CORRECTING THE RECORD on Chronic Pain
We are dedicated to advocating for the proper treatment of chronic pain
and putting an end to forced opioid tapers. Our mission is to ensure that people living
with chronic secondary pain receive the care and relief we need. We challenge
the misinformation surrounding chronic pain treatments, especially opioids, and fight
for patient-centered solutions that prioritize safety, dignity, and effectiveness.
Most of all we advocate for evidence-based treatments and we combat popular myth and misinformation.
Find A Pain Clinic
Search the National Pain Directory to find a pain management specialist.
Have you been force tapered?
Tell us your story and help us put an end to forced opioid tapers.
chronic pain
What does Chronic Pain Look Like?
Chronic pain can happen to anyone. It can have a variety of causes, including disease, nerve damage, inflammation, pain sensitisation syndromes, accidents or injuries.
Not all chronic pain is the same. Each person requires individualised treatment.
Most importantly, ALL chronic pain is either Chronic Primary Pain or Chronic Secondary Pain. It is essential to know which type of pain it is, because treatments are vastly different.
Opioids are NOT prescribed for chronic primary pain.
Opioids are often the only treatment option that helps for severe Chronic Secondary Pain.
how we help people who live with chronic pain
Chronic Secondary Pain has been ERASED FROM THE NARRATIVE
People who live with chronic seconary pain have been denied access to safe and effective pain medicines, opioid pain medicines, due to a campaign of fear and misinformation. Those of us living with severe chronic secondary pain due to incuralbe, proressive disease are instead, people are being offered pain sceince education, which is completely ineffective and inapproprate for chronic secondary pain. We expose the misinformation and myths around opioids and pain science education and the researchers who misrepresent their own results. The media are complicit in publishing cherry-picked and blatently wrong information about opioids.
WHO WE ARE
We are a patient-centred and patient led organisation uniting to advocate and educate around the prescribing of opioids for severe chronic pain. In recent years opioid pain medications have been demonised based on poor-quality studies and oft-repeated myths. We are trying to bring the science to the for, not the hysteria. Learn about the evidence.
FIND A PAIN MANAGEMENT SERVICE
Pain Management services are in high demand. In the public system, waiting periods are long, sometimes up to two years, and even private practitioners have long waiting lists of several months. We are building a directory to help you find an pain management clinic or practitioner near you.
WHAT DOES THE SCIENCE SAY?
There are many myths around opioids. The science tells us that the addiction and/or overdose in chronic pain patients is very rare, opioid-induced hyperalgesia is a rare phenomenon IF it exists at all, and there is NO place for dose ceilings. Thats what the science actually says. But its not what the media prints.
what we do
Learn about our campaigns – CORRECTING THE RECORD ON CHRONIC PAIN AND OPIOIDS
OVERDOSE AND ADDICTION ARE VANISHINGLY RARE IN CHRONIC PAIN PATENTS – SCIeNTIFIC FACT
There is NO OPIOID EPIDEMIC in Australia There is an UNTREATED PAIN EPIDEMIC
In June 2020 the government mandated changes to the way opioid pain-relieving medications are prescribed. These changes were largely misapplied by GPs and pain management doctors, and used to deny patients living with high impact chronic pain access to these lifesaving medications . These changes were enacted due to the opioid epidemic in the US, which has now been shown was NOT due to prescription opioids for chronic pain, but illicit fentanyl and other street drugs. Australia is blindly following down the same misguided path, ignoring the science, the evidence, that there is NO OPIOID EPIDEMIC IN AUSTRALIA. And that chronic pain patients are not the people dying of overdose. Opioids are the only treatment for severe, daily pain. To deny pain relief is cruelty and these policies are based on myth, not science.
People living with chronic pain in 2020 in Australia
Aged 45 or over live with chronic pain
Say chronic pain restricts what they can do
Learn about Pain Science Education
And how it has been used to deny people who live with severe, chronic secondary pain access to opioids.
Contact UsNeed Help?
Have you been force-tapered? Has your opioid dose beenreduced to a dose that is no longer effective to manage your pain?
Get in touch and tell us your story.
What CHRONIC SECONDARY PAIN PATIENTS SAY
Many have been force tapered
“I use a range of therapies for my chronic pain, including exercise, physiotherapy and opioid pain medications. My pain medications are the thing that allows me to exercise but now my doctor is taking my medications away.”
Jennifer WARD
ANKYLOSING SPONDYLITIS
“My neurologist doesn’t manage my pain, I need to see a pain management specialist for that. It means traveling four hours each way every three months. Even an hour in the car is agonising, let alone four.”.
Timothy Davis
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
“I live with multiple chronic diseases and my main symptom is pain. Access to multidisciplinary care is essential. I am one of the very few lucky ones who is still being prescribed my opioid medications”
SHAUN FISHER
CIDP