The makers of suboxone took down the makers of opioids by falsely spreading lies that opioids are the cause for addiction. The cause is the illegal made drugs being funneled into the states. People were not dying from opioids TAKEN AS DIRECTED. I was on hydrocodone for 25 years and because of the CDC 2016 GUIDELINES, I no longer have anything for pain relief and I work 40 hours a week, raised 2 children starting when they were 2 and 4. I had a cervical fusion. I AM SO ANGERY I HAVE TO SUFFER BECAUSE LIES WERE SPREAD AND BECAME THE NARRATIVE! The DEA, DOJ has to remove themselves from the doctor patient relationship and let the doctors help us suffering everyday and it affects my entire family. It has gone so far that people can’t get pain management after a surgery. What world are we living in that a pharmaceutical company who wanted to be the richest put us in the situation . The people at PROP. PLEASE STOP THIS INSANITY! Doctors are being put in jail just for prescribing recommended doses. The drugs on the steeets are pressed pills with heroin, fentynal, ETC. My family physician prescribed them to me for 25 years. Make it make sense. They had me doing ketamine infusions every 4-5 weeks. I owe the hospital $9k and I was doing fine taking a $10 prescription. I hope the right person sees this and has the capacity to make change because I can’t suffer much longer. It is a miserable existence. I am tired of being labeled as an addict when I am not! This insanity has to stop. CLAUDIA MERANDI with the DOCTOR and PATIENT FORUM/DON’T PUNISH PAIN has been fighting for us. Please VOTE for her post: REFORMING RESTRICTIONS ON PAIN MANAGEMENT AND ENDING THE HARMFUL STIGMA AGAINST PAIN PATIENTS. Thank you!!!
Please help the pain community to receive adequate pain control. We have children, cancer patients, intractable pain patients all being pushed away from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. All we want is the right to a life somewhat tolerable.
Please help us that are suffering, I’m 58 and had 14 surgeries and after losing my pain pump to infection, no one will match that dose orally though I got through the last 30 years just fine on higher doses needed for a severe condition, Please help us, we’re suffering and we’re slowly losing our will to live.
Please vote for this policy. Claudia will be bringing this policy to lawmakers. Reforming Restrictions on Pain Management and Ending the Harmful Stigma Against Pain Patients
Correct! If you look at addicts, how long do they use with no increased need to take more? 3yrs? 5yrs, 10? People with chronic pain do not chase a high. They just want the pain to be manageable.
We know that it will never go away completely. But a person can not stay alive with pain at a level 10 that never stops. Can you even wrap your mind around having pain at a level 5 that is there day and night, minute by minute , second by second, that never ends? We, the chronic pain community, arent looking for shangri-la, we just want to be able to read an article, talk on the phone, and be able to work at our jobs for as long as possible.
Someone with chronic pain will not abuse their only hope of functioing. Pain medicine, in this population, is not abused because being without it is real, tangible, torture.
I have had to take pain medication for 40yrs. I am now 58yrs old. I have a Masters degree, and was able to work much lomger than I would have, if not for medical intervenntion and being able to take the appropriare medication therapy.
I am the face of a chronic pain sufferer. Was it the face you expected to see?
I support pain management fully. And opioid treatment.
I’m a chronically ill/chronic pain patient & have been since 1998 & I’ve been going to pain management since 98. I live in AL and have been diagnosed with these conditions:
- Scoliosis 1990
- TMJ 1992
- C-Diff. 1992
- IBS. 1997
- Trigeminal Neuralgia. 1998
- Endometriosis. 1999
- PCOS. 1999
- Chronic back pain. 2000
- ADHD. 2001
- Kidney stones. 2002
- Stenosis. 2003
- Sciatica. 2003
- Bulging discs. 2003
- DDD Degenerative disc disease. 2003
- Lordosis. 2004
- Spondylosis. 2004
- Kyphosis. 2004
- SI Joint dysfunction. 2004
- Osteophytes. 2004
- Anemia. 2004
- High triglycerides. 2004
- High cholesterol. 2004
- Low HDL. 2004
- High LDL. 2004
- Osteoarthritis. 2005
- RLS. 2006
- Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. 2006
- Insomnia- due to pain. 2006
- Adhesive Arachnoiditis 2008
- Ankylosing Spondylitis. 2008
- Chronic migraines. 2010
- Torn stomach lining. 2014
- GERD. 2014
- Scapulalgia. 2014
- Peptic ulcers. 2016
- Polyps. 2016
- Myositis. 2016
- Myalgia. 2017
- Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. 2017
- Reynaud’s Syndrome. 2017
- Pancreatitis-beginning stage. 2017
- Fibromyalgia. 2018
- Sleep apnea. 2021
- Endomytritis. 2021
- Esophageal stricture. 2021
- Gallstones. 2022
- Deviated septum. 2022
- Enlarged spleen. 2022
- Fatty liver. 2022
- CRPS Chronic Regional Pain Sy 2022
- Vasomotor rhinitis 2022
- Gastro-esophageal reflux disease with esophagitis 2023
- Dysautonomia 2024
- POTS 2024
- Osteopenia Femur 2024
- Osteoporosis. Spine. 2024
