Help you can use today.

The Pain Snapshot

A clearer way to tell your care team how pain is affecting your life. Fill it out before your appointment and hand it to your provider — so a single 0-to-10 number never has to speak for everything you live with.

Know your rights

• A prescription written by a licensed provider for a real medical need is legal. Being a pain patient is not a crime.
• The CDC's opioid prescribing guidance is a guideline, not a law — and its 2022 update specifically warned against hard dose limits, rapid tapering, and cutting off patients who are stable. Many "rules" you're handed are firmer in the telling than in the text.
• You have the right to seek a second opinion, and a provider generally shouldn't abandon you without reasonable notice and a referral.
• Keep your own records — prescriptions, dates, and what you were told, by whom.

When a pharmacy refuses

• Ask for the specific reason. In some states, a pharmacist must tell you why.
• Ask if it's a stock issue (temporary) or an actual refusal to fill — they're different problems.
• Call ahead to other pharmacies before you travel; ask if they have it and will fill it.
• Loop in your prescriber's office. They can sometimes call the pharmacy or send it elsewhere.
• Write it down: date, pharmacy, the person, and exactly what was said.
• You can file a complaint with your state Board of Pharmacy if a valid prescription is wrongly refused.

Finding care that treats you like a person

• The advocacy groups below keep referral information and hard-won community knowledge about providers who still treat chronic pain.
• Ask in local patient support communities — word of mouth is often the fastest route.
• Telehealth has widened options for pain care in some states.
• When you call a new office, ask directly about their approach to long-term pain management before you book.

Advocacy groups fighting alongside you

More free tools

• Free Tools to Fight Back — copy-and-send letters for your doctor, your pharmacy, your medical records, and insurance appeals.
• The Pain Patients' Bill of Rights and The Pain Snapshot — read them, print them, share them.
• Myths vs. Facts — what the evidence really says about pain patients.
• The Names We Carry — a memorial to those we have lost.

Allies & partners

We are not in this alone. These organizations have fought for pain patients for years — follow them, use their resources, and lean on their communities.

• The Doctor Patient Forum — Claudia Merandi and Bev Schechtman's organization behind the Don't Punish Pain movement: patient advocacy, how-to guides, a podcast, and the fight against forced tapering and patient abandonment.
• U.S. Pain Foundation — free peer support groups, the INvisible Project stories magazine, educational resources, and federal advocacy.
• National Pain Advocacy Center — founded by Kate Nicholson; policy and human-rights advocacy for people living with pain.