The Painful Truth Documentary
The Film
The Painful Truth tells the stories of people who are hurting the most. They discuss their ordeals with friends, pharmacists, and doctors while fighting the system. They talk about giving up and how, sometimes, suicide seems like the easiest solution.
They number in the millions. They are all around us, but they live in the shadows.
They exist within a medical system that fails them and within a political system that treats them as druggies who receive medicine from doctors viewed as drug pushers.
The documentary tells their stories from the perspective of people who are the most hurting. They discuss their ordeals with friends, pharmacists, and doctors while fighting The System. They talk about giving up and how, sometimes, suicide seems like the easiest solution.
In addition, the documentary captures the wisdom of leading pain specialists who candidly speak out about our American medical system that has some of the worst outcomes in the world in pain management due to insurance, politics, and poor medical education. The Painful Truth caps a two-year coast-to-coast journey through despair, helplessness…and, above all, hope.
Full-Length Documentary
It Hurts Until You Die
Award-winning film festival version of the The Painful Truth Documentary, with extended scenes and information.
Full-Length Documentary
Producers
Lynn R. Webster, M.D. is an internationally recognized expert in pain and addiction medicine. Dr. Webster has long been an advocate for patients suffering from chronic pain and addiction. He has fought for better education and safer therapies to address the twin crises of chronic pain and addiction in America.
Craig Wirth has been in broadcasting 46 years starting in high school in Great Falls, Montana. He started at our channel four in 1970 for the first of several stretches as Utah’s TV story teller. He later worked as a network correspondent in Los Angeles and for TV stations in New York and Los Angeles.
Lynn R. Webster, M.D. is an internationally recognized expert in pain and addiction medicine. Dr. Webster has long been an advocate for patients suffering from chronic pain and addiction. He has fought for better education and safer therapies to address the twin crises of chronic pain and addiction in America.
For 25 years, he treated patients with chronic pain, many of whom were at high risk for substance abuse. For 15 of those years, he also treated individuals with opioid addiction. He has seen how lives can be destroyed with chronic pain or addiction. This experience has given him a unique insight to the medical challenges of fighting both diseases.
Dr. Webster earned his doctorate of medicine from the University of Nebraska and completed his residency in the University of Utah’s Department of Anesthesiology. He is board certified in anesthesiology, pain medicine, and addiction medicine. He lectures extensively, and has authored more than 300 scientific publications and books including, The Painful Truth: What Chronic Pain Is Really Like and Why It Matters to Each of Us (Oxford University Press). Dr. Webster is a senior editor to Pain Medicine, and he has contributed editorials and interviews that have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Washington Post, New York Times, Salt Lake City Tribune, Huffington Post, and The Hill.
Dr. Webster is Vice President of Scientific Affairs for PRA, a leading clinical research organization that operates in more than 80 countries. He is a past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM).
Craig Wirth has been in broadcasting 46 years starting in high school in Great Falls, Montana. He started at our channel four in 1970 for the first of several stretches as Utah’s TV story teller. He later worked as a network correspondent in Los Angeles and for TV stations in New York and Los Angeles.
He received four Emmy Awards for his New York and LA work. Wirth returned to channel four for a weekly TV visit in 1988 while also working in Los Angeles. He quickly specialized his reporting into telling the stories of the history of daily life in Utah for a 15 year run as a stable of Utah’s Sunday night TV.
He rejoined his old home of Utah’s first TV station in November, 2013 to again relive the delightful story of Utah’s history in his trademark “Wirth Watching” reports on the Sunday night news.
In 2012, he was inducted into the Utah Broadcasting Association Hall of Fame.
Wirth also serves as the Communications Director of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah and is a long time instructor at the University of Utah Department of Communication. He also shoots, writes and narrates historical based documentaries. His other passion is volunteering with Best Friends as the group’s M.C. for its Super Adoptions in Salt Lake City.
Viewers’ Comments
“The truth hurts and THE PAINFUL TRUTH is just that, a no holds barred account of what medicine and society are only beginning to fully realize: there is only so much doctors and nurses can do to relieve pain. We can reattach limbs, replace joints, transplant organs, and obliterate once fatal tumors, but we can’t kill the pain monster. Worse, fears about addiction and financial concerns prevent doctors from fully utilizing the treatments that have been developed. So all too often it’s not a matter of we CAN’T relieve pain, it’s a decision we WON’T. That’s a painful truth that is hard for anyone to stomach.”
—Anne F.
