Chronic Pain--the Epidemic Behind the Opioid Epidemic--Who is Treating IT?

We've all read the headlines and started to understand that there is an opioid addiction health crisis in this country, but how many of the articles address the underlying driving force behind the addiction: chronic pain.

Millions and millions of Americans live with chronic pain.  Their experience of pain prevents them from sitting anyplace for long. Their experience of pain prevents them from walking, from exercising, reduces enjoyment of all fun occasions.  For a long time, physicians only answer to this pain has been the prescription of opioids.

Receiving pain killers as your doctor's solution to chronic pain is a little bit like taking your car into the mechanic with an engine failure light lit up on the dash only to have him disconnect the wire to the light instead of fixing the engine.  Pain is there to give us information about something that is going badly awry.  Covering it up with medication doesn't change the underlying situation.

Even worse, many if not most of the people who are regularly taking the opioids STILL experience a lot of the pain that drove them to get the prescriptions.  So now they are addicted, at risk of overdose and still in pain.  It's bad.

A good friend of mine is one part of a team that has opened a special residential treatment program in Camarillo (near Ventura), California for addiction free pain management.  It's called A Healing Place -- The Estates: Transformative Solutions for Chronic Pain.  Click here for an article on their website entitled "why addiction free pain management?" 

A year ago Center for Spiritual Living, Davis founded All is Well Institute where our first project is to teach and support people in using spiritual tools, such as meditation and forgiveness, to heal themselves from chronic pain and chronic illness.  The results we've experienced are tremendous.