You Are Not Alone

You Are Not Alone 

by Richard A Lawhern PhD

Readers who are familiar with my advocacy on behalf of people in pain will recognize the title of this short article “You Are Not Alone”.  It is a powerful meme among patients and caregiver communities, meant to generate hope and to contradict social isolation and depression that are common among  people who deal daily with moderate to severe pain (aka “unrelenting agony”).  It is also a reminder to medical professionals who find themselves (figuratively or literally) looking over their shoulders for agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice, State drug enforcement authorities, or State Medical Boards.

Doctors, Physician Assistants, Nurses and Nurse Practitioners are not alone either.  The tide is turning on abusive and unjustified government regulatory policies that place doctors at risk for sanctions, loss of license, or even imprisonment for the imagined “crime” of treating their patients’ pain by therapies that incorporate safe and effective opioid analgesic pain relievers.

I am personally highly visible in this fight for healthcare equity. But I too am “not alone”.  Many others also speak on behalf of patients now being denied pain care.  They include the following individuals, in no particular order of precedence:

Andrea M. Trescot, MD, past President of the National and two State chapters of the American Society for Interventional Pain Physicians.  Member, US HHS Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, 2018-2019. Also my co-author in several papers.

Barby Ingle, BSc Psyc is a chronic pain educator, patient advocate and president of the International Pain Foundation.  She is also a best-selling author on pain topics and print-editor of iPain Living Magazine. Serving on multiple taskforces, coalitions, and testified many times on state and federal health legislation as well as at the Veterans Administration she continues to make a difference. Barby has appeared in media more than 1,300 times on health, chronic pain and access to care. She has received more than 25 commendations for advocacy work over the past 15 years; most recently 2021 AZ Capitol Times Leaders of the Year: Healthcare award.

Barry Ulmer, Director, Chronic Pain Association of Canada

Chad D. Kollas, MD, Medical Director of Palliative and Supportive Care at Orlando Health Cancer Institute.  Lead author of a major published expose on conflicts of professional and financial self-interest in a key member of the writing team of  CDC guidelines on prescription of opioids.

Cindy Steinberg is National Director of Policy and Advocacy for  U.S. Pain Foundation, Policy Council Chair for the Massachusetts Pain Initiative and a nationally recognized leader in pain policy.  She has testified before US Congressional Committees and in many other venues.  Member, US HHS Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, 20182019.

Dan Laird, MD, JD,  physician and expert witness helping defend doctors from persecution by DEA, DoJ, and State Medical Boards.

Forrest Tennant, MD, DrPh, nationally prominent pain and addiction researcher with 50+ years experience.

George Knapp, Peabody Award winning radio and television investigative reporter and news anchor with KLAS-TV Las Vegas News.  Lead commentator for the excellent television series, “The Other Side of Opioids.”

Helen Borel, RN, MFA, PhD., Nurse /Psychoanalyst.  Writer of fiction, satire, poetry and medical science.  Her recent book “American Agony:  The Opioid War Against Patients in Pain” addresses all aspects of current public policy and practice including legislation, lawsuits, and suicides of undertreated or force-tapered patients.

Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason  Magazine, and a nationally syndicated columnist.

Jeffrey A Singer, MD, is a general surgeon in Arizona and a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute.  He writes extensively on the relationship between drug prohibition and harms to medical patients.

Josh Bloom, Ph.D. Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science, American Council on Science and Health.  Author of numerous articles highly critical of bad science and bad policy enacted by US CDC, DEA, and DoJ.

Kate M Nicholson, JD, President, National Pain Advocacy Center.  Civil rights lawyer, speaker and writer on disability rights and pain policy. Represented patients on the Opioid Workgroup of the Board of Scientific Counselors at National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, to assess draft recommendations for updates and expansions of the 2016 CDC opioid guidelines.

Lauren Deluca, Executive Director of Chronic Illness Advocacy & Awareness Group, a member of the Vienna Non-Governmental Organization Committee and has spoken at the UN Office of Drugs & Crime for the past 3 Inter-sessional meetings regarding world health and drug policy/strategy. We are focused on the Public Private Partnerships undue influence on health care policy as a whole.

