Many people associate opiates with drug addiction. Author Robert T. Cochran, Jr., however, proposes in The Opiate Cure that this class of drugs is something of a miracle cure for numerous pain disorders and bipolar psychiatric problems. Under FDA guidelines, Cochran has used opiates to treat hundreds of patients with chronic pain. What surprised him was that opiates simultaneously relieved many patients’ mental illnesses though more standard psychiatric treatments hadn’t worked. The opiate therapies relieved bipolar symptoms, narcolepsy, attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and even obsessive worry and self-mutilation. This book aims to convince a hesitant medical community that opiates can control pain and many symptoms of the bipolar spectrum, with only rare cases of addiction.
Cochran’s treatment successes are laid out through dozens of detailed case histories of patients with multiple disorders who were completely relieved by opiates. For example, 43-year-old Laurel suffered years of back pain, but also was bipolar and had post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from early childhood abuse. After many other drugs failed, she finally found total relief through Methadone, “something that Xanax, Effexor, and Trileptal had been quite unable to do.” Opiate cures “can be so dramatic,” Cochran says, “so sudden and total, that denial simply cannot be sustained.”
The author, a long-time specialist in internal medicine, neurology and chronic pain management, lays out his case for opiates succinctly and convincingly, and includes a detailed list and explanations of all drugs referenced in the book. While not verified through stringent scientific standards, Cochran’s premise is thought-provoking and likely to hold wide appeal to patients struggling with long-term pain and bipolar issues, as well as to open-minded members of the medical community looking for alternative ways to help suffering patients.
Also available as a hardcover and ebook.
