More the 50 Million American Suffer from Chronic Pain Unnecessarily
Chronic Pain is described as acute pain that lasts longer than 3 months. Sometimes this is a result of an accident or surgery, but more often it is the accumulation of the physical affects on the body from one’s occupation. The most common types of chronic pain are persistent headaches, neck aches, back aches, joint pain (arthritis) and nerve pain.

Many chronic pain patients suffer from a multiple of these symptoms: yet chronic pain is not defined as a disease in and of itself—it is considered a symptom of “something else.” The problem is that in many cases this “something else” is in itself, untreatable. Absent a cure for the underlying cause of pain, the best chronic pain patients could hope for was the ability to limit their pain to a manageable level, have a degree of function, and a modicum of quality of life through pain medicine.

And now that option, thanks to the CDC guidelines, has been taken away from a significant number of 50 million chronic pain patients, impacting not only their lives, but the lives of their friends and families. A look at some of those who suffer from chronic pain needlessly as a result is a condemnation of our current medical profession and our health care system.

• 81% of retired truck drivers suffer from chronic pain
• 75% of retired hospitality workers suffer from chronic pain
• 65% of retired military suffer from chronic pain
• 64% of retired miners suffer from chronic pain
• 62% of retired police officers suffer from chronic pain
• 60% of retired farm workers suffer from chronic pain
• 60% of retired meat packers suffer from chronic pain
• 60% of retired loggers suffer from chronic pain
• 42% of retired firefighters suffer from chronic pain
• 40% of retired construction workers suffer from chronic pain
• 37% of retired commercial fisherman suffer from chronic pain
• 30% of retired oil riggers suffer from chronic pain
• 19% of retired longshoreman suffer from chronic pain

The very people who helped build this country, its economy and infrastructure are paying a heavy price for our own standard of living. They built our roads, our homes, supplied our food, delivered our supplies, secured our safety and country against enemies foreign and domestic and now the CDC Guidelines on Pain Management have condemned many of them to a life of suffering for their service to all of us.

Left untreated, chronic pain gets worse. It adversely affects chronic pain patients blood pressure putting them at risk of heart attacks and strokes. When allowed pain is effectively managed by adequate pain medication, chronic pain patients’ blood pressure returns to normal levels, but instead of this being the standard of care, doctors now want to prescribe blood pressure meds which do nothing to alleviate the pain and suffering. The CDC Guidelines for Pain Management have forced creative, productive and valued citizens into a lifetime of torture who have no quality of life, suffer from pain so debilitating they can’t fend for themselves with no quality of life. And even though they know there is a solution to adequately treating their pain, doctors are now forced to undertreat or abandon their chronic pain patients and suggest the suicide is an option if the pain gets too bad.

The best definition of chronic pain I’ve come across is from Bill Walton, NBA legend who after 36 operations, acupuncture, chiropractic care, massage, physical therapy, pain medications, epidurals and trigger point injections and many other alternatives found himself on the verge of suicide when he found himself unable to crawl, had to eat lying on the floor, couldn’t sit, couldn’t sleep, was limited to using a wheelchair or walker to move while suffering debilitating, excruciating, unrelenting pain.

“I can’t describe the pain. Think of being submerged in a tub of boiling acid with an electrified current running through it. That would be nothing.”

Fortunately a friend recommended he see Dr. Steve Garfin and underwent XLIF (eXtreme Lateral Interbody Fusion) which turned his life around. He still has pain, but it is manageable. He can swim, lift weights, walk, bicycle: in short he has regained function and quality of life.

There is no one-sized fits all solution to chronic pain. XLIF surgery is not a cure-all. For chronic pain patients who suffer from Fibromyalgia, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, Chron’s disease, Arthritis, Lyme disease, Scoliosis and more there is no cure to their disease. For other chronic pain patients there may be irreversible musculoskeletal disorders that will not respond to surgery. In all of these cases, undertreatment of the pain, or even worse--patient abandonment creates a vicious cycle which leads to a downward spiral into physical and mental decline that makes suicide an attractive option for the chronic pain patient.

Adding insult to injury, doctors have a tendency to doubt their patients’ complaints of pain as their first impulse. There is a definite bias against chronic pain patients with profiling them as drug seeking patients the first option. Doctors feel chronic pain patients are faking the pain--they just need to suck it up and get on with life. There is also a lot of misogyny in the health care profession (where many doctors believe they are Gods) which further stigmatizes the female chronic pain patient—estimated to be 70% of the total chronic pain population. The stigma foisted on chronic pain patients by the medical community, the CDC, the FDA and other government organizations is unacceptable and contrary to all medical care standards, human right standards and directly in conflict with the Declaration of Independence that citizens have the unalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

The Solution to Restoring the Chronic Pain Patients’ Lives is Well Known But Is Increasingly Denied
The War on Drugs has been going on for over 50 years, and just like Prohibition it has neither reduced the supply of illicit drugs and has grown crime to ever greater levels. Prohibition directly correlates with the rise of the Mafia in the U.S. just as the War on Drugs directly correlates with the rise of the Cartels and street gangs. Today, chronic pain and the war on drugs are costing the US taxpayer 1 trillion dollars a year, with a resultant rise in corruption of the very people who are supposed to be fighting this unwinnable war.

