Abstract
Is addiction a problem in chronic pain? There is a school of thought arguing that it is not. The arguments include the following: Thousands upon thousands of patients have been treated with narcotics for acute post-operative pain. It is very rare that any of them become addicts(l). Therefore treatment of pain with narcotics does not lead to addiction. Even long term use of narcotics is appropriate because, miraculously, tolerance does not develop(2,3). The proof is that many patients reach a plateau and stay there with regard to medication dose. If patients increase their dose, then it must be because their pain got worse. It has even been argued that narcotics are not pleasant and therefore no one would take more than absolutely necessary. However, the fact that pain patients reach a standard dose of narcotics does not prove that dependence is not a problem any more than the fact that heroin addicts or methadone maintenance patients reach stable doses implies that they do not have a dependency problem.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Streltzer, J. (1994). Chronic Pain and Addiction. In: Leigh, H. (eds) Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2588-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2588-2_4
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