Fear-Mongering and Stigmatizing Medications is Only Harming You and Your Community

The current trend among the chronic pain community — unfortunately driven by some of their loudest advocates — is to stigmatize medications which can highly effective for many patients and for the right conditions. One of the main targets of this stigmatizing misinformation is buprenorphine. Why? Because buprenorphine is a partial-agonist opioid medication which is frequently used for the treatment of patients with substance use disorder, specifically opioid use disorder, for medication assisted recovery (MAR).

People within the chronic pain community understandably fear being stigmatized as patients with substance use disorder (PWSUD) and are pushing back strongly against the idea of buprenorphine — a partial-agonist opioid medication — being pushed on them to replace full-agonist opioid medications. I would be curious if the medication were used to treat a different and less stigmatized community, if folks would be stigmatizing a medication that can be used in their treatment the same way.

I say unfortunately, because — as I have mentioned before and will continue to mention at every chance I get — the stigma that harms the SUD community IS the stigma that harms the chronic pain community. That stigma against people who use drugs (PWUD) is weaponized against pain patients and contributes to pain patients receiving inadequate treatment.

So long as the same loud voices perpetuating stigma against PWUD or PWSUD or the…