Additionally, the rise of profits at all costs in the corporate world that has been escalating since the 1980s plays a part in all of this. Big Pharma/Health Care are the biggest political lobby in the US and one of the most corrupt. Health Care operations bilk Medicare many billions of dollars a year in fraudulent billing and get fined with a slap on the wrist (a few million dollars). They have been caught holding meetings with their doctors who are instructed in how to overbill for Medicare and rewarded for so doing. In any other profession this would be a clear criminal RICO case. Big Pharma’s patents on opioids have expired so they trying to come up with other meds that are as effective and so far have not succeeded (except in getting doctors to prescribe these drugs that are often more dangerous than opioids and definitely not nearly as effective in dealing with chronic pain.)

To be clear, opioids and the possibility of addiction are not to be taken lightly. However, it is accurate to say that with doctors forced to prescribe fewer opioids and the DEA drastically restricting the number of opioids that can be produced through legitimate sources, the rise in Fentanyl was inevitable. What had been an “opioid epidemic” has now morphed into a Fentanyl epidemic AND left chronic pain patients as the real victims of this war.
So let’s do a fact check, free of the hysteria and propaganda of the war on drugs.

Lie #1. The Overdose Statistics themselves. Let’s be clear—we are fighting for the rights of chronic pain patients to have access to adequate pain relief. By definition, these are patients who are prescribed opioids by a doctor. The level of overdoses from these legitimate doctor prescribed opioids has remained basically constant for that last 15 years. But when the War on Drugs throws out overdose statistics they include heroin, street drugs (now laced with Fentanyl), Fentanyl, methadone (perhaps the most dangerous prescribed opioid due to its long half life) and those who overdosed from a combination of drugs (cocaine, benzos, alcohol, etc) as an opioid overdose. This is fearmongering at its best. The one change in prescription opioid overdose levels is that they are now more prevalent in doses under 50MME than ever—I would surmise that this is because patients who were at higher levels prior to the CDC guidelines and then titrated down to 50MME or less couldn’t stand the greatly increased pain levels they were forced to endure and seeing no end in sight to a lifetime of unbearable pain, waited until their next refill and took them all at once.

Lie #2. The US is 5% of the world’s population but we consume 80% of prescription opioids. The actual fact is that when based on MME (morphine equivalents) the US consumes 27% of prescription opioids. When put into the context that approximately 80% of the world doesn’t have access to health care treatment for pain and that some opioids are over the counter drugs in other countries we rate this an outright lie. Germany has the second highest per capita for opioid prescriptions and they don’t have an opioid crisis. Conclusion: prescription opioids are NOT the problem.

Lie #3. 80% of heroin users started with an opioid prescription from their doctor. The real fact is that 75% of heroin users started with opioids through street dealers.

Lie #4. The CDC guidelines were science based and they were unaware of the adverse effects they would have on legitimate chronic pain patients. The reality is that the guidelines were controlled by paid “expert witnesses” whose true purpose was to use the CDC guidelines to litigate against Big Pharma. The 90 MME level was arbitrary and the fact is that there are many factors that contribute to overdoses from opioids and the dosage level is not in the top five reasons for overdosing.

Lie #5. Studies show opioids don’t work for chronic pain patients. This is a gross misrepresentation of one study, which in itself was very flawed in both who comprised the patients in the study, the dosages used in the study, and the funding behind the study.

Lie #6. Opioids make pain worse in a common condition called Opioid Induced Hyperalgesia (OIH). No reliable evidence or studies have ever proven this, yet it is a commonly used reason to titrate chronic pain patients dosages downwards. Consider these two statements I was witness to that were given by the head of Kaiser Permanente Southern California. “The goal of Pain Management is to get all pain patients off of opioids regardless of the impact on their level of pain.” “Imagine your opioid receptors are like a sink. When your prescription levels are too high the sink overflows and doesn’t let the opioid receptors work.” Common sense tells us that if we are not getting our pain levels down to a manageable level (equivalent to walking on a badly sprained foot for instance) that the sink is draining faster than it’s being filled and our dosage needs to be increased.

There are currently DNA tests that can be used to both determine which opioid is the most effective on a patient by patient basis (for some it might be hydrocodone, for another oxycodone, for another tramadol) and what the patients opioid metabolic rate is. If a patient can metabolize 20 MME of opioids in an hour and is prescribed 80 MME per day, that means they will at best have four hours a day of modest pain relief and 20 hours a day of agony. Every patient is different and needs to treated accordingly.