I was deemed permanently disabled in 2003 but back dated to 1998, I’ve been in constant debilitating pain for as long as I can remember, I used to get halfway decent medical care. Now chronic pain patients cannot find a doctor to prescribe real pain medication, they will only prescribe Buprenorphine or any of its derivatives such as Suboxone, Subutex and/or Butrans patch which is not intended to help chronic pain but will help people with a heroin addiction, true chronic pain patients are not addicts & they don’t have addictive behaviors. With the way things have gone for the last 10 years it’s nearly impossible to find doctors who treat patients pain properly so when a chronic pain patient receives proper care the last thing they want to do is jeopardize what little quality of life meds they receive so they don’t misuse the opioids. I tried Suboxone in 2010 & it almost killed me, so the ER put it on my severely allergic list. The way the government has basically outlawed proven methods for treating pain has had a very negative consequence on pain patients, cancer patients, palliative care patients, hospice patients, patients with painful inpatient surgeries that hospitals are no longer using pain meds to help patients recover from surgeries when they’ve been used for thousands of years & worked well. The PROP (physicians for responsible opioid prescribing which is funded by the company INDIVIOR which makes Buprenorphine) anti opioid initiative took over studies starting in 2010 & those who participated in the studies had no business being the ones to conduct these studies. PROP lumped all the heroin overdoses with, cocaine, crack, hallucinogenics, illicit fentanyl, meth, alcohol and/or prescription drugs. That overinflated number was used to represent the prescription opioid patient overdoses written by doctors when in reality it was all of the illicit drugs overdoses , polypharmacy (illicit & prescription meds) overdoses and prescription only overdoses lumped together so the number that was presented to Congress & the Senate was a gross overstatement of what the prescription opioid overdoses really were in order to help fund the Opioid War beginning with the treatment of Suboxone leading the way to fix all the addicts. Now INDIVIOR has changed the DSM code to include all pain patients that take their prescription opioid medications properly to be diagnosed with OUD so that those pain patients will get put on suboxone and make INDIVIOR even more millions of dollars, because isn’t that’s what it’s all about.
I moved back to Alabama in 2012 due to a messy divorce and I could not find a doctor to take over my medical care because I am what you call a very complicated patient. I was on 23 medications I had to go off of cold turkey & I had zero pain meds to help with my chronic illnesses so I took over the counter meds, 1,000MG of Tylenol as a I woke up, 4 hours later I took 800MG of Ibuprofen & rotated said combo 12-16 hours a day. A year later I wound up in the ER throwing up bright red blood, the ER said I had torn my stomach lining & done some pretty nasty damage to my liver but guess what I got a pain clinic appointment within 3 days and it only cost me my stomach. So in 2013 I started on the pain clinic Merry Go Round. I would start off strong and build my way up to meds that worked & every single time the doctors would always there’s nothing more I can do for you so I got referred to a different clinic. Each year it got harder & harder to find doctors to treat me like an actual human being & not a criminal just for needing pain meds to get out of bed on a daily basis, permanently disabled people shouldn’t have to prove to doctors over and above their records that they deserve to be treated properly. My last pain doctor fired me because I received a bone density scan (I kept telling her I felt like my bones were aching so bad, she would never order A DEXA scam so my PCP did) I found out at age 49 I have osteopenia in my femur 1 point away from being osteoporosis and my spine has osteoporosis. My rheumatologist told me it was due to pain clinics making me get epidural steroid injections 3 times a year since 1998 (108) & they’re not FDA approved, she said for me not to get anymore injections or I would end up making the holes in my bones even worse. I told my pain doctor I could receive anymore injections and her response was “no injections no meds” and she fired me. I interviewed 5 different pain clinics and none of them wanted to treat me with real pain meds and only offered the medication I am deathly allergic to, I reminded them I’m allergic and can’t take it, all of them said that’s the only medication we offer so we can’t help you. I had to go to a methadone clinic for a couple of months because I was on 110MME’s a day when I got fired and my PCP could only offer 45MME a day but I could not keep going because I had to get to a clinic that was an hour drive one way every single day & my chronically ill body would not let me continue to do that every day so I was to go to my PCP so overnight I went from 110 to 45 (4hydrocodone a day & 25mg tramdol a day) I just received my January fill and only received 3 hydrocodone a day and was told by the doctor that it was a mandatory opioid reduction for their hospital. There’s no pain clinic willing to actually treat me so I’m going to have to go back to the methadone clinic and I’m not even an addict, this is what the government & doctors terrified of prescribing pain meds because they don’t want to end up in prison for treating their patients, I’ll have to find an addiction doctor and tell him I’m a pain refugee and he’ll probably diagnose me with OUD just cover his butt with the state medical board and the DEA, buy illegal drugs off the streets, just naturally withdraw from the pain meds I’m on which has been causing super high blood pressures (221/148) due to untreated pain and I’ll probably have a stroke or a heart attack or I could put myself out of the misery of being gaslit by every doctor I go to (PCP & 9 specialists) and none of them have an answer for me when I ask what is the solution. This is the chaos pain patients go through on a daily basis trying to figure how to get by on an hourly, weekly, monthly basis when doctors really don’t care if you live or die because the government has pushed them into a corner.