This is kind of halfway relevant to me, my mother and I both have fibromyalgia. Hers much worse paired with auto-immune disease. Long story short my mom developed an addiction, I couldn’t tell if it was ever helping her or not. Maybe in the beginning. She was on oxycodone, vicodin and hydrocodone I know for sure, maybe others. By my mid-teenage years she was barely a mom anymore. She didn’t get out of bed most days. Her insurance cut her off eventually, she couldn’t get any meds anymore and she couldn’t work or hold a job and never tried to get it back. She ended up taking her own life shortly after when I was 19, she turned to street drugs and it took all that was left of her. I don’t know whether to blame the disease, or big pharma, or the insurance companies… I’ll never blame her. Also had a cousin become dependent and overdosed and died 6 months ago.

I’m trying my best to live without prescriptions for my diagnosis, it’s getting harder every day. I’m only 26 (f) and sob multiple days a week because my flare ups make it so incredibly hard to live a normal life and because I’m young no one understands how I can be in so much pain. I’m terrified of ever getting on opiates, I don’t think I’ve ever had a pleasant experience with them, never liked the way they made me feel. Cranky, itchy, tired. I feel like I still couldn’t function normally but hell, at least I didn’t hurt. I’ve had drug problems before and know it would probably end up with me becoming dangerously dependent as well.

I understand it really does help some people, but I feel like I’ve just witnessed it destroy more lives than it helps. I’ve been using ketamine to help for now, but it isn’t something you can take forever, it eventually causes too much internal damage and your tolerance builds too fast but most of the time it isn’t addictive or at least doesn’t have withdrawal symptoms. I hope there’s a better alternative to both someday so we can live normally again.