Simon Chartrand was 23-year-old when he found himself, one morning, unable to eat or speak. Two years ago, an oral surgeon had severed his lingual nerve during a routine wisdom tooth extraction. Since then, he had felt a constant low-level pain in his mouth – but this was different. He began to faint while drinking water.
He was taken to the hospital by his boyfriend, where an IV sustained him for a week through artificial hydration and nutrition. His doctor cycled through various pain medications, trying to find one that would work. Exhausting all other options, he settled on high doses of Dialudid, a strong opioid.
“These are the pain killers you give to, like, terminally ill patients,” Simon says. He is en route to his weekly acupuncture appointment in midtown Manhattan. “By the time I left, I was taking 8 pills at a time. Which is enough to kill a person. But I was already so used to it that I could take it.”
Like many people living with chronic pain, Simon decided to try acupuncture out of a feeling of desperation. As the rate of new prescriptions for opioids rise, the rate of overdose rises even faster. According to a recent survey by the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of deaths from prescription opioids has increased by over 18,000 incidents in the past 20 years, and roughly 38 percent of the population who take opioids report taking them for chronic pain. And doctors, although they know the risks, are in a tough position – opioids treat pain better than anything else on the market.
But many patients are opting out. Simon (pictured above) uses combined physical therapy and acupuncture to manage his pain. It does not give him the same relief – or the euphoria – that Dialudid would, but it allows him to continue working towards his PhD in French Literature, and teaching French classes on the side. He is still catching up on the work he missed while on high doses of opiates.
