In my experience, the people who are often given the hardest time to make sure that they don’t have an addiction and aren’t trying to “get on over” on the pharmacist/doctor do’nt hae any sort of addiction problems, the one that do have already found a doctor that doesn’t follow those rules, or a pharmacy that is lenient about refills. Everyone is so worried about letting someone “get away” with conning them about pain meds that they often don’t realize that they are hurting the wrong people.

Drs. have a quick system called “inspect” that allos them to see how many prescriptions of pain medication someone is getting and how often they are refilling them and from who that takes five minutes. That would quickly show if someone is doctor shopping vs. someone who really did lose script and needs another one. Unfortunately, must drs. don’t do this or will only after they’ve given a patient a hard time and treated them like a criminal.

So I got an emergency appointment with my rheumatologist and am in hospital now, and have had to book another laparoscopy, because my pain just wasn’t ‘real’ enough, or whatever. I’ve known this GP for 15 years; he is a fantastic guy, but this whole moral panic about narcotics is just a miserable fail.

/sorry for rant. But yeah, I relate.

What really ticks me off is that people who need these drugs get bad rep because of those addicts who take it for fun when their bodies are healthy. They ruin their families and eat up state dollars in convictions, and we have to pay for the stigma. I hid my condition from everyone but professors and some immediate family members just because of that. I had to appear normal all the time to everyone else–my friends, everyone because they aren’t understanding.

I got off all my meds as per a personal decision I made, and am now spending my summer looking for an alternative. I hate that my cognitive abilities are not as they were before starting the meds, but atleast I have something to rely on just in case I need them for my pain in the following years.

In the US, it’s really insane. And I take 6 Vicoprofen a day, and have for over six years now. Every time I see a new doctor (nerve pain), I go through the litany of other drugs I’ve tried, none of which worked as well as the narcotics to allow me to function, and none of which came with as few side effects (my experience with Lyrica was particularly horrifying, and the withdrawal was agonizing).

But I’m an addict, you’re an addict, we’re all addicts, because pain is good for you, tight? (/sarcasm)

I’m one of those who is more harmed than helped by the drugs, so I get to experience the other side of this nasty little catch 22, which is that people are just as suspicious of patients who won’t take the drugs as they are of the patients who need them. I have to go around all the time about the intolerable side effects I get from the rx pain relievers (which don’t work to kill my pain anyway) and the fact that the anti-depressants, pretty much any kind or any combination thereof, make me suicidal. Apparently the prevailing assumption is that either I’m not really sick, or else I must not really want to get better, because otherwise I’d “just tough out” the suicidal ideation and the 24/7 anorexic/puking zombieism. And and and! Here’s the biggest irony: my drug intolerance is a symptom of the damn disabling condition, b/c before I got it, I could take any drug without issue, and now there are even antibiotics I cannot tolerate. Pfft, assholes.

Anyway, I was actually stopping by to thank you, sorry for the digression. I still can’t hardly have any conversation about any of it without ranting. I’m sure you understand, lol.

I posted in one of your recent threads at Feministe about my trouble with meds, and I was dropping by here to tell you that because of one of your other posts, I just ordered myself a TENS unit. I actually got it for free because I had gift certificates laying around so it’s a no-risk trial in that sense and if it doesn’t work for me I can pass it along to someone who needs one but can’t afford it. I know that it is a crapshoot, but I am hopeful that it will offer me some relief, any little bit of help will go a very long way. But really, I am just so grateful to you simply for making me aware of a drug-free option to explore — something which none of my team of highly paid medical professionals has done in the past 2 years — that I have been singing your praises to my housemate for a week, so I wanted to say more directly, THANK YOU. :)

HOW much more can they crack down!? Prescription day is already a once a month all day long ordeal. I feel like so many of you in that I don’t think it’s the government’s (or anyone else) business telling me what I can or can’t put in my body. I’m an adult. I don’t need a government nanny.

“Addiction calls to mind, though, a life being torn down. Addiction calls to mind a person who is seeing the detriment of a drug outweighing the benefit. A person whose life is falling apart because of the drug.

A chronic pain patient taking a narcotic pain killer under the close supervision and guidance of a knowledgeable doctor is exactly the opposite: sie is a person whose life is coming back together because of the drug.

Oh, so perfectly put! I canNOT function without my pain meds – which come in a variety pack similar to yours (from all over the drug spectrum). I can barely function with them. If I am going to be able to get out of the bed at all today, it is going to take a lot of help – pharmaceutical and otherwise – and I can’t understand why trying to find that help makes me a bad person. Why asking about narcotics (when so many other drugs have failed) singles me out as a person who abuses drugs, who’s just looking to get high. I’m really just looking for WHATEVER WORKS. Whatever allows me to participate in my frickin life, and I really don’t think that it’s outrageous for me to do that. And I really don’t think that it’s your place – insurance company, government, close-minded physician – to tell me I can’t have it.

What a fabulous, fabulous post.

