A Federal Drug Administration (FDA) panel voted narrowly (20 to 17) in June 2009 to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers in the world, because of their effects on the liver.

I have mixed thoughts about the efficacy of this proposed ban. On one hand, I have seen the quality of life improve for many people who received adequate pain relief from this type of medication. But I have also worked with people who abused them. Understandably many healthcare providers don’t understand the logic behind banning a drug which, when taken as prescribed, won’t harm a patient.

The FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee said in their report that the agency should ban the two prescription painkillers, Percocet and Vicodin, due to their high levels of acetaminophen and the ease with which patients can become addicted to them. Acetaminophen is also combined with different narcotics in at least seven other prescription drugs, and all of these combination pills will be banned if the Food and Drug Administration heeds the advice of this panel.

One of the reasons I am taking this issue so seriously is the impact this proposed ban will have on pain management. Not just for acute pain situations like serious bone breaks, major dental procedures etc., but also in the chronic pain management arena. Many healthcare providers have traditionally prescribed medications like Vicodin and Percocet to address breakthrough pain for people undergoing cancer treatment or other serious types of chronic pain conditions.

Whatever the outcome from the FDA, I believe it is important that anyone undergoing chronic pain management should develop a safe and effective medication management plan if they are on any medications that have serious risk factors, as well as looking at the psychological factors that accompany a pain condition, and what non-medication approaches can be implemented.

I Recommend This Three Part Approach To Developing
An Effective Chronic Pain Management Plan

1. Medication Management which includes a medication management agreement;
2. Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment that addresses pain versus suffering by learning how to managing thoughts and feelings, as well as changing self-defeating behaviors and problematic social/family reactions; and
3. Nonpharmacological (non-medication) Interventions which supports the development of safer ways to manage pain.

To learn more about how to developing a medication management plan please check out my last month’s article 12 Personal Action Steps for Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

If you would like to see my upcoming trainings and especially to learn about my 20 hour (three days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on December 7-9, 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 December 7-9, 2009 for the description and how to sign up.

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 books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. 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.

It is important to understand the connection between stress levels and pain symptoms, as well as recognizing that stress management can decrease the perception of pain. Physically, chronic pain raises stress levels and drains physical energy, while psychologically it affects people’s ability to think clearly, logically and rationally, as well as to efectively manage their feelings or emotions. Remember, that in most cases when someone can learn to lower their stress levels, they will also experience a decrease in their perception of pain. 

My new article for September gives readers seven strategic steps for managing stress for someone undergoing chronic pain management.  Please check out this article Effective Stress Techniques for Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

If you would like to see my upcoming trainings and especially to learn about my 20 hour (three days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on December 7-9, 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 December 7-9, 2009 for the description and how to sign up.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book 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.

One trend I’ve seen over the past 26 years of working with people undergoing chronic pain management is how challenging it can be to describe what they’re going through. I also know this from a position of living with my own chronic pain for the past 27 years. I can still remember early in my pain recovery when I couldn’t find a way to articulate what I was going through.

Over the years I have helped many patients develop what I call a pain vocabulary and gain a more effective way to communicate with their healthcare providers and significant other how they’re really doing with their pain management. In addition to a pain vocabulary some people find the using artistic interpreations of their pain can assist their healing and/or pain management process.

I still remember about fifteen years ago I asked one of my patients to make an artistic interpretation of her pain on a bad pain day to bring to our next sesssion. She came back with the most ferocious and scary black and red dragon that I had ever seen. It had long claws and fangs with blood dripping from them. On our final session she brought me a gift. She was a very good artist and what she brought me was a picture she made of her relationsihp to her pain as a result of all her hard work and healing. I still keep this in my office. It was a picure of a cartoon-like friendly dragon with a silly grin who was playing with a little boy who had a toy wooden sword. The caption on the drawing showed the dragon touching the tip of the sword and saying “Och! That’s sharp.” What a transition.

Not all of my patients have been able to make such a dramatic change in their relationship with their pain but the more successful ones all have made peace (friends) with their pain. One thing that really helps is when people are able to separate out the physical components from the psychological components of their pain. Two of my publications have an exercise that assists people to do just that. It’s also a very good pain vocabulary building tool.

If you want to learn more about the psychological component of chronic pain management please go to my article The Psychological Components of Pain that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

If you would like to see my upcoming trainings and especially to learn about my 20 hour (three days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on December 7-9, 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 December 7-9, 2009 for the description and how to sign up.

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 books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

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.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.