The opioid epidemic is killing a lot of people and causing many more to suffer side effects from these dangerous drugs and the addiction that is a common result of their use. Many people ask the question if chiropractic can help these people. Short answer, yes. Long answer yes but first we must look at the reason for the opioid usage in the first place.

Alternative Treatment

Some chiropractic organizations are touting chiropractic as a great “alternative” to these opioid pain killers. There is a fundamental problem with this ideology. Many people get addicted to opiates as a result of chronic pain, often low back pain, neck pain or headaches.  If to merely replace opiates with chiropractic we assume that chiropractic being used as pain management. This is wrong. Its true chiropractic is great at help people with many of the common neck and back pain symptoms that get people hooked on opiates. It is a flawed paradigm to say that chiropractic is merely an alternative to manage the neck or back pain. Chiropractic treatment has the potential to correct the CAUSE of the neck pain, low back pain and MANY other chronic or acute pain problems.

Is Cause a Factor?

The undeniable fact that people and medical doctors often fail to ask is “What is the cause of this back pain or neck pain or headaches or practically any other symptom?” Opiates and other drugs can do a good job at changing the symptom, but at the end of the day, no one has an opiate deficiency. Your body is not functioning properly and as a result, there is an abnormal symptom present, often in the form of neck pain or back pain.

So while chiropractic can manage the pain, it is more important than that because it often eliminates the cause, something opiates or pain killers could NEVER do, hence the enhanced potential for addiction. This fact is why it’s an inaccurate comparison to look at chiropractic as an alternative to opioids or pain killers. Chiropractic is often far superior to drugs when treating musculoskeletal abnormalities that cause acute and chronic neck, back pain and many other painful issues. Patients who choose chiropractic first are far less likely to use drugs or have surgery than those who visit a medical doctor or surgeon first. If you are like most people and are not excited about the idea of having surgery or getting addicted to dangerous opiates then using chiropractic first is a good choice.

When you consider these obvious differences as we look at chiropractic and opiates, it’s not surprising that patients are able to have much better success when they choose chiropractic. Not only is chiropractic often able to fix the cause of the problem but the potential side effects are almost nonexistent. The safety of chiropractic is a stark contrast to medicine as a whole but exponentially safer when compared to the typical pain management treatments that often include dangerous opioid drugs. You don’t have patient getting addicted to chiropractic, abusing chiropractic dying as a result of “overuse” of chiropractic. Chiropractic, unlike opiates, is not illegal without a medical doctors prescription.

Of the 63,632 Americans in 2016 who died from drug overdose opiates were responsible for over 66% of these deaths! Can you imagine the insanity that would ensue if chiropractor killed over 40,000 people in one year?!?!? You’d be hard-pressed to find even a few dozen over the entire course of the profession’s existence, and many of those wouldn’t likely be able to be proven as a direct cause.

Chiropractic is one of the safest and most effective ways to treat the abnormal structural problems that are often the cause of chronic neck and back pain that many people resort to opiates.  It’s not an alternative to these dangerous pain management drugs. Chiropractic is a superior choice for better health and optimal function.