If you’re living with chronic pain and want to improve your quality of life you need to have good pain management.  An effective pain management plan starts with an accurate assessment of your presenting problems, your strengths, weaknesses, support system, as well as any obstacles that could sabotage your pain management.  This usually requires using a multi-disciplinary team approach that includes an in-depth medical history and physical by your doctor followed by appropriate diagnostic testing by other team members.

One of the first treatment decisions needs to be whether or not modification to your medication plan is necessary.  If it is needed then you need to determine whether inpatient medical assist is necessary or you can do it on an outpatient basis with your doctor’s guidance.  This is where you need to develop your personalized appropriate medication management plan.

Do You Need Pain  Medication Modification?

If modifications to your medications are made you may need some craving management tools to help you adhere to your new plan and ways, in addition to your medication, to handle pain flare ups.  As you continue with your pain management planning it is important to learn non-pharmacological, holistic pain management tools as well as social support.

Then you need to develop an initial relapse prevention plan that will help you identify your high-risk situations for ineffective pain management or self-sabotage.  It is crucial to have a relapse prevention plan in place that addresses both your high risk pain situations as well as any core psychological or other coexisting issues such as depression. An essential part of that plan is also to have a simple yet effective pain flare up plan in place.

In APM™ Module Four: A Guide for Managing Pain Medication in Recovery you can learn to explore how you can use pain medication using a recovery oriented approach. First you will look at some misunderstood terms, then you will be asked to list the benefits and disadvantages of using pain medication. Next you’ll write your pain history story and then be shown how to develop your own effective pain medication management plan. The final step is to review a Recovery/Relapse Indicator Checklist and complete a final call to action.

For a brief overview of some of the information in this module please check out my article Managing Pain Medication in Recovery that you can download for free on our Ariticles page. To purchase APM™ Module Four please Click Here.

For those of you that would like an additional resource regarding medication management please go to our Publications page and check out my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Module Two: Examining Your Potential Medication Management Problems. To purchase this module please Click Here.

To learn about two skill trainings coming up in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including disorders including addiction 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.