There is a recurring problem with treating addiction in drug rehabs: people who have chronic pain. Some of these people are addicted to painkillers, and opiate medications have become their drug of choice. Other people have chronic pain and are addicted to something else (such as alcohol), but they can’t use their prescription medications in a drug rehab facility, so that becomes a problem as well. A third group of people might have been self medicating for years with alcohol or other drugs, and now that they have checked into a treatment center and are getting clean and sober, they are starting to notice a chronic pain in their body that they might never have even known was their.

All 3 of these types of situations present a problem for recovering addicts.

Most treatment centers and drug rehabs take the approach that no client that is admitted to their care can use opiate painkillers while they are in treatment. This is just the approach that the majority of treatment centers have taken.

Most professionals have the attitude that it is important to try to manage chronic pain without addictive opiate medications, especially if the person is checking into a treatment center for any type of addiction (alcoholism, cocaine, whatever the case may be).

So here are some pointers about chronic pain that can help the recovering addict:

1. The pain is far less than people realize - this is because of the nature of opiate painkillers (such as Vicodin, Oxycontin, Morphine, etc.)–they do not really lessen the pain at all at the source….instead, they simply dull the brain into thinking that it doesn’t mind the pain so much–right at the level of the brain. They have found that patients given opiate medications can still accurately describe the level of their pain, even though their brain has been dulled into not caring about it so much. This is very different from how some other pain medications work, such as NSAIDS like Ibuprofen, which actually reduce the pain and inflammation right at the site of the pain itself.

2. Opiate addicts who have become dependent on painkillers are simply playing catch-up, trying to constantly medicate themselves from withdrawal symptoms. The withdrawal symptoms will eventually start to become indistinguishable from their original source of pain, so this is a long term game that they can never really win anyway. Kicking the opiates and finding an alternative is the best long term solution.

3. Alternative solutions will present themselves as people remain clean and sober, and coming to manage their pain effectively might be a learning process. If someone is taking a large dose of opiates several times a day to manage their pain, and they go to treatment and detox and get clean, it might take a month or two before they really learn how to get their pain down to a manageable level. Realize that this is very possible though! Their are alternatives to opiate medications, including both alternate medications and alternate therapies. Hypnosis, in particular, has proven to be especially helpful for some people in managing very serious chronic pain. But recovering addicts can learn what works for them and go far beyond the ideas here, using things like hot showers, massage, or even meditation to help them in alleviating their pain.

If you are addicted to opiates, understand that those types of drugs merely mask the pain, they do not lessen it, and many of the alternative therapies can actually lessen the amount of pain right at the source.