Recently the news has been full of reports on opiates, addiction, ideas to treat the problems of substance abuse and opinions. An April 17 Maine Sunday Telegram article suggests using medical marijuana instead of opiates for pain relief.

Mercy Pain Center is mentioned in many articles on methods to help people with their pain issues. My comments concern statements in the article by Stephen Hull, M.D., director of the Mercy Pain Center in Portland.

Dr. Hull believes that “opioids do not work for chronic pain and many times are counterproductive.” He also is paraphrased as saying that Mercy Pain Center’s goal “is to wean as many people from opioids as possible, by introducing alternative therapies such as physical therapy, exercise, acupuncture and chiropractic.”

Many of the people living in Maine with chronic pain are injured on the job. In Maine, that means the fishing and logging industries, carpentry, heavy physical labor and work that involves repetitive injury, as well as registered nurses, nursing assistants and cooks.

Some pain patients are to be found eligible for disability but are on very fixed incomes. The alternative therapies Dr. Hull promotes are mostly not covered by Medicaid (MaineCare), and Medicare has tight restrictions on very limited chiropractic care. Neither covers acupuncture at all. MaineCare will cover one or two visits for physical therapy and then patients are on their own to recover.

What are the options for those patients who cannot afford the alternatives? How do they cope without pain relief? Do they buy opiates off the streets? Do they turn to heroin? Or do they lose their functionality and quality sleep and develop depression, as I see frequently in my patients?

What if they are one of the thousands who have lost their medical coverage through Gov. LePage’s purge of the poor? What helps these patients?

Eleanor Dudek, ARNP

Standish

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