opiophobic shield

What doctors and more often physician assistants put up when someone with legitimate chronic pain has exhausted all other options aside from opioids; potent narcotic analgesics. The reason for it is usually the provider has been harassed by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) into thinking they have some "quota" or max number of times they can write for opioids which is bogus.

The shield usually consists of blatant lies to patients such as:
"I actually can't prescribe narcotics..."
"There is too much of a risk of addiction with that product so I'm not going to prescribe it"
"Its too addictive"
"I'm not allowed"
Or commonly just a blank stare as they look at you as if you just asked for 900mg of heroin in tablet form simultaneously coming up with a way to avoid the topic. Ask any chronic pain patient how many times they've had to arm wrestle physicians for better quality of life.

John 19 years old had been a star power lifter and football player for 5 years, towards the end of his high school experience he herniated a disc in his neck resulting in severe weakness and shooting pain in both arms. After 12 months of pain management with full compliance and patience John showed little improvement in his pain levels despite trying everything his physician suggested. When he asked for something stronger his doctor accused him of being drug seeking and dismissed his requests. When John ended up with more pain he had to see his doctors physicians assistant since the doctor was too busy playing golf. The physicians assistant lied to John and told him "he could not prescribe pain killers", the PA obviously didn't have the balls to be upfront and John continues to suffer.

Earny 91 years old had been doing manual labor work for over 30 years and was hit by a car causing severe pain that could not be resolved with regular pain killers. His doctor refused to put him on MS Contin or any other pain killers citing the fact that he could become addicted. Even though Earny's health was rapidly deteriorating his doctor put his own agenda ahead of Earny's quality of life. Earny died a slow painful death which could have been eased with Morphine.

Narcotics are vital and legitimate aspects of medicine! Do not be an opiophobic shield to a better life for pain patients!