pain

How Fear, Misinformation, Stigma Have Devastated US Pain Patients

Tamera Lynn Stewart had been taking prescribed opioids for 12 years to treat her chronic pain, following some cancer-related surgeries.…

April 28, 2021

How Artists Are Reimagining the Overdose Crisis

Last year, I volunteered at a harm reduction center where fights and cold sweats broke out, war stories and grudges…

December 17, 2020

DEA Wants to Surveil Patients. Trans Men Stopped Them Once Before.

Throughout the past decade, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sought to encroach on patients’ privacy by accessing their prescription records…

November 16, 2020

My Daughter’s Birth Exposed the Medical Community’s Anti-Drug Stigma

In January, a few weeks after my 49th birthday, my partner, Carolyn, gave me a most unexpected gift. She emerged…

October 28, 2020

Can LSD Microdosing Be a Potent Weapon Against Pain?

LSD is a famously potent psychedelic. But new research has investigated the drug's potential in a whole new setting, as…

September 3, 2020

IV Ketamine Shows Promise for Chronic Pain, But Doubts Remain

The Littleton, Colorado location of Ketamine Wellness Centers is in the basement level of an inconspicuous suburban office building. The…

March 3, 2020

The Formidable Challenge of Understanding Pain

Whether you consider opioids to be the gold standard for treating pain or a last resort, they do the job…

January 28, 2020

How Emergency Departments Fail Pain Patients in Need

Since 2000, Anne Fuqua has been on opioid pain medications, including fentanyl and Oxycontin, notorious for their involvement in different…

January 9, 2020

To Taper a Pain Patient? It’s Never One-Size-Fits-All

Many years ago, I broke my ankle⁠—tibia and fibula⁠—in a fall from a horse. It was compound and comminuted, meaning…

July 22, 2019

How Did We Come to Abandon America’s Pain Patients?

Overdoses—not those involving prescription opioids, but of heroin and illicit fentanyl, often combined with benzodiazepines—continue to go up. But opioid…

July 15, 2019