[LadyDoc]

no. in pain clinics, they use multiple modalities to treat pain. If you need "more and more" pain medication to "feel normal" you are treating a psychiatric problem, not pain.

Most pain clinics use several levels of pain management. They use anti depressants to make people less depressed (i.e. "feel normal"), physical therapy, local injections of cortisone, exercize, and non narcotic pain killers (NSAIDS like motrin to treat the inflammatory component of pain, and Gabapentin to treat the neurologic pain component).

Unless you have worsening disease, such as cancer, you DON"T increase the dosage of narcotis...because the pain level stays constant...

[lonestar]

In theory, anyway. I'm thankful I've had no first hand experience with chronic pain so I don't have a clue.

When I was 19 and "diet pills" were new, my doctor and next door neighbor, pulled me off the streets to give me some. I had gained my 40 lbs during my Fr. year in college.

I took one and at 3 a.m. I was sitting up in bed with the lights on counting flowers on the wall. Literally. I never took another diet pill. Later they were known as "speed."

That's my experience with drugs.