New Study Examines 'A Life In Pain' - The Experiences Of Older People

In defense of the medical community, they are pre-occupied with addicts because the gov't is ... because our society is more concerned with keeping addicts from getting high than with relieving pain. The war on drugs has failed, but little is going to change because there are too many careers and too much money at stake for the enforcers.

Good docs have lost their licenses because the DEA thought they were prescribing too many narcotics.

Another part of the story is the behavior of addicts themselves ... providers look upon chronic pain issues with a jaundiced eye because they have been burned. We see this on AN, especially in the ER nursing threads. A pioneer in pain management once wrote that if we are truly committed to relieving pain, we have to accept the fact that some addicts are going to "get over". Easily written, not so easily done in fact. No one likes being played and people with chronic pain pay the price.

I don't know any good answers. Pain management specialists grapple with this all the time, as do front-line providers such as ER folks. It sucks that chronic pain sufferers have to jump through such humiliating hoops to prove that they aren't addicts.