Hi, my name is doctor James Grant.  I’m a National Board-Certified Chiropractic physician practicing in Salt Lake City Utah.  We specialize in treating neural musculoskeletal problems, primarily neck, back shoulder, knee, ankle injuries or degenerative problems.

Today I’d like to talk about the opioid epidemic or pain pill epidemic.  This been a concern of mine for over 30 years.  In my practice, we treat a lot of auto accident patients.  Our emphasis and specialization has driven us to become certified in automobile accident impairment.

As a result of this, we see hundreds of patients that come from the hospital or from the emergency room with pain pills like Percocet, Lortabs, Percodan, Vicodin, and other forms of opioids. These pills are highly addictive.  Patience that take them on a regular basis can become addicted to them within a short period of time.  Medical doctors are the ones who have prescribed these powerful medications.

 

The patients build an addiction to the prescription pain medication and begin to get hooked to the feeling of relief they get from these medications.  These doctors who feel they may be investigated by the department of occupational licensing for over prescribing patients will then cut the patients off of their prescriptions.What happens next is the patients will often times go to a different doctor and then another until they’re cut off by everybody.  When they can’t find another doctor to prescribe these pain pills they go to the street and many of them will end up on Heroin which is a very similar opioid or pain pill substitute.

Utah is one of the worst States in the nation concerning opioid addiction, it ranks in the top 10, which is very concerning to me.  These patients feel they have no choice and so they go to the street and become heroin addicts.  The unfortunate thing is they will do anything and everything to support their habits.  They will steal from their families, they will forge checks, they will rob banks and stores and commit horrible crimes to satisfy their addiction.

All of these things happen to a family member of mine and after a 10 year battle with addiction he was found by his parents on Christmas morning with a needle in his arm and was pronounced dead at the scene.

What can we do about this epidemic?  One of the first things is that we need to become educated about the dangers of prescription opioid use, and when you go to your medical doctor with pain, you need to ask him if there are other alternatives.

In my opinion, the best alternative to the most musculoskeletal pain like back, neck, shoulder or knee pain, is to ask your position to send you to a Chiropractic physician.  Chiropractic care is the best form of pain management that does not require any pain pills or opioids.  Most patients that we see have relief on the first visit and within 3 to 6 are pain-free.

Think of the billions of dollars and family tragedies and loss of life this would save if medical doctors referred they’re paying patients, people that are in pain, to Chiropractic physicians.

If the Chiropractic treatment does not work in within a 6 to 8 week period of time, where the patient is still in pain, then alternative forms of medicine should be considered.  Chiropractic care is a wonderful way to treat pain musculoskeletal injuries without addictive pain pills or surgery.  Spread the word, talk your friends, talk to your families and talk to your doctors when you see them.  This could save someone’s life and it may just be your own or one of your families.