Problems with Chronic Pain Management and Prescription Medication

Chronic pain managemebt is a serious health crisis facing many people. They can be under-medicated, over-medicated or sometimes just misdiagnosed. They may also have co-existing disorders such as an addiction that must be taken into account. No matter what a person decides regarding the question of whether or not to use prescription drugs to manage their pain, they must look at the whole picture – not just the use of pain meds. In my experience people who look at the biological, psychological and social aspects of their pain condition, and address each area, have much more favorable treatment outcomes.

Unfortunately, we live in a quick fix society. When something goes wrong we look for the fastest way to remedy the situation. When we have a headache we “pop a pill” and the problem is solved. If you watched any amount of TV the past few years you may have noticed a significant increase in commercials hyping prescription medication. Many people are demanding specific medications that they saw on TV with the mistaken belief that—if it’s advertised on TV it much be safe; for example the commercials advertising Lunesta, a sleep medication. After all how can such a cute butterfly be dangerous?

So it’s not surprising when our back starts hurting again using medication to escape from the pain is our primary concern. Our medical system is designed for crisis, or symptom management. Rarely do we look for the underlying reasons for our headache or back pain. Using the “Band-Aid” approach of taking a pill seems quicker, cheaper, and easier—but is it really?

People undergoing chronic pain management experience three major types of pain:

(a) physical or biological;
(b) psychological, which includes thinking and emotions; and
(c) the social and cultural, which influence the perception of pain.

Medication is only effective for physical or biological pain. When people use medication for the other aspects of pain, it can often lead to addiction.

I want to introduce the idea sometimes it is possible to treat a chronic pain management condition without taking medications. It’s important to remember that if a person has a condition where they need to take appropriate chronic pain management medication that they still need to incorporate nonpharmacological interventions that are appropriate for them. The main point I want to make here is that there are as many types of pain interventions as your imagination will allow, and your mind is open to.

Although managing pain without pills can be a very desirable goal, in some cases there needs to be an “appropriate” medication chronic pain management plan. This plan should be a collaborative process with a professional who understands the biopsychosocial nature of pain and the very real risks of dependency or addiction. In addition to the psychological treatment plan and the medication management plan we need to explore non-pharmacological modalities such as acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, hydrotherapy, biofeedback, etc. As you can see this is anything but a “quick fix.”

To learn more about effective chronic pain management—especially when other coexisting disorders are present—please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management, that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

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 learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

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