Lynn Webster, MD, FACP, FASAM, past President, American Academy of Pain Medicine, and author/producer of The Painful Truth.

Maia Szalavitz is an American reporter and author who focuses on science, public policy and addiction treatment.  Several of her articles on pain and addiction have appeared in Scientific American.

Mark Ibsen, MD, working physician who has been contesting judicial and State Medical Board actions against his medical license, for over six years.

Michael Schatman, PhD, CPE, Director of Research and Network Development for Boston PainCare. Clinical psychologist who has spent the past 32 years working in multidisciplinary chronic pain management.

Pat Anson, Editor Pain News Network

Roy Green, syndicated commentator on radio stations across Canada.  Three-time consecutive winner of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters national Gold Ribbon award, Canada’s most prestigious broadcast award.

Sally Satel, MD (Psychiatrist), extensively published author and analyst in National policy for treatment of pain and opioid addiction.

Shasta Harner, Vice President of CIAAG

Stefan Kertesz, MD, Division of Preventative Medicine, University of Alabama.  Widely published expert in addiction treatment, opioid and drug policy.

Steve Ariens, Pharmacist, retired: blogger on patient rights and caregiver to a chronic pain patient dealing with severe pain for decades.

Steven E. Nadeau, MD, a working Neurologist and  Associate Chief of Staff for Research at the Malcom Randall Veterans Administration Medical Center, with 35+ years’ experience and a ton of peer-reviewed publications in medical literature. Fair disclosure: along with Jeffrey K. Wu, Dr Nadeau and I have recently co-authored a landmark paper, “Opioids and Chronic Pain: An Analytic Review of the Clinical Evidence“    See https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpain.2021.721357/full

Terri A Lewis, PhD, NCC, is a clinical educator with more than 30 years of experience in the development and administration of community rehabilitation and counseling programs.

Vanilla Singh MD, former Chief Medical Officer for the US Assistant Secretary of Health, and Chair, HHS Inter-Agency Task Force on Best Practices in Pain Management.

These voices are having an affect with National medical professional groups.  No less an authority than the American Medical Association is now on record declaring as “mythology” the silly idea that America’s public health crisis in opioid addiction and overdose mortality might  ever be “solved” by restricting patient access to prescription pain relievers.  In the context of the AMA Joint Task Force on Substance Use and Pain Care, some 27 State and National professional medical academies and associations have declared in favor of major redirections of regulatory policy, placing individual patients first.   Separately, the American Academy of Family Physicians and five other National professional medical groups have declared that “Frontline Physicians Call on Politicians to End Political Interference in the Delivery of Evidence Based Medicine.”

Each of these professionals and groups has contributed to the public conversation on US national policy for regulation of opioid pain relievers and of physicians who employ them on behalf of patients in agony.  Each in their own way has helped to discredit  the 2016 CDC opioid guidelines, and to repudiate the prevailing unjustified draconian persecution of medical professionals by DEA, Department of Justice and State prosecutors.

Many non-professionals also contribute their time, knowledge and lived experience in advocating for and supporting patients.  Literally hundreds serve as administrators of peer-topeer support groups in social media.  Others lobby at State and National level for changed policy and legislation, including the following among others: Amara Moon, Andrea Anders, Angelika Byczkowksi, Anne Fuqua, Cathy Kean, Caylee, Cresta, Claudia A  Merandi, Erika Conrad-Wes, Heather Wolf, Jeff Edney (CPP News Network – Facebook), Jonelle Elgaway, Kristen Ogden, Lawrence and Rhonda Favero, Robert Rose, Rose Bingham, Sally Balsamo, and others.

Doubtless I have missed some names and organizations active on behalf of patients.  Readers please feel free to identify other voices in comments to this article.

Author note:  Richard A Lawhern PhD, is a volunteer non-physician patient advocate and healthcare writer with over 25 years experience and nearly 150 published papers, articles, and interviews in a mix of medically oriented journals and popular media.