Are We Managing Pain But Fueling Addiction?

Written By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II Date: February 10th, 2009. Topic: Member Blogs.

At many of my pain management trainings I ask my audiences three questions to keep in mind as we go through the taining. The first is “are we managing pain or fueling addiction,” that is directed at pain management providers and the second is “are we treating addiction but sabotaging pain management,” and the third question “is it really addiction or could it be pseudoaddiction?”

I’ve been noticing since 1986 that many people with chronic pain and coexisting addictive disorders weren’t getting appropriate treatment interventions. If they went into a pain clinic the entire focus was on the physical pain symptoms and opiates were the usual intervention. If a patient ran into trouble with their medication or actually became addicted and started acting out the usual intervention was to discharge them from the clinic.

Now if that same person went into an addiction treatment program now the entire focus was on the addictive disorder and the pain was not being adequately addressed. If the patient started complaining they were often accused of “drug-seeking” and if it continued they were discharged from the program.

That is why in 1996 I finally started presenting clinical skills training in the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. As I began I also continued to do research and actually go to pain clinics and addiction treatment programs to observe and sometimes consult with the staff. What I noticed is a phenomenon I coined the Addiction-Pain Syndrome™ that I explain more fully in my article Understanding the Addiction Pain Syndrome.

Today as I conduct trainings, workshops, and seminars I often hear people say “Addiction-Free Pain Management® has sure been a well kept secret.” That is why I am now focusing on consultation and training services and my goal is to get the word out—People with chronic pain and coexisting disorders can be helped and we must start implementing effective treatment to make that happen.

That is why we are offering two trainings in the Sacramento area in addition to my other trainings all over the United States. If you would like to go to the 7 hour training Are We Managing Pain but Fueling Addiction or our 20 hour Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification training please go to the Calendar page where you can learn more about all of the trainings I’m presenting and submit your registration for the Sacramento events. Space is limited so decide soon.

To learn more about my views on the right to chronic pain management, please read my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are living with chronic pain, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication problem and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively, please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.