When Night Falls Loud
I don’t know if my experience matches that of other people suffering from chronic pain, but in my life, pain is with me with each moment. It usually stays around my normal pain level, a solid seven on the scale, but sometimes, it flares into something ugly. The pain is sharper, heavier, and there are days when my body feels like it’s been hijacked by something ugly, where nothing I can do helps.
It’s during those stretches where something curious happens: the dreams. They’re not normal dreams; I’m dragged into scenes where I’m the target of such rage that it feels real. If I’m the target, who’s pulling the emotional trigger? The people I’ve loved most in my life turn against me with venomous words. Once, my mother appeared, shrieking at me like she was a banshee, with a voice with such fury that I couldn’t comprehend. While in those dreams, I’d feel anger rise in me, but the only thing I could manage to do was warn those around me to calm down. Then I’d wake up, shaken, exhausted, and still with my constant companion.
I was curious about the relationship between my dreams and pain. I found research showing a clear link between chronic pain and nightmares, often with unusually vivid recall. What I found most surprising is that my nights mirrored what I read.
The takeaway for me is simple: The sharper the pain, the louder the dreams.
Suppose anyone else who lives with chronic pain has experienced similar dreams during their bad stretches. If you have, I’d like to hear about it.
I’ve said this in prior articles: I know many people have it far worse than I do. My struggles, as difficult as they feel, pale in comparison to theirs. These men and women endure relentless physical pain, but that’s not all: The cruelty of a bureaucracy that brands them addicts and throws roadblocks in their path. For them, every step toward relief is turned into another uphill climb.
Here are six stories from people who are walking a path that few understand: the short temper from lack of sleep, the quiet stretches when people ask if you’re okay, and the only answer is “I’m fine.” And for me at least, despite my trying to keep it to myself, I end up watching my loved ones deal with my constant complaining
Incognito
Incognito’s story begins in childhood, when rheumatic fever left her with damage most doctors either overlooked or dismissed. Decades later, she lives with adhesive arachnoiditis, a condition so painful and so poorly understood that many patients are left abandoned without help. For her, pain has been a constant companion since the days when her classmates were still learning multiplication tables.
She spent years being told it was all in her head. The pain kept spreading, tightening around her spine, making even ordinary movement an exercise in grit. Each clinic visit became another round of humiliation. When she finally found a doctor who believed her — Dr. Tennant — it was like oxygen after suffocation. He treated her not as a suspect but as a patient. His care did not cure her, but it gave her dignity and some measure of relief after a lifetime of disbelief.
Incognito’s account shows the long road many pain patients walk before anyone listens. It is not simply the illness that destroys them, but the dismissal that follows. Her life is proof that medicine fails when it treats suffering as a character flaw instead of a call for compassion.
David F.
David is 69 and carries the weight of rheumatoid arthritis and a spine that has slowly betrayed him. His iliac crest pain makes standing feel like punishment, and only once in recent years did he taste life without it: a diagnostic nerve block that silenced the agony for a single day.
That day confirmed what his doctors already suspected — his superior cluneal nerve was the culprit, and ablation could give him months of relief. He is not looking for a miracle, just for the chance to stand without feeling like he’s being cut in two. However, Medicare classifies the procedure as “experimental,” and clinics are reluctant to perform it. Fraud statutes even block him from paying cash for the treatment. So he returns to tramadol, Tylenol, cortisone shots, and physical therapy. They help at the edges but never touch the raw nerve pain that the block erased. Each day begins with the same blade in his back, and he knows there is an answer — just out of reach.
David’s case exposes the cruelty of bureaucracy. He does not lack proof. He lacks permission. And that is the final insult: to prove a treatment works, only to have a system declare his suffering less real than its paperwork.
John G., Critical Care Nurse
John G. isn’t just a patient. He spent his career as a critical care nurse, living at the intersection of policy and pain. He watched as government officials demanded hospitals raise patient “pain scores” or face financial penalties. He lived through the policy swing from reckless overprescribing to rigid denial — and then became a patient trapped in that same pendulum.
