How did we get into this mess?
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), July 2018, in the late 1990s, doctors started to increase the number of prescriptions they wrote for narcotic pain medications based on the reassurance from pharmaceutical companies that patients would not become addicted to them. However, this led to the misuse of these medications before it became clear that opioids were highly addictive. As a result, opioid overdose rates began to increase, and the opioid crisis was born. Now, instead of the pharmaceutical companies accepting responsibility for this crisis, we physicians were the ones blamed by the government, the media, and the public.
The NIDA shared the following statistics on patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain:
Roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients misuse them.
Between 8 and 12 percent develop an opioid use disorder or addiction.
An estimated 4 to 6 percent of this group transition to heroin.
The NIH is actively seeking safe, effective, non-addictive strategies to manage chronic pain and met with pharmaceutical companies and academic research centers in the summer of 2017 to begin this process.
This is why it is so important for physicians to learn drug-free pain management. If the opioid crisis is going to improve, it has to happen at a ground level with the physicians who are seeing the patients and addressing their chronic pain.
From this information, it is clear that physicians have been misguided regarding the management of chronic pain. From my experience as a surgeon and hypnotist, the definition of chronic pain is incorrect, and its recommended treatment is severely flawed.
This propelled me to find a simple method based on hypnosis for managing chronic pain that I've been using for years. The MindWise Protocol for Drug-Free Pain Management is simple to learn, easy to do, and provides a new stream of income for your practice in only a 20-minute office visit. Despite what you might think, it doesn't matter the degree of pathology your patient has or their pain-scale level, you can make their pain go to a zero utilizing this method.
You can learn more by attending the Drug-Free Pain Management Workshop
In the next blog article, I will discuss the difference between acute and chronic pain, and why chronic pain is so difficult to manage. It's not what you think.
Emile Allen, M.D.
Creator of the MindWise Protocol for Drug-Free Pain Management, Certified Instructor of Advanced Medical Hypnosis, Board Certified Hypnotist, and Former Chief of Urology and Vice-Chairman of Surgery
www.MindWiseProtocol.com