[ladyinred]

I think you might be right. I am going to a pain specialist, and he has to have his patients sign contracts and he very carefully monitors us. There is a stigma against pain sufferers as evidenced on this thread by some, who consider anyone who has to have the meds a junkie! They also want to lump us into the same category as street junkies. Walk a mile in my shoes!

[X-Servative]

Didn't Wynona Ryder have multiple prescriptions from multiple doctors for something like Xanax. I don't seem to remember her being charged with "doctor shopping."

[CobaltBlue]

If you take narcotics regularly over a long period of time for chronic pain, you *will* become addicted to them. So in the sense of being a drug addict, there's no difference between someone who gets their drugs legally and someone who gets them illegally.

What matters is HOW you get them. If a doctor prescribes them, then you're not a street junkie. If you go to four different doctors for one month's supply of the same drugs every month, you're still not a street junkie, but you're probably breaking the law.

When you tell your four doctors what you're taking, do you tell all four of them everything you're taking? Or do you tell each of them that he's your only doctor and you get your drugs only from him?

Maybe the solution would be to legalize narcotics, so you can buy them without a prescription. That would be one way of solving the problem, wouldn't it? No crime, no criminal.