Opioids Aren't Increasing Your Pain, but those "non-narcotic" Alternatives Might

Serotonin May Perpetuate Chronic Pain - National Pain Report
http://bit.ly/1aRnuOh
http://americannewsreport.com/nationalpainreport/serotonin-may-perpetuate-chronic-pain-8822871.html

Anyone who has read Dr. Forest Tennant's Intractable Pain Patients' Handbook for Survival or Overcoming Opiophobia knows that, contrary to popular belief, opioid pain medications do not cause pain and doctors are lying or ignorant if they tell you that they do. Unfortunately, opioids are all too frequently blamed for chronic pain. Yes, there are a handful of people who experience an increase in pre-existing pain from truly high doses of opioids. These incredibly rare cases have very specific diagnostic criteria and simply still being in pain on opioids doesn't indicate OIH, especially without a worsening of pain with each dose increase. This is seen as a tool to convince CP/IP patients and their caregivers to "free" the CP/IP patients from the treatments that actually relieve pain (mu-opioids & methadone).

"No magic bullet. The worst propaganda being pushed upon all chronic pain patients, including those with and without intractable pain are the illusive "magic bullet" formulas being advanced by either pharmaceutical and medical device industries, unethical practitioners and some health plans and government agencies...The worst deception these days is the fraudulent pitch that pain can be cured by stopping all medications, as if control is the cause!!"
-Forest Tennant MD PhD

...Here comes the irony... (sorry for the long preamble)
As it turns out, the medications that the OIH proponents prescribe and recommend most often (serotonin increasing antidepressants, like serious SSNRIs, MAOIs, TCAs, & atypical antidepressants, like Remeron/mirtazapine) could be what is actually worsening pain in chronic pain patients! Seriously! How's that for irony? Not only are these doctors manipulating their patients out of effective treatments, but they may actually be making their pain worse with these psychotropic medications (plenty of which are neurotoxic).

Remember, procedures and surgeries are high & ultra high (respectively) profit while doctors get paid NOTHING for writing prescriptions and controlled substances (especially CIIs, like opioids) require even more non-reimbursed time thanks to the overstepping DEA, overzealous prosecutors, strict regulations, and public backlash thanks to an extremely small percentage of hefty doctors who ran already illegal pull mills.

~~While I can understand hesitating to risk your medical license, freedom, career, home, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that must be spent to defend the criminal charges (still lose medical license & career), it is completely unethical to manipulate a patient into believing a lie so that you can commit malpractice by unilaterally rejecting an entire treatment modality without reasonable cause. I've had several PMs tell me that opioids are my best and/or only option, but they don't personally prescribe. That's horrible, but at least they didn't lie to or attempt to manipulate me like the PMs at Hopkins & UPenn did (unfortunately, this behavior is on the rise and more than half of all PMs engage in this kind of inappropriate behavior)~~

Notes:
* The only non-serotonin antidepressant is buproprion/Wellbutrin/Budeprion
* There is one antidepressant that actually enhanced serotonin reuptake (gets rid of the old, useless serotonin), however the FDA has not approved it (likely to avoid pissing off the multibillion dollar pro-serotonin antidepressant industry). For those of you outside the USA, the only commercially SSRE (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Enhancer) is called tianeptine/Stablon/Coaxil/Tatinol
* The National Pain Report article is based on a medical journal article in Neuron named "Central Terminal Sensitization of TRPV1 by Descending Serotonergic Facilitation Modulates Chronic Pain"
http://www.cell.com/neuron/retrieve/pii/S0896627313011410
http://bit.ly/1aRrRbU
* If anyone reading this believes that they may have OIH (or knows anyone who believes that they have OIH), PLEASE email me! I'd greatly appreciate the chance to discuss it with you. If you're interested, I'll also provide you with information to help you determine if you actually have OIH.

Walgreens is Ruining My Life - National Pain Report

My Story: Walgreens is Ruining My Life - National Pain Report
http://bit.ly/1dgNjnj

Okay, so I got a little carried sweaty with my comment, but that's no reason not to share it with you guys!

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This is all part of the DEA's war on doctors and war on patients. Drug dealers aren't easy to go after and they fight back. Doctors have plenty of non-hidden resources and admit they dispensed the meds. The DEA is made up of a bunch of cops who are too ignorant to acknowledge their own medical ignorance who can't tell the difference between medical practice (which they are expressly forbidden from governing under the constitution- legitimate medical practice is exclusively governed by the states) and pill mills. Unfortunately, the DEA is left to determine what is legitimate medical practice with no medical training and AUSA (Assistant US Attorneys) have been know to later bribe "medical experts" up to $40,000 to say that the accused doctors are out of bounds.

