There are no known effective treatments for ME/CFS at this time. If pain is truly an factor in your ME/CFS or FM then at some point narcotic painkillers might be a subject of discussion with your physician.
Much of it depends on lifestyle factors: do you need to work everyday, be a parent or caregiver, or are you on disability and can cope by rest and removing stress from your life? For patients, it is not one-size-fits-all.
This article affirms what I have always felt was the case. It is a fallacy that narcotic painkiller use typically ends in addiction. According to this article, the addiction rate for those who use them in a legitimate medical context is 4.5%.
For those with past issues of alcoholism, substance abuse, pyschological issues, then the rate jumps to 30% percent. Some doctors and patients alike have confused the two groups, probably leading to the undertreatment of some very sick people.
Painkillers are generally considered much more addictive than benzodiazopine drugs. So their addiction rate is probably even lower. And I constantly hear the bias against those too when the subject of Klonopin comes up. Some patients may be suffering needlessly.
ME/CFS is usually a life long struggle. Most people, friends, acquaintances, and more importantly doctors, will secretly doubt there's anything wrong with you beside depression, a negative attitude. We've heard that in spades from the UK members.
It's a life boat out there, folks, and it's every man or woman for himself. And people who are newly diagnosed deserved to be given an honest assessment of what the facts are.
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Much of it depends on lifestyle factors: do you need to work everyday, be a parent or caregiver, or are you on disability and can cope by rest and removing stress from your life? For patients, it is not one-size-fits-all.
This article affirms what I have always felt was the case. It is a fallacy that narcotic painkiller use typically ends in addiction. According to this article, the addiction rate for those who use them in a legitimate medical context is 4.5%.
For those with past issues of alcoholism, substance abuse, pyschological issues, then the rate jumps to 30% percent. Some doctors and patients alike have confused the two groups, probably leading to the undertreatment of some very sick people.
Painkillers are generally considered much more addictive than benzodiazopine drugs. So their addiction rate is probably even lower. And I constantly hear the bias against those too when the subject of Klonopin comes up. Some patients may be suffering needlessly.
ME/CFS is usually a life long struggle. Most people, friends, acquaintances, and more importantly doctors, will secretly doubt there's anything wrong with you beside depression, a negative attitude. We've heard that in spades from the UK members.
It's a life boat out there, folks, and it's every man or woman for himself. And people who are newly diagnosed deserved to be given an honest assessment of what the facts are.
"If you're a person that doesn't have a history of addiction and doesn't have any major psychiatric problems, narcotics are relatively safe as long as your doctor doesn't give you too much and uses the right medication," Fleming, who was not involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.
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To get a sense of how addictive opioid painkillers are for those patients who do have a prescription, researchers from The Cochrane Collaboration, an independent group that reviews research on medications, collected the results from 17 studies covering more than 88,000 people.
All of the patients had been prescribed opioids to treat chronic pain, and nearly all of them had pain unrelated to cancer.
In 10 of the studies, patients used the painkillers for anywhere from three months to several years, while one study included just short-term use of several days and the others did not report the length of time patients were on the drugs.
Taken together, the studies found that 4.5 percent of people developed a dependency on the painkillers.
"It's a low percentage," said Dr. Silvia Minozzi, lead author of the study and a member of the Cochrane Drugs and Alcohol Group in Rome.
Although 4.5 percent was the most common rate of addiction among the studies, Minozzi pointed out there were large differences in the rates each study found - ranging from zero to 31 percent..
For instance, a study by Boscarino and his colleagues that was included in Minozzi's review found that 25 percent of patients became addicted. The group of patients Boscarino surveyed had a high rate of alcoholism and illegal drug use, though.