“I hope I will remain alive for 2023 to see changes in pain control,” a woman I’ll call Nancy H. says in a recent email. “I have been treated with opioids for over 25 years at the pain management center of a world-renowned hospital in Boston. I now am suffering daily because I was force tapered down from 150 milligrams of oxycontin and 60 milligrams of oxycodone per day…to just 60 milligrams of oxycodone.”
As a health care writer and advocate for people living with chronic pain, I get a lot of messages like this one. They reflect the experiences of patients suffering the consequences of opioid prescribing guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in 2016. Those consequences include sharp reductions in medication, undertreatment of pain, reduced access to care, and outright abandonment of patients, resulting in needless suffering and sometimes suicide.
The horrifying fallout from the CDC’s 2016 recommendations, which inspired laws, regulations, policies, and practices aimed at reducing the medical use of opioids, was obvious to patients, pain experts, and the American Medical Association.
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