Quite often, severe chronic pain is the outcome when acute pain is not or improperly treated. Also, there is a BIG difference between people who are drug seekers, as in the video, and those who truly are in need of relief from chronic unremitting pain. Illegal drugs laced with fentanyl are the biggest problem. The solution is NOT to declare arbitrary and dangerous reductions in legitimate pain patients' med regimens. Rather, it should be to step up the catching of illegal and laced drug shipments - unfortunately by some of our own agencies, at times, a la Barry Sears in the 1980s. I don't think Mr. Sessions would like a nice LONG bout of SEVERE and CHRONIC pain accompanied by his just lowering the already successful dosage regimen. Suicide is what I have been reading about that so many are seeing as their only option in an unrelenting course of action by an over-reaching government. Most people think that pain meds ONLY treat pain. Well, the following information will give an overview of the bodily systems that are damaged and worn down by unremitting pain.
Lymerick
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Complications of Uncontrolled, Persistent Pain

Persistent, unremitting pain may adversely affect the body’s endocrine, cardiovascular, immune, neurologic and musculo-skeletal systems and require aggressive treatment of the pain as well as the resulting complications.
By Forest Tennant, MD, DrPH
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To the unfortunate patient who is afflicted and the practitioner who treats it, incurable, persistent pain is truly its own disease regardless of its underlying cause.1-3 Persistent pain, which is also often characterized as chronic or intractable, has all the ramifications of a disease in that it may have pre-clinical and overt phases.4-6 It may be intermittent or constant, as well as, mild, moderate, or severe. The most unappreciated clinical feature of persistent pain, however, is the plethora of complications that may result — particularly if the pain is constant and unremitting.

Many recent and emerging studies clearly document that persistent pain exerts profound impacts on the body’s endocrine, cardiovascular, immune, neurologic and musculo-skeletal systems.7 Presented here is a review and classification of some of persistent pain’s complications to give the practitioner a basic understanding that persistent pain may produce a symptom complex or syndrome that must be recognized at the clinical level.1 Even though our understanding of the occurrence and mechanisms of the persistent pain syndrome are still quite limited, it is clear that the diagnosis and treatment of persistent pain’s complications must be simultaneous with pain treatment.

Deconditioning Complications

SNIP