How can we curb opioid abuse in America? To answer this question, we need to find out why people use opioids in the first place. One reason is that they are easily accessible. A family member might have some that a young adult could reach out and start taking. Another possibility is that a user has been prescribed an opioid to treat some type of chronic pain. As for how the crisis occurred, we can start by saying that opioids are overprescribed. For example, Medicare does not have any type of approval process before doctors prescribe opioid medications. As long as a patient has a valid prescription, he or she can easily obtain these dangerous drugs. Addictive prescription opioids have been shown to cause more harm than good in the treatment of chronic pain. Effectively treating chronic pain with alternative methods is key to ending America's opioid crisis. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayAlternative Treatment MethodsAccording to Peter Staats, alternative methods for treating chronic pain include "applying electrical currents to nerve fibers; injecting steroids or anesthetic into problem joints, tissues, and nerves, or treating with an electrical stimulator of the spinal cord (Staats 2017)." These treatments have been shown to provide sustained pain relief without the risk of drug addiction. Reducing the number of opioids prescribed will in turn help reduce the number of patients who become addicted. Research has shown that “three-quarters of patients who underwent a procedure that stimulated a specific part of the spine reported significant improvements in their level of leg pain over the course of a year (Staats 2017).” This is a significant improvement. “Or consider another clinical study, of a device made by Abbott* that stimulates the area of ​​the brain that controls pain signals with electrical impulses transmitted through the spinal cord. Chronic pain patients treated with the device saw their level of opioid use stabilize or even decrease (Stats 2017)." With these types of results, why aren't these treatments more widely used? Partly because they are not considered traditional medicine and health insurers are skeptical and try to steer doctors and other healthcare providers away from nontraditional treatments. For a practical example, we can consider back pain, one of the most common types of chronic pain. Low back pain or "LBP" is defined as persistent when symptoms last more than 4-6 weeks and chronic when pain persists beyond 12 weeks (Veizi and Hayek 2014)." Options for treating LBP, beyond prescription medications opioids, may include nerve blocks or epidural injections. These injections are given in a series of three, over a period of about six months. Nerve block injection treatment can also help providers determine a detailed medical picture and the best plan of treatment. Treatment with an electrical spinal cord stimulator or intradiscal electrothermal therapy has been shown to be effective, but is considered a more drastic treatment than the nerve blocks described above. For this treatment, a small electronic device is implanted under the skin as low as possible to allow the skin to heal around it mostly flat. Then the device emits a small electrical charge stimulating the back muscles. In.