Having Physio for neck and backache. GP won't help with pain relief?!

I'm not sure what country you live in but if you are in the US then welcome to my world. In 2016 the CDC published guidelines for general practitioners to follow when prescribing opiates for pain relief, particularly for someone suffering with chronic pain. (chronic pain is a pain that lasts for 3 or more months. Acute pain is the term used for pain after surgery or something similar). Since the guidelines were publish to the world (yes I mean the world not just the US) has gone nuts. Here in the US the DEA started busting into doctor's offices during business hours, guns a'blazing demand the employees back away from the patient records. Then they arrest the doctor for over prescribing opiates to their patients if they are prescribing more then what was recommended by the CDC Guidelines. Not that the guidelines are law or anything. They were meant as a suggestion. But since they were published doctors have gotten scared that they will be the next DEA victim so many have simply stopped prescribing opiates and let their patients suffer through withdraw instead of doing the humane thing and tapering them slowly. Even the guidelines recommended a slow taper. Other patients (myself included) are having our dosages reduced to the maximum suggested dosages that the guidelines are recommending even when it causes the patient to experience more pain. Seeing a pain management specialist will help if you can find one that still prescribes. We are a class of people that are being quite literally tortured. Thousands of us who have been on our pain meds for years without incident are finding ourselves with no quality of life any more. All of this is because the CDC wrote guidelines and stated that the US has an opiate crisis that needs to be stopped and that long term opiate prescribing is where the problem exists. They have since come out and admitted that the data they used to come to this conclusion was bad information but they have made no changes to the guidelines. In addition the Veterans Administration were the first to say that they were going to stop the practice of prescribing opiates to most of their vets. And the politicians saw an opportunity to look good to their constituents by introducing bills to further reduce the use of opiates for chronic pain. Pharmacies like CVS and Wal-Mart have changed their prescription policies on filling prescriptions for opiates to only agreeing to fill for one week at a time. And some CVS pharmacists are not following their own company policy and instead are just denying to fill any opiate prescription. Medicare/Medicaid and other insurance companies are also writing policy changes for coverages on opiate prescriptions. Oregon's Medicaid is considering passing a law to make ALL patients taking long term opiates tapper down and stopping their opiates across the board regardless of their pain. The suicide rate of the chronic pain patients has drastically gone up with patients and their families reporting that their reason for the suicide was because they could no longer stand the pain they were in. Meanwhile the opiate crisis that is plaquing our country is not being addressed. China is flooding our country with illegally manufactured fentanyl and it's killing addicts right and left. Also heroin is a big problem as well. Some states and municipalities have filed lawsuits again the manufactures of opiates to get money to help fight the crisis in their area. They are blaming the manufactories that make opiates because in the 1990's the drug reps were telling the doctors that it was safe to prescribe opiates to their patients and that they would not become addicted to the drug. 

You are not safe living in another country either. The minute that the CDC guidelines were published Canada adopted the same kind of policies. I believe that the UK did the same. As for the other countries around the world some are even worse. In some countries you can't get any opiates at all for anything. Imagine having surgery and having to suffer the pain with nothing more then aspirin. I believe I've heard that Canada is changing their policies to a more acceptable prescribing practice.

There are alterative treatments that you can try that many other people have had success with. I do not want to mention them here because the monitors will delete my comment. I can tell you a little bit about them in a PM if your interested.

Sorry for the long post but this subject is near and dear to my heart. BTW Sept 18 is Pain awareness day in the US and there are going to be rallies all over the country.