Chronic Pain Management and the Addiction-Pain Syndrome™
Physical pain is the reason many people start using potentially addictive substances. Chronic medication use plus genetic or environmental susceptibility can lead to increased tolerance as a result of searching for pain relief. Eventually the addictive substance no longer manages the pain symptoms. In fact, it often increases or amplifies the pain signals—a condition called opiate-induced hyperalgesia (an extreme sensitivity to pain) can also develop. The end result is severe biopsychosocial pain and problems.
Historically, pain disorders and addictive disorders have been treated as separate issues. Pain clinics have had great success in treating chronic pain conditions. Chemical dependency (addiction) treatment centers have also had success in treating addictive disorders. However, both modalities often struggle when the patient is suffering from both conditions.
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 center area in the diagram is the Addiction Pain Syndrome Zone. This is why I developed the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) system. APM™ concurrently addresses the addictive disorder, the pain disorder, and the addiction pain syndrome. All three zones are addressed—The Addictive Disorder Zone, the Pain Disorder Zone, and the Addiction Pain Syndrome™ Zone.
To learn how the Addiction-Pain Syndrome™ impacted one of my former patients please check out my article Understanding the Addiction-Pain Syndrome™ that you can download for free on our Article page.
If you’d like to receive training for helping people with relapse prevention, I’m very excited to announce that the Gorski-CENAPS Corporation is presenting The Relapse Prevention Therapy44 Hour Certification Training in Ft. Lauderdale October 18-22, 2010. To learn more about this 5 day 44 hour training you can check out our Calendar 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 books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.
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