome by creatively combining existing chemical dependency and chronic pain treatment methods using a multidimensional, non-traditional approach—thus developing an effective chronic pain management plan. 

An important part of developing an effective chronic pain management plan is obtaining an accurate understanding of what effective chronic pain management really means.  I believe that effective chronic pain management requires a three part approach:

(1) A medication management plan—developing an effective medication management agreement

(2) A cognitive-behavioral treatment plan—addressing pain versus suffering by better managing your thinking and feelings as well as changing any self-defeating behaviors and problematic social/family reactions

(3) A non-pharmacological (non-medication) pain management plan—developing safer ways to manage pain. 

That’s why I developed the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System.  The APM™ system is a treatment approach that uses a biopsychosocial model to integrate the most advanced pain management methods developed at the nation’s leading pain clinics, with the most effective treatment methods for addictive disorders developed at the nation’s leading addiction treatment programs. The result is a unique integration of chronic pain management methods that combine proper medication management with nonpharmacological techniques to insure both chronic pain management and addiction treatment. This leads to relief of pain while lowering or eliminating the risk of addiction or relapse.

For patients who have an addictive disorder and suffer from chronic pain there are significant obstacles to be addressed before positive chronic pain management outcomes can be realized.  As a result, many physicians prescribe addictive drugs to patients with chronic pain without taking necessary precautions.  This is due in part to the fact that there are so few treatment alternatives proven to be effective.  However, there have been cases of successful treatment with this population that can be studied and verified.  Treatment methods that have proven successful must be tested further in controlled longitudinal studies to ensure their reliability, validity, and lasting effects. 

I believe we are at an exciting evolution with chronic pain management.  It is finally getting the attention it deserves and as a result we can stop the flood of despair that millions of people experience due to mismanaged or undertreated chronic pain.

Unfortunately, there are also many obstacles that can get in the way of developing an effective chronic pain management plan including not using a multidisciplinary chronic pain management approach. To learn more about what I consider effective chronic pain management treatment check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

To learn about my 20 hour (two days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on May 18-19, 2009 in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including disorders including addiction please Click Here and scroll down to the May 18-19 description.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book 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 recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.