I’m frightened. More frightened than I’ve ever been in my 50 years on the planet. Why?  As a chronic pain patient, it started with reading about what is happening to those suffering from chronic pain. The Gestapo-type tactics used by the DEA, as they burst through the doors of pain clinics, often without warrants or cause, rifling through patient files, terrorizing patients, arresting doctors and even, it has been reported, doing body searches of employees. I have a list of over 60 doctors who have experienced this, some winning in court, but many losing their practices, their licenses, and with some, their lives due to suicide.

The suicide rate among chronic pain patients, by the way, is 900% higher than that of the general populace. That’s because they can’t get their hands on the one thing that will relieve their pain. Narcotics. People who are insulin dependent get their insulin, no problem. High blood pressure?  Just ask your doctor. Thyroid medication?  No questions asked. But narcotics?  For pain?  Even though study after study (Harvard, the New England Journal of Medicine, not Mad Magazine) has proven that taken correctly for treating pain, narcotics (opiates) are safe. 

We first need to educate our lawmakers, who seem to be blind, deaf and stupid in this regard, to the difference between addiction and dependency. Am I dependent on my meds?  You bet. Am I addicted?  No way. I don’t have an addictive personality, and if a cure were found, I’d flush every last one of those things down the toilet. I hate the side affects, and put up with more pain than I have to because of them. Now, I would have to go through withdrawal, but withdrawal does not mean addiction. Dependency and addiction are not the same. Period.  I’d have to slowly withdrawal from another one of my meds as well, and that is not a narcotic. FIGURE. IT. OUT.

When I talk to friends and family members about this, they generally don’t believe me. They listen politely, of course, but most times, write it off as my pain medication talking, or a histrionic episode brought on by too many hours of solitude due to my condition. While it’s true my life has changed drastically since inoperable spinal tumors began causing pain that cannot adequately be described, the stories are unfortunately, not just stories. They are truth. There are way too many sources backing them up to be written off as some over-the-top conspiracy theory nut trying to grab a little limelight.

Still, these stories aren’t “sexy” enough for most major newspapers. Or, and this is a more likely theory, conspiracy or not, most major newspapers lean to the right, and this is definitely a left issue, though not in left field.  The “sexier” stories are those of addiction, doctor misconduct, patient lies and pharmaceutical wrong doing, whether they did wrong or not.

What’s true, is that only 1% of those who take narcotics to treat pain become addicted in the way the DEA is trying to sell it. 1%. The reason one reads of higher statistics, is that the statisticians throw in those who are addicts or have addictive personalities into the mix. And while there are always a few “bad apples” in any profession, the number of doctors being harrassed, arrested and generally losing their practices far outnumbers what would be considered a few.

Start acting now. Don’t wait. It’s later than you think.