Mind. Blown.
Sometimes, it wakes me in the middle of the night: a punishing throb in my lower back. The pain has been my near-constant companion for half of my 41 years. I don’t know its origins. As a health editor, and with no injury to point to, I suspect DNA may play a role—studies have shown a genetic link, and I come from a long line of bad backs. Regardless, over time it’s become more tenacious. Insistent. For the past four years, it’s been joined by a gnawing, steady thrum that radiates down my left leg from hip to knee, the by-product of a herniated disk pressing on a nerve in my spine. Some days, it whispers. Others, it roars.
My distress is just a drop in the bucket. Chronic pain—the kind that lasts longer than three months and torpedoes people’s sleep, moods, relationships, and careers—affects roughly 100 million Americans. The majority are women, in part because we’re more likely to be plagued by conditions like fibromyalgia, migraines, and low-back pain. Sixty percent of sufferers seek help from their family doctor; 40 percent will see a specialist (e.g., a gastroenterologist for Crohn’s disease). Many of them—roughly 10 million annually—will, at some point, be given a prescription narcotic, an opioid to numb the pain.
I’m one of them. At times I can go days or weeks without the meds; but when even standing without pain becomes a struggle, I swallow them every six hours, per the label. I know the dangers: Up to 29 percent of patients given opioids for chronic pain misuse them; between 8 and 12 percent develop an opioid use disorder; and roughly 5 percent transition to heroin. I’m
