People in pain aren't the enemy in the opioid crisis

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I’m NOT taking a stand on a political candidate in this post, but I do want to highlight something so important that Elizabeth Warren recently said:

"Programs and policies meant to deter opioid abuse should not force millions of Americans to lose access to critical medicine and live in pain."

THIS is a real fear of so many people who now have or who previously lived with pain. It's a fear that's indescribable -- of being in the emergency room yet lightyears away from help, and of asserting which medication will ease your suffering by the smallest amount, just to be denied.

To help people in pain, it's crucial for practitioners and policymakers to talk about opioids in a way that doesn't stigmatize those who do or did use them, and in a way that's empathetic to the fear and experience of pain.

I'm grateful to no longer need pain medications. But I still keep them in a drawer *just in case* I should ever need them again -- because the fear she talked about is REAL, and if I didn't *know* that I had access to them, that fear would still haunt me, and it would impose very real limits upon my day-to-day sense of risk-taking, well-being, and adventurousness.

The efforts to combat opioid abuse must distinguish between opioid use and abuse, and they MUST address the concerns of and involve the voices of those in the disability advocacy communities.

Here’s her Tweet and the full scoop: