Emerging research is helping to place pain and addictive disorders on a continuum rather than on the traditional dichotomy of recent years [12–15]. It is clear to a growing number of clinicians that pain patients can, and sometimes do have concur- rent addictive disorders that decidedly complicate the management of an already challenging patient population [16–19]. It is possible for pain and addiction to exist as comorbid conditions such as the case of the alcoholic with peripheral neuro- pathic pain. However, the chronic pain patient who suffers from the disease of opioid addiction may be somewhat different. In this situation, the opioids used to treat the chronic pain may be iden- tified as either.