When his own body gave way, John carried both medical knowledge and patient experience into his appointments. He knew exactly what the rules were doing, because he had enforced them himself. He saw how hospitals pushed opioids to satisfy satisfaction surveys, and how that same pressure now punishes patients by cutting them off. In his own care, he faced suspicion instead of sympathy, and red tape instead of relief. The irony was bitter: the very system that once forced doctors to overtreat now under-treats and shames patients like him.
John’s testimony strips away excuses. Patients did not invent this crisis. Bureaucrats did. Pharmaceutical executives did. And now the punishment has fallen on those least responsible: the men and women who live with daily pain and simply want to be treated as human beings.
Redthunder, Army Veteran
Redthunder wore the uniform of the United States Army and paid the price in scars and broken bones. He is now 90% disabled, a number that sounds abstract until you see what it means: he cannot leave his house without pain relief. And lately, even that relief has been rationed away.
The Veterans Administration, which once pledged to care for him, now treats him like a suspect. Pain medications that gave him the ability to step outside, to see the world beyond his walls, are rationed and restricted. The DEA’s shadow looms larger in his care than his service record does. He fought for his country, but his country now fights him when he asks for mercy. Each day, the horizon grows smaller. Each week, his world feels more like a prison with no door.
Redthunder’s story is not just his own. It is the story of a promise broken. Veterans are supposed to be honored for their service, not punished for their scars. Yet in his case, the betrayal is total. He served a nation that now fears paperwork more than it respects his pain.
Texas Nurse and Administrator
This Texas nurse spent his career as a nurse and administrator, helping others heal. A liver transplant saved his life, but afterward he found himself dragged into a new kind of battle — the fight for pain management. Instead of compassion, he was met with suspicion. Instead of care, he was treated like a criminal.
His medications gave him the ability to function, to enjoy the life that his transplant had preserved. But over time, the system cut him off. He was forced to taper when his body wasn’t ready, and then he was shoved into cold-turkey withdrawal over Thanksgiving. The timing was cruel, the method inhumane. A man who had dedicated his career to medicine was abandoned by it in his own time of need.
Texas nurses’ experiences are a mirror for countless patients who survive the impossible only to be punished for doing so. He is proof that pain management has stopped being about healing and has turned into a contest of suspicion. His survival is both a miracle and an indictment.
mliebs: Retired U.S. Border Patrol
mliebs once stood guard on America’s border, honored as Employee of the Year for his service with the Border Patrol. But when pain entered his life, it stole the career he loved. Opioids became the only tools that allowed him to keep moving, to keep functioning at any level.
Even with a record of service and a reputation for excellence, mliebs found himself stigmatized. He was treated as if survival itself were a crime. Pain medication made his life bearable, yet each refill carried the weight of judgment. He wasn’t looking for euphoria—he was looking for a way to stand tall after a lifetime of service. But in the eyes of the system, that distinction no longer mattered.
mliebs’s account is not one of triumph but of endurance. He has outlasted pain, prejudice, and policy, but at enormous personal cost. His story is a warning: even those who give everything to the nation can be abandoned when they need its mercy most.
More Chronic Pain Stories
The Door Was Locked: When Pain Clinics Disappear and Lawmakers Dismiss the Fallout
The Forgotten Casualties of the Opioid War
Chronic Pain Patients: I Want to Hear Your Stories
Your Stories: Real People. Real Pain. How the War on Opioids Is Destroying Lives
Suffering in Silence: Four More Stories the Opioid Crackdown Refuses to Hear
The Diet Nobody Wants: When Pain Starves More Than the Body
The Door Was Locked: When Pain Clinics Disappear and Lawmakers Dismiss the Fallout
Discarded: Veterans and Survivors Left Behind by Pain Policy
Got a Story? I Want to Hear It.
If you live with chronic pain and have been pushed aside, doubted, or punished by the very system meant to help you, I’m listening.
You don’t need to write a novel. Just say what you need to say. You can share as much or as little as you like.
And if you’d prefer to stay anonymous, that’s absolutely fine. I’m not a government agency or research lab. I’m not running numbers.
I’m just trying to tell the truth, your truth.
Not to sensationalize suffering. But to hold the system accountable for what it’s done to real people: mothers, workers, veterans, neighbors.
People who didn’t ask for pain but live with it every day.
You can send your story by clicking the “TIPS” button and including your email address so I can follow up if needed. Please include my name at the beginning of your message so I can ensure I receive it.
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