There’s also the “eyeball” test. A real chronic pain patient doesn’t get high when they take opioids. The best they get is close to normal—if given sufficient amounts of opioids they become active, alert and productive. When not given sufficient amounts of opioids they cannot function, think clearly, be productive or active. The addict or drug seeking patient when given the same dose of opioids goes on a nod (basically slumped in a corner, semi-asleep with no desire to do anything or go anywhere). I’ve seen junkies and I’ve seen legitimate chronic pain patients. The difference is obvious. The problem is that doctors have been brainwashed with 50 years of propaganda from the War on Drugs and have never seen addicts or junkies in person and so they assume anyone who is seeking relief from pain and asking for opioids because they are the only thing that works are drug seeking junkies. Additionally, there is no test that determines how much pain a patient is suffering from: it doesn’t show up in blood work, or C-scans or MRIs and too many doctors believe that if you can’t measure it or see it, it can’t be real. The starting point should be that the pain is what the pain patient says it is.

Should opioids be the first treatment option for chronic pain patients? No. However, a complete medical workup of possible causes of their pain needs to be conducted and at a fast pace.  (It shouldn't take 20 years to diagnose Ehlers Danlos Syndrome for instance.)  Depending on their underlying conditions, certain less aggressive pain medications, like NSAIDs, can cause grievous harm. For instance, in Ehlers Danlos Syndrome patients (who often suffer extreme chronic pain) NSAIDS can cause spontaneous organ ruptures which can result in death in a matter of hours. NSAIDS are also responsible for over 10,000 deaths a year. At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the health community to find a solution, in the quickest manner possible, that works to alleviate the pain that chronic pain patients suffer through every day, even if it includes opioids that greatly exceed the CDC guidelines.

The Barriers to Better Outcomes are Significant but Can be Breached.
For chronic pain patients to be able to have their pain moderated to a controllable level (what normal people would classify as “that hurts a lot” there are many barriers and only one solution. Let’s discuss the barriers:

Litigation. This won’t work. With Big Pharma, the Health Care System, The DEA, the Prison System all having vested interests in criminalizing opioids and having control over the amounts doctors can prescribe lawsuits based on human rights violations, patient rights violations, civil rights violations will not be successful. Even in clear cut RICO violations like those of Kaiser that held parties and give doctors instructions and bonuses to commit Medicare fraud were not indicted, much less prosecuted for such a blatant conspiracy.

Advocacy Groups. There are many advocacy groups that support proper treatment for chronic pain patients. The problem is they are underfunded and that their cliental (the chronic pain patients) are physically unable to stage peaceful protest marches. While one move the 50 million chronic pain patients could possibly undertake is to follow the latest CDC guidelines which recommend you go to the nearest ER if your pain is too severe to handle on a specific date and crash the health care system. The problems with this approach however are likely to be counterproductive. Many of them would be hit with a 5150 code (involuntary commitment to a mental facility), most of them would have their current, limited amount of opioids reduced to nothing in retaliation, and some of them would likely be charged with manslaughter or murder for overwhelming the ER rooms to such an extent that life threatening emergencies couldn’t be triaged appropriately. This is ironic in the sense that a the degrees necessary to be a medical doctor is the only degree that is a license to kill. Even if a doctor purposefully kills a patient the worst outcome in almost all cases is a fine for malpractice.

Clinical Trials. The cost of these is overwhelming and for every realistic study (which has yet to occur) on the effects of opioids on chronic pain patients will be overwhelmed by biased studies from Big Pharma. Additionally, this will take many multiple years to ever happen if there ever was sufficient funding for them. Interestingly enough, there are clinical trials being proposed for the use of LSD, mescalin and other hallucinogens for curing a variety of mental disorders and even as a solution to chronic pain.

Propaganda. For 50 years we’ve been bombarded with the War on Drugs. Two generations have been taught that all “illicit” drugs are bad. Not only has this infected the government and the health system, but it has brainwashed the general public. Yet, over 1200 drugs are recalled each year by the FDA because they have proved to be either dangerous or ineffective. On the flip side, less than 50 new drugs are approved each year by the FDA. This indicates that the medical profession and big pharma get it wrong far more than they get it right. A classic example is that heroin was invented by Bayer to cure morphine addiction.

Big Money. There’s a lot of money at keeping things like they are. The War on Drugs costs the US taxpayer $1,000,000,000,000 a year. At best, it reduces the amount of illicit drugs entering the US by 1%. Big Pharma and the Health Care Industry spend $50 million dollars lobbying for legislations—that equals $1,000,000 annually for every member of Congress.

