Does anyone find it weird when addicts and doctors presume if you take non opioids you aren't in "true pain" and don't have chronic pain?
Admit please remove if not appropriate. I'm just frustrated.
I had a really weird Twitter argument come up. For context it was a person essentially claiming opioids are natural and long term use causes dependence and not abuse. That they've been recommended methadone and saboxone as alternatives to prescription opioids.
Now I kind of saw this as actual addiction level issue I tried to explain the statistic of long term use, alternatives, and why opioids are fantastic short term but shouldn't be used long term besides as a last resort. I only say this because I literally had spinal cord injury and live with CRPS and chronic daily headaches, and only manage the pain through intense PT and OT I did at an out patients AMPS clinic, and I take cymbalta and very low fuse dose gabapentin.
I just found the whole conversation weird simply because my CRPS support group we all universally hate opioids and because we are all working, we can't use them. Some of us do have intrathecal pain pumps, spinal cord stimulators, and one actually resorted to amputation in order to get off of opioids.
So I found that the person was drug seeking. I only saw this behavior once and with one of my old classmates who constantly was trying to get me to give him gabapentin to "help his pain" after his doctor cut him off. He later overdosed on laced heroin in the bathroom my senior year of highschool.
Like I'm not denying that as chronic pain patients we don't have needs for different treatments, but I found the displaying of the risks particularlly bizarre including how they acused me of faking being injured to make a point (I wish I was faking because wouldn't have trouble swallowing, issues urinating and constant nerve pain).
That said I did once have a doctor who said my pain was mental trauma, and blatantly ignored the mri of my neck where you could see swelling in my spinal cord. I asked a doctor in the ER for 3 days of pain meds and a CT and he refused because it was just a broken nose. I had a lefort 2 fracture, C3 to T2 fractures, broke 6 ribs, and had a lacerated kidney and spleen. Yeah, literally you could see the scaring on later imaging, and remodeling on later MRIs and Xrays.