Replacing Opioids

Our county’s Committee for Healthcare Improvement has issued a set of guidelines for doctors to use in prescribing opioids. Some of the guidelines encourage shifting pain patients off of opioids and onto non-drug approaches. Instead of prescribing pain killing drugs:

1. Doctors can teach their patients “to think of something else, maybe a new sailboat.”
2. If that doesn’t work, doctors might slap the patient in the face 12 times while reciting, “I’ll show you what pain is.”
3. If that doesn’t work, a nearly certain non-drug cure for pain is death.