The Prescription Drug Trap Sabotages Effective Chronic Pain Management
This morning I did a consultation and treatment planning session for a therapist friend of mine whose patient has been on prescription opiates for over ten years. My friend became very concerned for this person a couple of weeks ago when she drove herself to a therapy appointment while significantly over-medicated. This patient didn’t ask to have a problem but over ten years of using only medication for her chronic pain management in addition to using her meds for emotional and stress management reasons has finally caught up with her.
According to researched published in Pain Physician Journal (2006), 90 percent of people in the US receiving treatment for pain management are prescribed opiate medication. Of that number 9 percent to 41 percent had opiate abuse/addiction problems. We also know that at least 80 billion dollars is spent for pain relief in the United States each year—a significant amount of that is for prescription medications. What is harder to quantify is the emotional cost to family systems when one or more members suffer with a chronic pain condition.
Unfortunately, this prescription drug problem only comes to the public’s awareness when a nationally recognized personality is “caught” in the pain/addiction trap. So how do intelligent, high functioning people fall into this prescription drug trap and how can it be avoided? The leading cause for many people falling into the prescription drug trap is an under-treated or a mismanaged chronic pain condition—I believe this was the case for my friend’s patient. To learn more please go to my article Avoiding the Prescription Drug Trap 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 effective chronic pain management please go to our Publications page and check out my book The Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide. To look for my upcoming trainings please go to our Calendar page.
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