Opioids Backlash Leaves Some Struggling With Chronic Pain

Unable to obtain morphine, Heather Weise, 50, lay balled up in pain at her home in Milford earlier this year. It took nine days to refill her narcotic painkiller and she blamed the clampdown on opioid prescriptions for her woes. “My pain’s up there with cancer,” said Weise, an administrative assistant at the sandwich-chain Subway. “I almost ended up at the ER.”

Weise suffers from adhesive arachnoiditis, an inflammation of membranes surrounding the brain and the spinal cord, for which she was prescribed a daily dose of 120 milligrams of the opioid painkiller morphine. When her prescription ran out in the stipulated 30 days for refills, she had nowhere to turn to for relief.