Four years ago my mother had an osteoporotic stress fracture in her lower back/sacrum which caused her intense pain - think of sciatica on steroids. She spent a couple of weeks in a rehabilitation hospital and even with strong opioids, she was hurting terribly. Without them, the pain would probably have killed her.
She was still getting opioids (lower doses) when she came home - it fell to me to manage dosage and frequency per the doctor's instructions. In due course the pain diminished along with her requests for pain pills, and one morning, the pain was just gone.
She quit asking for opioids, so she avoided addiction. The point being, opioids are sometimes necessary and essential for pain management. Cutting off people with a legitimate medical need is both cruel and sadistic, and could cause desperate people to seek illegitimate sources - and we all know the problems with that.
