NC Overdose Drop Tied to Addiction Rules, Not Pain Care
North Carolina's 23% overdose decline tracks directly to pandemic-era waivers easing take-home methadone access for addiction treatment programs. This...

Created by Richard Unterberger
Research, policy, and coping guides for high‑dose opioid chronic pain patients
Explore the latest content tracked by High-Dose Opioid Management Digest
North Carolina's 23% overdose decline tracks directly to pandemic-era waivers easing take-home methadone access for addiction treatment programs. This...
Chronic pain prevalence climbed to 24.3% of U.S. adults in 2023, up from 20.5% in 2019, with high-impact cases limiting daily life reaching 8.5%.
-...
Walmart's $50 million DOJ/DEA settlement highlights pharmacies' duty to block unlawful controlled-substance dispensing, raising risks of added...
Chronic pain stems from varied mechanisms—nociceptive, neuropathic, or nociplastic—plus central sensitization that amplifies signals. This complexity...
California's new CA Bridge Connect provides a free, confidential call and text service for immediate referrals to opioid use disorder treatment,...
Pharmacogenomic testing could help hospice teams select and dose opioids based on genetic variants like CYP2D6, reducing adverse effects such as...
High-dose perioperative glucocorticoids cut 24-hour opioid consumption by 3.8 mg IV morphine equivalents after hip and knee arthroplasty, below the...
Virginia Tech researchers are deploying AI and natural language processing to mine clinical notes, build risk dashboards, and enable personalized pain...
A wide optimism divide—94% of clinicians versus just 42% of patients—highlights how access barriers undermine patient hope despite broad agreement on...
Chronic musculoskeletal pain disrupts movement, sleep, and confidence by amplifying nervous-system sensitivity beyond tissue damage.
Persistent pain that disrupts sleep, work or daily life warrants specialist evaluation rather than dismissal as normal aging.
Key red flags...
A Cochrane review of eight trials finds lumbar supports provide little to no benefit for chronic low back pain, aside from possible short-term relief...
Therapy succeeds when clinicians validate physical pain as real and move at the speed of trust, letting patients like Remi lead without assuming...
Step therapy delivers an evidence-based framework for reviewing medication requests in workers’ compensation, beginning with first-line treatments...
Lindsay Cafariella describes how chronic illness taught her to listen to her body's signals, set firm boundaries, and find empowerment in small...
VA chronic pain management requires coordinated behavioral-health integration, as 52.9% of veterans in the wHOPE cohort screened positive for moderate to severe depression and 37.5% for PTSD, amid high rates of suicidal ideation.
Can Ensysce's first-in-class opioid with built-in overdose protection deliver safer care for chronic pain patients?
Ensysce's completion of enrollment in the final stage of its PF614-MPAR-102 study advances the MPAR overdose-protection technology, which maintains...
New MRI research on non-specific chronic spinal pain reveals clear structural brain alterations tied to clinical symptoms.