The above may seem insurmountable, but actually they overlook one thing. There are 50 million (or more) chronic pain patients in the U.S. and they each have at least two friends or families in their support group. Combined, that’s 150 million votes which is more than the total number of votes in the 2020 election. This means, if the chronic pain patients decide to turn the 2024 election into a single issue election about humane treatment for chronic pain patients, regardless of race, sex or political party they can elect any candidate they choose for the U.S. House and President as well as 1/3 of the U.S. Senate. This still leaves the obstacle of the remaining 2/3 of the Senate who is not up for re-election in 2024, but it might be enough of a threat for this remainder to see the light. Otherwise, this same coalition of chronic pain patients can elect another 1/3 of the U.S. Senate in 2026 and that is enough to pass any legislation they want regarding treatment for chronic pain patients. This will require an entirely new slate of candidates for House, Senate and President—in effect a built in term limit for everyone now serving since they are already bought and paid for. The numbers are there for the necessary signatures to get any candidate who’s on board on the ballot in every state. The numbers are there to guarantee that these candidates will win the primary election and the general election. In return, it will require a pledge from these candidates to make this new Humane Treatment for Chronic Pain Patients the first order of business when Congress convenes in January 2025. This pledge will have to be ironclad, with recall petitions already signed and ready to go for candidates who renege on their pledge. The pledge will also need to include an impeachment clause for any Supreme Court Justice who rules the new law unconstitutional. The merits of this are immense. 50 million chronic pain patients will no longer spend their life in agony, many will be able to rejoin society in a productive manner, the monies wasted in the War on Drugs can be used for border security and infrastructure improvements. These and other details need to be worked out by the end of the year so candidate recruitment can begin. So, let’s call it what it is—a health care revolution because one thing is definite, the numbers don’t lie.

Your Participation is Vital. Your Impact will be Enormous.
Today, one in five Americans suffers from Chronic Pain. There is considerable talk about outlawing opioids for dental surgery and medical surgery very soon. If you’ve ever had a tooth pulled, a root canal, a colonoscopy or more major surgical procedure you were given opioids to combat the pain. Imagine going through any of those procedures with just a Tylenol. That’s what life as a chronic pain patient has become. How sure are you, your wife or husband, your parents or best friend won’t be the one in five who spends their retirement in untreated or undertreated chronic pain. To obtain our objectives will require two phases: the planning stage and the implementation stage. The purpose of our FundRazr campaign is to fund the planning stage. This entails the following:

• Creating the Humane Treatment for Chronic Pain Patients Law. It will require the efforts of experts in the field of crafting legislation that dots every “i” and crosses every “t”, preparing candidate pledges and petitions to be put on the ballot, recall documents and Supreme Court impeachment documents.
• Reaching out through established Chronic Pain Patient Networks for initial communications in getting them on board with the project.
• Crafting mass marketing messaging to counter the 50 years of propaganda created by the failed War on Drugs.
• Defining the benefits of repurposing the savings from ending the $1 trillion annual expenses of the war on drugs and how this will reduce crime and corruption.
• Setting up a distribution system for delivery legitimate opioids to legitimate pain patients. Standardizing what constitutes chronic pain and how dosage is determined so that it is effective. Placing safeguards against driving under the influence, crimes committed under the influence, etc. Setting price limits on what legitimate opioids would cost and maximums for what federal and state taxes could be charged and what these new taxes would be used for.
• Making sure the business model doesn’t have the restrictions that the legalization of marijuana has to legal marijuana dispensaries which can’t use the banking system or take standard business tax deductions for employees, rent and overhead. (These restrictions are why the black market for marijuana still exists.)
• Create projections what this new form of our legislature and executive branch of the government would look like and what it could accomplish—not only for the chronic pain patient but for every citizen of our country. Certain benefits are obvious: less crime, far less overdoses from Fentanyl, bigger workforce, less agony for chronic pain patients, better infrastructure. Others are not so obvious but there’s a distinct possibility that, with a new crop of politicians who are not beholden to any lobby, that compromise and enacting legislation for the benefit of the vast majority of Americans becomes possible, our third world health care system becomes a role model for the world and far more affordable—actually the possibilities are endless.

What’s in it for you?
Obviously, if you or a loved one falls into the 20% (at the low end) of Americans who will develop chronic pain, you will be eternally grateful that you contributed to this Humane Treatment for Chronic Pain Patients Revolution. (The burden of the chronic pain patient affects not only the patient who suffers from the pain, but from their loved ones who have to provide support—either financially or with time spent on assisting the chronic pain patient they love.)

To each and every supporter, we pledge to send you updates about our progress as we move forward. We also want to hear from you as to your thoughts on what should be included or resources you think would be of help.

Once the planning stage is complete (to be done no later than November 2023) we will already have begun the implementation stage. In fact, the implementation stage will begin immediately upon reaching our funding goal for the planning stage.