“113 million Americans live with chronic pain. Dr. Lynn Webster is a powerful voice for the voiceless. I’m grateful for your work, and for dedicating your life to help others. Thank you, Dr Webster. “The Painful Truth” is exactly what you titled it...Painful and the Truth.”
—Karen D.
“Bottom line, people are suffering. Those who are addicted are suffering and those in Chronic Pain are suffering. We also know over the counter pain medication are ineffective and unhealthy. Alternative therapies are temporary at best for those who suffer muscular and neurological pain. One has to wonder why there is no compassion for people who are truly suffering from chronic pain. Stat should focus on the real epidemic which is illegal drugs instead of attacking Chronic Pain sufferers and people that advocate for them.”
–Scott R.
“A very heartfelt thank you to Dr. Webster and the handful of doctors who are abiding by their oath to do no harm and standing up for their pain patients!!”
–Pam
“It’s happening everywhere! ! Wrong, ridiculous, cruel & unfair to us chronic pain patients. Something has to happen.”
–Thea D.
“I am very pleased to read about this documentary, and look forward to seeing it. There are two things I know for sure: intolerable chronic pain is real, and to a person experiencing it, any relief will do. Pain relief is absolutely vital. Shame on the glib fools who roll their eyes and suggest a cup of tea or meditation to relieve chronic pain. How fortunate they are to know so little about it. How unfortunate that they lack empathy, that they might be able to imagine it…It is a ‘drug war’ gambit that uses innocent people in pain as pawns, and it is grossly indecent.”
–Mike
“It’s about time that pain management is not seen as the villain in the ‘opioid epidemic.’”
–Nikki D.
“I am a Disabled Veteran who has been suffering for about 30 year. My Doctor had me pain free for about 15 year’s until these politicians came riding in on their white horses and began this war on opioids. They took away the medicine that worked and gave me more of a different medication.”
–Wayne S.
“I am thankful that Dr. Webster is standing up for pain patients. Addiction is a horrible epidemic, but punishing pain patients will not solve this. The guidelines have been taken by many states and doctors as Laws for all doctors prescribing medications not just primary care MDs.”
–Linda C.
“I applaud Dr. Webster’s attempt to enlighten the public to the hard truth that Pain Specialists HAVE BEEN discouraged from prescribing opioids to patients who genuinely need them. I am one of those patients. The general public needs to be fully aware of the fact that, should they be unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with chronic pain anytime in the near future, they are basically screwed as far as having any real possibility of receiving pain meds in a dosage that would be sufficient to control that Pain on a consistent basis.”
–Anonymous
“It’s high time someone stood up for those in chronic pain.”
–Sharon R.
“Unless you have personal experience with daily unrelenting pain, you have no right to dictate how peoople with chronic pain should be treated with opioids. The worst punishment for someone would be to have to suffer with pain. Drug abusers are not the same as a person with chronic pain. Comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges.
–Kathleen Y.
“I appreciate Dr. Webster and his commitment to helping get the correct information about this issue of chronic pain brought out. Thanks.”
–Beth W.
The Painful Truth Documentary Images
Pain advocate and pain sufferer Cindy Steinberg works from bed each day near Boston as the National Director of Policy and Advocacy at the U.S. Pain Foundation. She details the struggles of getting respect for those in pain for the cameras of “The Painful Truth.”
Shopping Center shooting spree victim Carolyn Tuft tries to walk through her yard while experiencing her daily pain. She tells “The Painful Truth” it has taken eight years to get disability despite losing muscles, bones, and carrying over 135 lead pellets in her body left from three direct shotgun blasts.
Shopping Center shooting spree victim and now chronic pain sufferer Carolyn Tuft gives “The Painful Truth” cameras a personal view of what happens when the sharpest pain often hits sufferers in the night as they try to sleep.
Co-producers Lynn Webster, MD and Craig Wirth (who also handled principle videography) shot dozens of examinations of pain patients over a two year period across the nation to gather a comprehensive view of people in pain.
The deflated game ball given to Hal Garner after an AFC Championship represents the grind and injuries that lead to an abundance of available pain medication and addiction that lead to a prison term.
Lynn Webster, MD is one of America’s leading pain experts and researchers. The award winning author is also a past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.
Former NFL great and chronic pain patient Hal Garner candidly details his pain medication addiction spiral that landed him in prison and his recovery.
Co-producers Lynn Webster, MD and Craig Wirth traveled 70,000 miles gathering stories from pain victims and chronically their daily struggles. Much of their work was done in some of America’s most prestigious pain clinics.
