Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump say 'tough it out' without opioids but they never felt my pain

Steven Horwitz | Opinion Contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption ER opioid overdose visits up 30 percent The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new numbers on the opioid crisis, saying the number of overdose visits to hospital emergency rooms soared last year, the latest evidence the nation's drug crisis is getting worse.

President Trump’s new proposal to combat opioid addiction included some very tough talk about a tragic problem, so it was easy to miss one ambitious goal: slashing legal opioid prescriptions by one-third.

Similarly, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested that part of the problem is that not enough people are willing to “tough it out,” and that they should be just taking aspirin instead, he quickly got my attention. Recently, I tried to do just that.

In early November, at the age of 53, I spent a week in the hospital and was eventually diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a plasma cancer. Thankfully, there are a variety of treatments that hold the promise of long-term remission. But in the short term, multiple myeloma can be extraordinarily painful and many patients can only get relief by using prescription painkillers such as opioids.

Concerns over opioids are not unfounded. The CDC reports that overdoses from prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999, numbering over 20,000 in 2015. Those numbers are of real concern, but we cannot forget that there are also real, tangible costs of living with pain — and that pain relief is part of the healing process for patients like me.

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Multiple myeloma eats away at the calcium in your bones, weakening them. In my case, it went after my back, causing two small stress fractures and numerous lesions, all of which were extremely painful.

In the hospital, I was able to deal with that pain using Tylenol, mostly because I was just in a bed or chair all day. I declined the offer of prescription painkillers when I was discharged. One reason was that worries about opioid addiction had me concerned. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the pain to become serious once I got home and started moving more.

People who wish to drastically limit access to opioids need to know the reality of this kind of pain. Getting out of bed took 10 minutes or more because even one small wrong movement while getting to a sitting position would cause severe back spasms, making me shudder with pain. Walking around my house required balancing myself on walls and door frames.

The pain from sitting down and standing up from the toilet required that I use a chair to hold my weight like one would use a walker. I had visions of being found in the bathroom, stuck on the toilet or even unable to get up off of the floor. Every little twist and turn of my body risked those spasms and shuddering.

Eventually I realized my mistake and got a prescription for opioids. The quality of my life quickly and dramatically improved, as within two or three days, the pain was reduced substantially and my mobility and mood were significantly better. I could walk comfortably and hug my kids again.

It’s important to understand that this kind of debilitating pain not only causes unnecessary suffering, it prevents patients from healing. It takes every bit of energy you have to fight it, and your body has little to nothing left to use to heal. Some medical professionals call pain “the fifth vital sign” because of the way in which it matters for a patient’s health. Opioids enabled me to relax, to sleep and to heal.

Four months later, I am almost completely pain-free and have been largely able to resume most of my normal activities. Blood work indicates that my chemotherapy is beating back the cancer. Access to opioids has without a doubt been a key factor in how quickly my health has improved.

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The controversy around opioids makes people fear legitimate and humane medication. I can’t get back that week I spent in pain. I can’t erase the experience of watching my kids and the rest of my family seeing me suffer.

Policymaking that ignores the benefits of opioids and focuses only on the drawbacks —as serious as they are — is unacceptably one-sided, and passing such policies will mean that thousands, if not millions, will suffer unnecessary pain and fail to heal as they should.

Tackling opioid overuse may indeed require a serious overhaul of a health care system in which some doctors find it easier to throw pills at patients than talk to them. And when those pills are paid for by third parties, the incentives to use them sparingly are weakened.

But in the end, what medications are appropriate will always best be determined within the doctor-patient relationship, not by bureaucratic dictates and bans. The opioid problem might be real, but unilaterally denying relief to those in pain is a cure that’s worse than the disease.

Steven Horwitz is an economist with Ball State University and an affiliated senior scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.