The Chronic Pain patient and Opiods

It is not my intention to say that every person who walks into a Doctors office and complains of pain should be prescribed opiods. However the previous statement does not describe a chronic pain patient. These people are like me. They have had numerous operations and other invasive procedures that have not stopped their pain and in most cases has only made it worse. Most chronic pain patients hate taking pain pills. What they really want is a normal life. Below is part of an article from WebMd.

"In the last few years, everyone's heard about the apparent epidemic of prescription drug addiction, especially to narcotic painkillers. We see human-interest stories on the news about regular folks getting hooked on OxyContin or Vicodin. Every few months, it seems, we get another news release from a new celebrity confessing to an addiction. The reports may give you the impression that the lure of these drugs is irresistible, that we're all just a few pills away from addiction.

This leaves many people with chronic back pain -- and often their doctors -- stuck in the middle. On the one hand, they're afraid of the risks of addiction that come with powerful painkillers. On the other, they're suffering from severe and debilitating pain and need some kind of help.
But are the risks of prescription drug addiction really as great as we think?
"There's this buzz that these painkillers are demon drugs being marketed to unsuspecting grandmas," says Karen Miotto, MD, an addiction psychiatrist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. "But that's not the case."

There's no doubt that prescription drug addiction can be devastating and destroy lives. But for many experts, the more widespread public health issue is that people in desperate and debilitating pain aren't getting the painkillers they need because of inflated fears of addiction. While opioid painkillers -- like OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin -- have risks, they're often outweighed by the benefits, experts say.

Source: By R. Morgan Griffin

And the above is true. I personally know several people in the level of pain that I am in. None of them are addicted to anything. They are just like me, all they want is the ability to have some kind of life.