Craig, a middle-aged banking consultant who was on his school's lacrosse team in college and played professionally for half a dozen years after graduating, began developing back problems in his early 30s. "Degenerative disc disease runs in my family, and the constant pounding on AstroTurf probably did not help," he says. One day, he recalls, "I was lifting a railroad tie out of the ground with a pick ax, straddled it, and felt the pop. That was my first herniation."
After struggling with herniated discs and neuropathy, Craig consulted with "about 10 different surgeons" and decided to have his bottom three vertebrae fused. He continued to suffer from severe lower back pain, which he successfully treated for years with OxyContin, a timed-release version of the opioid analgesic oxycodone. He would take a 30-milligram OxyContin tablet twice a day, supplemented by immediate-release oxycodone for breakthrough pain when he needed it.
Then one day last May, Craig's pain clinic called him in for a pill count, a precaution designed to detect abuse of narcotics or diversion to nonpatients. The count was off by a week's worth of pills because Craig had just returned from a business trip and forgot that he had packed some medication in his briefcase. He tried to explain the discrepancy and offered to bring in the missing pills, to no avail. Because the pill count came up short, Craig's doctor would no longer prescribe opioids for him, and neither would any other pain specialist in town.
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http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/08/americas-war-on-pain-pills-is