Amandaw, ah, thanks for explaining. It’s frustrating that doctors have to put more burdens on patients who are already suffering in order to avoid censure. Healthcare should be between provider and patient. Everyone else can kindly butt the f*ck out. You’re absolutely right, it is bullshit. I’m glad the arrangement you’ve got with your GP is working for you. It’s hard to find.

I see the same rheumatologist who diagnosed me as a kid, so we’ve got a 13 year history and I think that’s part of why he’s so accommodating about scripts. He knows I vary between mostly and completely housebound, so his office has been incredibly flexible. Moreso than I have any right to expect, really. He’s been seeing me free of charge since I lost my insurance, even. I know that I’ve been really, really lucky. This is part of why I get so steamed when I hear about chronic pain patients being denied care/pain control. That could so easily be me. Hell, that should be me. The only reason it’s not is because I was privileged enough to form a connection with a compassionate, generous physician before I landed in the uninsured/uninsurable gutter.

But I still go through these steps. Because it protects *them.* Honestly, it protects me too. That way, we never have him end up getting audited and my chart looking “suspicious.” We make sure everything is documented clearly.

But it’s still bullshit, because if we didn’t have this pain-denying culture we would not need that “protection.” It’s bullshit that even though this medication does the exact same thing those five others do, I have to jump through a hundred times more hoops to get my treatment, and I can never count on it being there the next month – ever. It is always looming over me, knowing I might suddenly be denied or delayed.

I used to go through that with every medication – all six of them – before I got on my husband’s insurance. He works for the state. His benefits are good. Really good, compared to most citizen’s (not the gold-plated stuff rich people get, but still good). And even with this “good” insurance, I go through this bullshit every month.

I’m not sure if you read the thread linked on the proposed ban on Vicodin and Percocet. I’ve been to plenty of doctors in my time, and had a variety of treatment from them. This is the best GP I’ve ever had, and it’s still a convoluted mess. And I go through it because I know *he* is being honest and responsible about things and that’s why we have to do it this way. He’s earned my trust, so I cooperate. And so it goes.

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SarahMC – yes. Exactly. It’s just fucking exhausting keeping up with it. Feels like a second job, the invisible one that nobody else can see me working, but I can feel its weight on my shoulders every moment. It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t had to do that fight day after day, year after year — not just for a short time, but for years at a time, knowing it will likely never end. It weighs on you. And that doesn’t exactly help your physical or mental state. Second shift for the sick.

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Tori — ugh, that’s bullshit. I had doctors dismissing and ignoring my menstrual pain my whole life too. One doctor even agreed my problem was most likely endometriosis, but felt it would be useless to do the laparoscopy to diagnose it, so she just wrote me a prescription for the birth control. Which, you know, helped some, but it was still frustrating, feeling like the gravity of my pain was being denied and dismissed.

If it’s an option for you… try a new doctor. It can take some hopping, which takes time and energy and money you shouldn’t have to pay, but there are some good doctors out there who will *listen* to you and *work* with you and try and make sure you are taken care of. This dr certainly sounds like s/he has no interest in helping you at all.

This and this post might be relevant, or search for “endometriosis” here. Not necessarily your diagnosis, but the matter of “woman part pain” is treated similarly across the board in the medical world… we have a long way to go yet.

And thanks all for the comments.

God. This. Times, like, eleventy billion.

Last week, I called my doctor to set up a consultation appointment for severe dysmenorrhea. I’d previously been told to wait 3 months from my Mirena IUD insertion to make this call, to give my body time to adjust to the IUD. So I waited, as instructed, like a good little girl, and dealt with the pain by taking rather more than the recommended doses of OTC pain relievers. But because it still hurt “I can’t stand upright” amounts each cycle, I did call back.

And was told, “Why don’t you give it another 3 months before you come in? Even if it’s not the IUD, that will be fine.”

Um, for pain I’ve had for 14 years? No, really, 3 more months of this will *not* be “fine.”

And this was to discuss *any* additional pain management options the doctor was willing to put on the table — not just pharmaceuticals (though this would have been a likely next step) and not just medications with a higher potential for physical dependence. In my particular scenario, the likelihood that any given medication will cause me serious physical harm is low, and the likelihood that it will help make my life better is higher.

So I feel like there’s no argument to be made here that this doctor is “looking out for my best interests” or whatever. I can only speculate that the motivation is pretty much what you suggested — that I’m imagining or exaggerating my pain.

And pain patients like yourself, who really shouldn’t be involved in this, are left to pass a kidney stone in a hospital waiting room because the doctor is afraid that the patient might be an addict faking the pain for meds. Yet of course, this is America, if you were a millionaire doctors would be lining up to throw pain medications at you whether you had pain issues or not.

Land of the free…. yeah right.

I’m kind of surprised you have to go through so much for a hydrocodone prescription. I hope this is not too intrusive, but I was on hydrocodone for many years (switched to something else a year ago) and I would only need to see my doctor for a new script every five or six months. He’d write me a script for 120 pills with five refills. Just wondering if it’s a state thing or something else that prevents your doctor from doing the same. It’s really not my business and I’m just curious, so feel free to ignore the question if it’s out of line.

Peace to you.