Are You Dealing With Chronic Pain And Addiction? (3 Options To Consider)

So what do you do if you have an addiction to pain pills or heroin and you really and truly also have a chronic pain issue? I'm Amber Hollingsworth, master addiction counselor, and this channel is all about giving you the tools, strategies and supports to beat addiction once and for all. You're not going to beat this thing by being the toughest cowboy out there, but you will beat this thing by outsmarting it. So if you're ready to take your life or your family back from the disease of addiction, subscribe to this channel and I'll make sure you have the strategy you need to pull that off. Okay, so let's get on with our topic. This is about a three step process for coming off of pain pills or heroin for people who have a legitimate pain issue. Okay, so here we go. Step number one. And as usual, the first step is always the hardest. The first thing that you have to do is you have to be able to differentiate between the pain issue, like the chronic pain issue or the injury that you had, and the withdrawal pain, because the withdrawal symptoms of pain pills or heroin is actually pain. So if you've been taking pain pills for a long time to deal with a pain issue, you are going to experience more pain for two reasons, and here they are. First and foremost, when you're taking pain pills or you're taking heroin, which is essentially like taking pain pills, your brain stops producing its own natural pain defenses. And so when you stop taking those pain pills and or heroin, your natural pain defenses aren't working. So everything is magnified. And that pain, not only does it feel like it is still there, it feels like it's worse than it ever was. Because in addition to your brain not having its own natural pain defenses anymore, it also is in withdrawal. And the withdrawal symptom from pain pills or heroin is more pain. Usually it's experienced kind of like flu like symptoms with general pain all over your body, but especially concentrated in your back. And it usually feels like you have, like, restless leg syndrome, like you can't sleep, like you feel fidgety and like you need to move. It's a very uncomfortable feeling and it's hard to tolerate for long periods of time, which is why people find it so difficult to physically get off of pain pills. And so the truth of it is, it's going to take a few weeks, a minimum of a few weeks, to be completely off of pain pills to let your brain sort of readjust. And your brain's and your body's own natural pain defenses will kick in Its then that you're going to know what amount of pain is stemming from the drugs themselves and what amount of pain really and truly is an old injury or a back issue or whatever that original pain issue was. I've been telling people this for years and years. When I worked in the detox center, when I've worked in outpatient, and even now in my own outpatient treatment center, and no one believes me. It is really, really hard because as soon as you don't take those pain pills, you feel terrible and the pain is back. So it's like me telling you something that goes directly against your experience. But I can confirm for all of my clients who get past those initial few weeks, they actually feel much less pain than they did when they were on the pain pills. Because once your brain's natural defenses kick back in, your pain level is going to decrease significantly. So sometimes 75 or 80% less pain, or at least less of the original or chronic pain issue. So I say all that to tell you that a lot of people are able to successfully come off of all pain pills and or heroin, and their quality of life goes up exponentially. Their pain is not nearly what they thought it was before and is oftentimes able to be managed with things like Tylenol and or ibuprofen. Now, I know if you're watching this video, you're thinking, okay, Amber, yeah, that's not going to be me. I'm telling you, this is a bad problem. You can see it in my X rays like it is there. If that's not you, I want to go back to number one and say, everyone thinks that's not them at first. So make sure you at least try what I'm telling you first before you make that decision. Okay? So I'm going to assume you've tried number one, you've given yourself a few weeks, and you are just miserably uncomfortable. The second thing that you might should consider is talking to your physician about an antidepressant. And you might be thinking, what's an antidepressant gonna do for my pain? Well, believe it or not, antidepressants do a lot to relieve pain. Because what an antidepressant does is it helps you to stop fixating on the pain. When you're in pain, naturally, you're obsessing about it. You're thinking about it, and it's hard to think about anything else. And as you're doing that, it's just deepening that neuropathway over and over and over again. The More you think about it, the more it's going to hurt. So in many cases, being put on an antidepressant helps people to not obsess about it and think about it, which can significantly decrease your pain without taking something addictive. Okay. And the third option to think about here is if you're taking some sort of regular pain pill that's a short acting medication, then you probably already know that your tolerance just keeps going up and up and up and the medicine works less and less and less. And my guess is you're going to sort of hit the ceiling as far as what works and also for what a physician is going to be willing to prescribe you. If nothing else works and you truly have long term chronic pain that has to be managed, then you might want to talk to your physician about getting a maintenance type medication that uses buprenorphine. Those medications would be things like Suboxone, Subutex, and now the newest form is sublocade. Now I'm not a physician, so I'm not telling you to take these medicines. I'm a counselor, an addiction counselor, and I'm telling you to talk to your physician about these options just to clear any misunderstanding. The reason these other medications might be a slightly more effective way to manage your pain is because your tolerance isn't likely to keep going up and up and up the same way it does with other pain medications. And buprenorphine is actually a long acting opiate. So you don't get those spikes every four hours like you might taking other things. You don't get that sort of like constant roller coaster of withdrawal. Those medications can even things out and make it a lot more steady and tolerable and hopefully will help you get out of that building tolerance, needing more and more and more cycle that you're stuck in. But number three really is probably the last option that I would consider if I were in your shoes. I've had hundreds and hundreds and thousands of clients over the years. I've been doing this like a long time and I've got one client that I've seen now for several years who's using this as an option. She actually had a major wreck and when she was a teenager, like major, like almost didn't survive and crushed like almost everything in her body. And she did recover from that after tons and tons and tons of surgeries. But as you can imagine there are some problems left over. This client actually noticed that she was taking more of these medications, that she was dependent on them and they weren't working. Well for her. And so she did her own research and found out about Suboxone, but went out, got herself on Suboxone and has been able to maintain on a pretty low level of that for several years without much issue. But to be honest, I would describe that client maybe as dependent on pain meds, but probably not really addicted to pain meds. And there is definitely a difference. Before you decide to go with option number three, I am going to strongly suggest you do a couple of things. First and foremost, talk to your physician. Remember, Amber is not a doctor. I am not prescribing you anything. I'm just educating you about some options. And the other thing you should do is take a look at my other videos on Suboxone, Supplicate and subutext. There are a couple here and I'm going to put them right here so that it's super easy for you to click. And you can watch that next.