Letter: Anti-opioid guidelines hurt some patients

The story “Drop in fatal opioid overdoses” [News, July 10] does not report that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines in 2016 recommending that doctors reduce prescribing opioids in an effort to control overdose deaths. This action is a primary reason for the fall in opioid overdoses.

During this process, some patients in chronic pain have been cut off from their medically necessary medications. They are left to not only suffer in pain but also experience severe withdrawal from the lack of opioids. Ultimately, some patients seek suicide as an escape.

Unfortunately, many in the public have not made the distinction between those who abuse opioids and those who need them for chronic pain.

People in pain have limited treatment options and for many, alternative therapies are not covered by insurance and fail to be effective. People with real pain and legitimate medical problems should not have to suffer and be denied pain medications prescribed by their doctors.

Stacey Udell, Melville

Editor’s note: The writer is a co-chair of the annual Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association’s walk for complex regional pain syndrome.