Ameliorating chronic pain: opioids, adjunct and alternative therapies

Excerpt

“The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain”. Aristotle seems to sum up the problem of achieving relief from pain, especially chronic pain, while avoiding addiction. Allowing a person or animal to suffer debilitating pain when relief is possible seems so repugnant to society that it is considered acceptable that the terminally ill may be provided with massive doses of drugs to ease their living and dying. However, for those who are not terminally ill there is concern that patients seeking relief from severe chronic pain may become addicts. This concern increases the reluctance to prescribe opioids, which can lead to the under treatment of pain. It is a formidable health problem that is causing many people to now ask that if those at the foreseeable end of their lives can be spared unnecessary pain, what about the patients who are still active and want to continue to be productive? …