Even if a doctor wins their case, they end up hundreds of thousands of dollars (easily $750,000) in the hole with NO MEANS TO REPAY THAT DEBT because they lose their medical licenses automatically.

Our entire legal system is BROKEN! The accused are GUILTY UNLESS PROVEN INNOCENT, instead of INNOCENT UNTIL & UNLESS PROVEN GUILTY. That's a big problem, but it can be fixed in pieces. For example, doctors should be judged by THEIR PEERS, OTHER DOCTORS, not cops. The DEA should have NO POWER over medical practice and allegations of overprescribing should be handled by state boards with criminal charges being decided by state DAs and this should be ONLY AFTER there medical board determined that their actions were outside of the scope of medical practice.

Doctors must stand up against the DEA's tyranny and we must stand up for our doctors. Enough of the DEA's games, enough of the scapegoats, enough of the lies from doctors, from pharmacists, from drug companies, and ENOUGH of the DEA's lies.

Knowledge is POWER and the DEA knows that and that is why they spread their propaganda. We must counter their lies with smart, level headed rebuttals. Statistics are powerful and we must remember to use specific statistics and clinical trial results because, while our individual stories are powerful, large trials sway opinion faster. Everyone who is comfortable doing so should call their local news stations and encourage them to do stories about the suffering of CP/IP (chronic pain/intractable pain) patients as a whole AND about our individual struggles. We must rebut the DEA's "Opioid Epidemic" and reminds the nation, and the world, that the true epidemic is underprescribing and undertreatment. The 'Epidemic of Undertreatment' is a threat to our national and economic security.

Our comments here are a start, but I encourage all of you to branch out beyond the CP/IP world. Post this and every other article and opinion publicly on your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and every other site. Branch out beyond the internet (if you are able). Write to your elected officials, medical boards, medical societies, and anyone else who might listen.

Above all else, STOP BITING YOUR TONGUE WHEN YOU'RE LIED TO!!! When your doctor says that there is a "new law" causing him/her to reduce your meds, instead of admitting his/her cowardice, POLITELY inform him/her that you mean no disrespect and are not arguing with his/her decision, but there are no new laws governing prescriptions, however you understand that the DEA has been overly aggressive. You stop the lies, build a report (silent 'T'), and it can cause your doctor to consider more adequate prescribing because you can build trust through honesty.

Although I worded this all as "directions", I mean it all as suggestions and I hope that you all can understand my passion for this subject and not hold my wording against me.

Steve

If anyone knows of any articles or studies that I can add to http://bit.ly/IPkills in order to represent what chronic pain is really like for patients, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, caregivers, physician extenders, family members, etcetera, please email a link to me. I'm also working on a less personal site, essentially an encyclopedia of chronic/intractable pain. Any articles for that site are also welcome.
IntractablePainKills at gmail.com

Fibromyalgia solved: Not in the mind, but a very real physical ailment | Washington Times

Fibromyalgia solved: Not in the mind, but a very real physical ailment | Washington Times
http://bit.ly/1eL1qpQ

Something that the CP/IP community has known for years...

... IT'S NOT ALL IN OUR HEADS!!!

Even for CP/IP sufferers without Fibromyalgia, this should be welcome news because most complex pain patients have at one time or another been told that it's "all in our heads" or it's Fibro, take some Prozac/Cymbalta/Lyrica/gabapentin.

I, myself, suffered throughout most of my childhood with excruciating pain caused by childhood Fibromyalgia. Of course, as a minor, I received no pain medication. I wasn't even given worthless antidepressants. I wasn't officially diagnosed with anything, I was told that I suffered from "growing pains" and every future complaint was promptly dismissed (yes, I'm bitter). As an adult, I was repeatedly misdiagnosed with Fibromyalgia only. I wouldn't have been so upset with this misdiagnosis if Fibromyalgia wasn't treated like a second class illness. Although I still do still suffer from Fibromyalgia, most of my pain is cancer pain with some Fibromyalgia "sprinkled" in between (the two are completely different for me).

Thank you to the researchers who took the time to show that we're in pain, not crazy.

-Steve