With the influx of articles and blog posts about the Opioid Crisis, some may say that I'm bandwagoning here by writing this post, but honestly, I've been planning to write it for some time. My next-to-last blog post touched on the subject, dipping my toes in the water, if you will. This one is going to be a bit more in depth, and much more personal. I'm not going to throw out a bunch of tables and graphs, but I will give some statistics. And I will give the truth. The government and propaganda would have you believe that anyone on prescription opioid medication is abusing them. The statistics do not support that.
What statistics? (Note: rather than using two numbers [e.g. between x and y percent] I will go with a median number to simplify the statistic unless it's a margin of 5 or more) That only about 21 to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioid medications misuse them. Only 10% develop an abuse problem. Only 5% transition to heroin.
While it's true 80% of heroin users first abused prescription opioids, only 5% of that 80% had them prescribed to them in the first place.
The truth is, this opioid epidemic is a heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl epidemic. The overwhelming majority of patients who are prescribed prescription opioid do not abuse them nor become addicted to them. Yet we are being punished for the minority that does. We are being punished for people abusing street drugs because we responsibly use prescription medication that happens to be in the same drug class.
And now the death toll is rising. But here's the thing, dear reader. The rising death toll I'm referring to isn't overdoses. It's suicides. Yes, you read that right. A steadily growing number of chronic pain patients are committing suicide because they are being cut off of the one thing that makes their lives bearable with little to no hope of reaching that point again. They're committing suicide because they HAVE no hope, because they're seen as drug addicts, as junkies looking for a fix, not as people in unbearable amounts of pain who are crying out for help and being told they just need to suck it up and stop looking for drugs. They're committing suicide, dear reader, because the fear of death is far outweighed by the agony of life they're experiencing without proper pain management. The pain management many of you who don't live with chronic pain are cheering to be taken away.
You're killing us. We are sick. We are in levels of pain that you could not even imagine and frankly, I don't WANT you to be able to imagine. And that pain never stops, it never goes away. It's there with every breath we take, even in our sleep, it's there.
I have dreams where my pain permeates them. I get torn apart by animals or my bones broken by falling rocks and wake up with a start... Only to realize the pain of the dream is still there. Because it's real, and often I can't move for several minutes because of the level of pain I'm in. It's all I can do to force myself to breathe because even that is agonizing. But after a while, sometimes as little as five minutes and sometimes as long as an hour, I can move a little. And then a little more. Bit by bit I coax my spasmed muscles and throbbing, swollen joints into movement and manage to roll over to reach my bedside table where I can finally take a pain pill and a muscle relaxer. Fifteen minutes later, I can finally take a full breath without feeling like knives are scoring down my back and across my ribs. I slowly work the stiffness out of my joints and muscles, and another hour or so later, I can finally get out of bed and with the support of a cuff crutch, make a slow journey the 15 feet to the restroom and back before I have to rest again as that short trip has exhausted me from the pain, and I know that the rest of my day is going to be primarily spent in bed trying to fight off pain with heat, various topical analgesics, and medications. Rare are the days I'm well enough to go out and enjoy myself. They happen, and I make the most of them. But they're rare. Because pain management has such a tight leash on it that my regimen is completely inadequate.
I'm not telling you this to earn your pity. I don't want it. I'm not being hyperbolic either. None of this is an exaggeration. God knows I wish it was.
I'm telling you this so hopefully you can understand, just a little bit, what living with severe chronic pain is like. Why people like me need opioid medications to get by, to try to have a relatively normal life. The restrictions in place make properly treating us difficult if not impossible, and it's only getting worse.
Please, help us. We're using our own voices to speak out, but without the help of people like you, reader, people who don't suffer but who have compassion and empathy, who understand that chronic pain patients are not drug addicts, our voices may not be enough. We need your help in this fight. We are fighting for our lives. Literally. Some of us have already lost that fight.
Help the rest of us win.
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