SACRAMENTO – An Orangevale veteran says he managed to live on the same dose of painkillers for decades. But suddenly, he lost access to the entire amount. CBS13 has been following his journey for months, and here are the results.
Even something as simple as taking a walk with his wife is painful for Richard Wright.
“I take opioids for pain control,” he told CBS13, explaining that 35 years after breaking his back, he takes doctor-prescribed morphine every day. “He gives me [the] quality of life and pain relief that allow me to get out of bed, stand up and visit my family, especially my grandchildren.”
But a few months ago, Richard said his doctor Kaiser told him he was cutting the dose in half.
“I don’t understand why they want to take him away,” she said. “Without it, I’m in bed. With it, I have a life.”
It turns out that since 2016 the CDC has been recommending patients stay below the equivalent of 50 milligrams of morphine per day. Richard was taking 90 milligrams. His wife, Linda, says gradually lowering his dose left him sore and sick from withdrawal.
“With medication,” it’s not like he has a perfect life and we accept that and work with it,” Linda told CBS13. “We’ve been doing this for 35 years.”
Kaiser Permanente couldn’t talk to us about Richard’s case, but admits it is changing some patients’ opioid prescriptions “following current scientific evidence and public health recommendations,” adding that the federal government has “new controls” in deed.
The states and feds are aggressively attacking the pharmaceutical industry for its role in the opioid crisis, and as part of some deals, distributors are limiting the painkillers they dispense. That, in turn, is forcing some doctors to rethink the medicine they prescribe, and pharmacists are scrutinizing the prescriptions they fill.
“The difficulty is unbelievable,” Janell Baptiste told CBS13 last year when Sonora pharmacy SaveMart stopped filling the pain prescription. She said she has been taking the pills for the past 13 years following a motorcycle accident. She got sick from withdrawals and couldn’t find a pharmacy in her area willing to pick up her prescription.
“It’s only been four months, but these four months have felt like years,” she said.
His region, Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, has the highest rates of opioid prescriptions in all of California — about 80 prescriptions per 100 people — which is more than double the state average.
“Unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve had a sharp increase in opioid-related deaths,” said Dr. Kim Freeman, Tuolumne County health official. “This is our highest year yet.”
Dr Freeman says new data show 14 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2022, a sharp increase from 2018, when there was just one.
“If you have a lot of patients taking high doses, you’re going to be screened a lot and you need to be careful as a provider,” he told CBS13.
This can, in some cases, lead to more efforts to reduce patients to lower doses, which according to addiction researcher and professor Dr. Stephan Kertesz of the University of Alabama, can have mixed results.
“The problem is, you can’t always solve a crisis by going exactly backwards from how you got into it,” said Dr. Kertesz. “While some patients may benefit, many more suffer mental health crises, drug overdoses, suicidal ideation or even die by suicide.
Research from UC Davis published just last year showed that one to two years after an opioid dose was reduced by 15% or more, there was a 57% increase in the risk of overdose and an increase in the 52% risk of mental health crisis. CBS13 checked in with Janelle 10 months after he first struggled to get her meds from Save Mart. She says she is now taking “small amounts” of opioids and would prefer a higher dose, but she is managing. She says another local pharmacy is filling her prescription for her.
As for Richard, she says that while she understands there’s an opioid crisis, she thinks she should have joined the conversation even before her doctor cut her dose.
“I’ve never overdosed; I’m not going to overdose,” Richard said. “And that’s a calculated risk I’m willing to take for the comfort it gives me.”
CBS13 spoke to Richard last year and latched on to his story as he navigated the taper. His initial updates describe excruciating pain and withdrawal symptoms. But now he’s been on Kaiser’s pain management program, and he’s tried other therapies. And guess what? Last month, Richard says he swallowed his last morphine pill. Yes, after 27 years, he’s not only on a lower dose, but he’s completely stopped morphine and is taking a drug called Suboxone, also known as buprenorphine. He says his pain is now manageable and calls it “a miracle.”
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