As a journalist, I have always been taught to represent all of the possible sides and opinions in a story. However, when it comes to writing about opioid or narcotic pain killers, the majority of reporters only represent the negative sides of these types of pain killers. A few recent examples have pulled my attention back to this kind of lopsided reporting. I saw these articles on a Chronic Pain support message board, and they have gotten very strong reactions, both from me and others on the board. It seems that, because these medications have a darker side, they aren’t worth having in society, no matter what they might do for people in pain. It is too often forgotten that these medications are some people’s only hope for getting out of bed every day, let alone leading a productive and happy life.
The first article, which was found on philly.com, was titled “Dangerous mix: Teens & legal drugs,” and spoke about the increasing misuse of prescription pain medications by teenagers (found at http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/16477561.htm). However, the author, Judy Shepps Battle, fails to recognize anywhere throughout the article that, while there may be negatives to these medications, there are also many positives. There is no mention of what the proper use of these medications or what these medications can do for people who are actually in pain. The article focuses on two specific types of medications, Vicodin and OxyContin. The author states, “…62 percent of teens believe prescription pain relievers are "easy" to find at home.” However, OxyContin is only used in cases of severe chronic pain, not for the average broken arm or sprained wrist. It leads me to believe that the survey the author quotes is about Vicodin and the drugs in that class, as opposed to the long-acting, stronger drugs, but that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the quoted materials. Battle does not tell readers that the survey focused on any specific medications, leaving readers to assume that it is speaking about both of the medications mentioned throughout the article. This article was found under the opinion section, but was written by an addiction specialist. While she makes some good proposals about how to solve this issue (like keeping these types of medications “under lock and key” and disposing of medications no longer in use) she doesn’t mention any solutions that actually deal with changing the teenagers’ behavior. She simply says that keeping the medications out of a teen’s reach will stop them from using them, but I think that others would disagree that that course of action is the only one to be taken. If parents don’t teach their children that prescription medications aren’t for use other than that which is intended, nothing will stop them from taking them and nothing will stop them from getting to them. Some people, when reading this article, may conclude that these medications should be done away with entirely, which will pretty much get rid of the problem completely. In these kind of articles, a reader comes away with the thought that the world might be a much better place without these kinds of medications because the positive side to them, the power they have to help people live their lives, isn’t mentioned anywhere throughout the article. I very rarely see an article that actually praises the use of strong narcotic medications for people who have no other options and who, without them, would be in pain beyond comprehension every minute of every day for the rest of their lives.
The second story, titled “Program Helps Patients Deal with Chronic Pain,” implicates that those of us who use narcotic pain killers to treat our pain are addicts who need to be put on a 12-step program, similar to the one for alcoholics or gamblers. The story ran on the INDY channel news, located in Indiana (http://www.theindychannel.com/health/10782581/detail.html). They featured the Chronic Pain Rehabilitation Program at Methodist Hospital that helped people deal with their chronic pain by offering them this 12-step program. If the patients got through all of the 12-steps, they would need less medication and be better equipped to deal with the trials of having chronic pain. There are some pieces of this story that I completely agree with. In order to help deal with chronic pain, a person has to deal with the emotional impact it has on them. Someone once told me that the only way to describe the emotional pain this chronic pain causes is by relating to death. It is a death of the person’s identity and many times, their very lifestyle, and they must grieve for that loss. Everything changes with this kind of unending pain, especially when it is made clear to a patient, as it was for me last March, that this pain will last the rest of their life. It’s a scary thought. I lost everything that I felt made me the person I was at the time. And I had to go through the grieving process, just like I would if someone close to me died. However, this story doesn’t lay out the 12 steps of the program. It is extremely short and seriously lacks information. When someone without chronic pain reads this article, I think that it would say to them that chronic pain could be solved without pills and that those of us who do use medications are just trying to take the easy way out. This story is another one that fails to promote a positive image of chronic pain patients. Yes, it is a step forward, because it isn’t talking specifically about medications, but at the same time, it can give the impression that the pills are bad, similar to other stories, and this mind-body approach is the only way to go for everyone suffering. I think that this story does make one thing very clear, and it is one thing that most people just don’t understand: “Chronic pain generally can’t be fixed, but a growing number of patients are learning to come to grips with it.”
Finally, a recent study was published, “suggest(s) that opioid pain relievers often provide no advantage over non-opioids for relieving chronic back pain.” This really surprised me. I’ve been on opioid pain medications for over four years, and they have been helping me the entire time. Without them, I doubt I would be able to leave my bed, let alone get to school to finish my education and give myself the change at a life. The study does say that these medications carry a higher risk of addiction. I have one huge problem with that statement: they do not define addiction in the article summarizing the research. I have learned, in the research about my condition, that there is addiction, addictive behaviors, and physical tolerance. If those performing the study defined addiction as a person’s body craving the medication, then addiction isn’t the correct term. Physical tolerance is the term used for that type of issue. Addiction is a term used when a person craves the drug mentally and will go out of their way to get it, no matter the consequences, even if the drug has lead to bad things in the past. These terms are used interchangeably, so the majority of people would put those of us whose bodies crave the medication in the same category as someone who uses cocaine or crack, and it isn’t fair to us. Anything that’ll perpetuate this stereotype, I believe is horrible research. The summary quoted research about the percentages of the study group who, by the end of the study, had some sort of substance abuse disorder (exactly what that is was not spelled out). However, these numbers were not compared to the rates of this disorder in the general public, so the percentages quoted could be similar or even identical to that of the general population. I think an article like this, along with this kind of research hurts people like me who suffer from chronic low back pain. After reading this, many people may believe that I must be an addict because I’m on these medications even though they don’t work for my kind of pain. Also, everyone who has responded to this article in our support group’s message board completely disagrees with their findings, and these are the people who experience this study every day. (The article can be found at: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=2007-01-15T225652Z_01_KNE582550_RTRUKOC_0_US-OPIOIDS-CHBACK-PAIN.xml)
The more these stereotypical ideas are spread, the harder it makes life for me and all those like me. It is amazingly difficult for me to get my pain medications and get these medications in the strength I need them in because of the teenagers and even people my age misuse the medications and doctors don’t want to prescribe them, especially to people my age. People call me an addict, including my own family members, and tell me that the only reason I am in the situation I am currently in is because I am on these medications, and even, as my aunt told me, because I didn’t seek the care of a chiropractor. Stories like the second one I quoted here are part of the problem, not the solution. Add those two stories to the research I quoted here, and person who takes opioid pain killers for their chronic low back pain is turned into an addict who is contributing to the problems with today’s teenagers and is wasting their time with medications.
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