May 25, 2016 2 min read

The head of the state’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, Gary Tennis, was in Washington Tuesday to meet with police, social workers, elected officials and others involved in the battle against drug addiction.

During an informal discussion following a ceremony to honor first responders who have saved the lives of overdose victims, blame fell upon the pharmaceutical industry for encouraging physicians to overprescribe strong medication for pain that can be treated with other means. That’s certainly a major factor, but the problem is more complex than that.

“The difficult part is that it’s multigenerational,” said Roberta DiLorenzo, superintendent of Washington School District. “It’s really hard to break that cycle for a child who’s grown up not feeling pain because everybody self-medicates in some way.”

People have been attempting to escape the painful realities of life by way of alcohol and drugs for thousands of years. If there is something different now, it is that too many people are unaware that there are alternatives to relief from pain – both physical and mental – and that they are ignorant of the consequences of their behavior.

That medical science has developed medication that can effectively relieve pain is wonderful. But we have come to expect to be pain free in the recovery from our injuries, which is unrealistic and unnatural.

It is normal for a doctor to prescribe 10 days’ worth of opioid medication – proven time and again to be highly addictive – to patients who might easily find enough relief with common aspirin or ibuprofen. And in so many cases, patients accept this treatment because being free of pain is so much more convenient than dealing with some discomfort.

And for many of those patients, 10 days is not long enough, not when the drug is so effective and their mood is so elevated. The route to addiction from this point is well documented.

Pain, of course, can be agonizing and debilitating, and relief from it important. But pain comes to us in degrees, the lesser of which can be lived with. Just as there are better ways to deal with life’s problems than drowning them in alcohol, we need to realize that there are probably other and better ways to manage our physical pain than risking addiction, and falling into a crevasse from which we may never be able to climb out.