What's the appropriate role of opioids in treating chronic pain?

For years doctors have used opioid painkillers as the go-to solution for all kinds of pain. Now that U.S. society is saturated with these pills and so many people are dying of overdoses, medical consensus and even laws are changing. Doctors are getting the message to cut back. But some patients with chronic pain say they’re being cut off – all of a sudden – from the medicine they depend on. 

So what’s the solution? Answering that question means we have to re-examine what we *think* we know about chronic pain. 

On this episode we zoom out and get a more complete picture of chronic pain, so we can understand where opioids fit in.

We find out about one solution that helps people feel better while voluntarily scaling back on opioid painkillers. Doctors, nurses, and therapists are working to give their patients with chronic pain a whole new set of tools.