The Other Side of Opiates: Lifesavers

You’ve read a lot in these pages in the past few weeks about New Mexico’s problem with the abuse of prescription opioid drugs, which have now surpassed cocaine and heroin as the cause of overdose deaths.

It’s a considerable problem that, in addition to lives lost, causes misery among users and their families. The Journal’s coverage comes amid a new awareness of the potential dangers of opioid pain medications and a push for reform in how they are prescribed and controlled.

Several readers have reminded me that there’s another side to pain pills: They’re legal, and they’re most often used legitimately. For people recovering from surgery or living with chronic pain, they are a lifeline.

It’s a testament to the power of pain and the ability of opiates to control it that some of the people who have written or called to complain about this new “war on drugs” are willing to bare their private struggles to tell the flip side of the opiate story.

I heard from Michael Taylor, a retired elementary school counselor, who told me about the severe back pain that has governed her life for decades and resulted 12 years ago in prescriptions for methadone and morphine.

Taylor is 72. She doesn’t get high, and she’s not addicted to her pain medications. But she needs them in their proper doses to relieve the pain and get through the day. “It’s because of the drugs that I’m able to function,” Taylor told me. “Unless you’ve been through that 24/7 throbbing pain, you have no idea.”

Taylor understands the tragic consequences of recreational use of opiates, but she’s tired of the drugs being discussed only as illicit and the new drug to abuse.

“I realize the hell that those who take illegal drugs go through and put their families through,” Taylor said. “It’s not to compete with that problem, but it is important to understand the legitimate use also.”

The use of opiates to treat chronic pain has improved the quality of life of countless people with back problems, arthritis, fibromyalgia and other painful conditions. For people who rely on opiates for legitimate medical conditions, there is a rising fear that abuse of the drugs to get high will lead to a backlash against pain management doctors and result in restrictions on prescribing that will hurt legitimate users.

“There’s a broad brush that anyone taking it is doing it to get high,” Taylor told me.

Shayla Heavner echoed the thought. “If you go to a pain clinic,” she said, “you’re branded.”

Heavner called to remind me she had gone to high school with my daughter. I remembered her as Shayla Bennett and as an accomplished dancer, but she filled me in on what had happened since she graduated. Doctors found a previously overlooked problem – her cerebellum is located in her neck instead of her skull. She had brain surgery in 2009, and her life changed.

“I’ve been in pain treatment since then,” she said. She can’t turn her head, can’t drive. She wears a patch that releases fentanyl 24 hours a day and is prescribed dilaudid for break-through pain.

She’s 24, married now and a mother of two children. She leads the life of a stay-at-home mom, not a drug abuser.

“I never abuse my medication,” she said. “I never take more than what’s recommended.”

Still, she said, she feels judged for using the drugs and wanted me to understand that the only feeling she gets from her medications is a relief from pain.

“High or relaxed?” Heavner said. “I never feel that way.”

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal