Chronic Pain and Chemical Dependency

No one who has not had to live with chronic pain can truly understand the difficulties of doing so.  From migraines to back pain, from ringing ears to crippling nerve damage, the causes of chronic pain are as numerous as they are debilitating.   The medical community too offers little help.  They tell us to learn to live with discomfort and help us “manage” our pain with a host of muscle relaxers and pain killers.  The result: increasing discomfort coupled with an increasing dependence on chemical release.

Xanax and OxyContin are but two of the more common pain relievers currently prescribed, over prescribed by the medical community.  There are hundreds of others.   This process of “pain management,” of course, leads to missed work, to failed careers, to families devastated by not just the inability of all to participate in family functions, but by the increasing focus on chemical pain management.  As chemical dependency advances the client comes to suffer more than pain: the depression, anxiety, hopelessness, anger, lack of focus that accompanies any addiction.  And thus many who would not normally be considered, nor consider themselves drug addicts, find themselves in the same cycle of  discomfort, release, increased discomfort, increased need for release that any addict suffers.  We find that we have “managed” our pain and ourselves into a smaller and narrower life than we ever would have imagined for ourselves.

No one would suggest simply ignoring the underlying conditions and the subsequent pain, but it would be equally devastating to ignore the consequences of trying to manage this pain, on our own, chemically.  The first step is to recognize that the attempt to chemically manage the pain has led to problems as great as the pain itself.  Before any reasonable approach to the conditions causing the pain can be addressed, we need to be separated from the chemicals causing our lack of clarity and focus, need to address our failed attempt at management in order to be strong enough to confront the genuine challenges of life. 

At The Right Place, Residential Detox we have discovered that the causes of our addiction are not as important as our response to it.   Trying to separate ourselves from the chemicals upon which we have grown dependent on our own is both dangerous and ineffective.  Few are those who can withstand the discomfort for long before returning to those behaviors which bring them both relief and despair. More pointedly, withdrawal symptoms from pain killers include hot/cold sweats, heart palpitations, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, tremors and seizures.  Some sufferers have induced heart attacks; some have died.

Separating ourselves from the chemicals upon which we have grown dependent requires help.  Medically monitored and medicinally supported, residential detox at The Right Place assures not just safety and security, but as comfortable a detox as is possible.   What started as a method of managing our pain has become its own problem.  Give yourself a chance to start over. 

Call The Right Place: Residential Detox at 1-888-748-7523 (RHT-PLCE).

Relax:  You’ve found The Right Place.