Claudia on Recovery TV Podcast 8/19/25
This week, Claudia joined Recovery TV with host John Tassoni to talk about the crisis in pain care and what’s really happening behind the headlines.
In this interview, Claudia breaks down:
Why the CDC’s flawed data fueled a huge increase in overdose deaths after the 2016 guideline.
How doctors are being intimidated, prosecuted, and jailed for treating pain.
Why patients, including the elderly, cancer patients, and people with sickle cell, are being forced onto the streets for relief.
The dangerous push to substitute Suboxone for pain treatment and why that’s wrong.
How corrupt academics and federal incentives created today’s broken system.
What the Doctor Patient Forum is doing, from legislation to support groups to national advocacy, to push back and restore compassionate pain care.
👉 Watch the full episode here:
As Claudia says in the interview: “Telling a patient that opioids don’t relieve pain, that’s a form of mental illness. Morphine relieves pain. It doesn’t cause pain.”
If you want to go deeper, don’t forget our Patreon is updated daily with resources, analysis, and support for both doctors and patients.
Because no one should be left to suffer in pain.
The Rhode Show with Claudia Merandi 1/24/24
Studio 10 – Claudia 1/22/24
Claudia – on John Tassoni’s Recovery TV Podcast
Nikki Medoro Show – Claudia Merandi
You Can’t Treat My Pain Because You’ll Lose Your License
Watch Claudia interview pain patient, Connie. Connie has survived breast cancer twice, 30 surgeries, and MS, yet she’s had a hard time finding a doctor to treat her pain.
“The few doctors that are brave enough (to prescribe), it’s only a matter of time before they get shut down.” ~Connie
“We’re seeing people in hospice, palliative care, with acute injuries, kidney stones, and nobody is being treated because of the opioid elimination industry. This is a big business; there is a lot of money in suffering.” ~Claudia Merandi
Pharmacy Podcast Network – Claudia and Bev Discusses Patient Abandonment
The Doctor Patient Forum is a non-partisan, community-based organization that works to support pain patients and their physicians with access to lifesaving pain relief and to mitigate the harmful effects of efforts to curb liberal prescribing and overdose. With a focus on disabled people, those in chronic pain, and physicians who work with them, DPF provides information, practical tools, and policy analysis to strengthen patient-centered safe and appropriate medical support and advocates for approaches that reduce increasingly common suffering and death resulting from non-consensual medication reduction or termination of care.
Raising Awareness and Improving Conditions For:
• Pain patients facing non-consensual medication reduction
• Termination of treatment
• Untreated pain
Well-intended responses to the overdose crisis by state and federal authorities have caused unintended harmful consequences including patient dismissal / termination of care and forced/non-consensual opioid and benzodiazepine tapers, which have led to a crisis of medically abandoned patients, suffering, and even death.
Guests:
Claudia A. Merandi
DPF Board Member, Executive Director, President
Beverly Schechtman
DPF Board Member, Director, Vice President
It’s Not Just in Your Head – With Bev Schechtman
Bev Schechtman was on the podcast “It’s Not Just in Your Head.”
“Opioids Are Legitimate Medicine.”
Our guest discusses the horror show that current drug policy is having on American lives, how access to vital medication has been removed from people who need it in order to work, or function, or have any semblance of quality of life. As such, huge numbers of people are turning to street supply or ultimately taking their own lives to escape their chronic pain. This episode highlights a variety of serious issues with current drug policy and explores the ramifications of letting ‘black box’ algorithms dictate who is considered worthy of treatment and how easy it is to be labelled a ‘drug seeker’ based off your mental health history.
This discussion is deeply informative and terrifying, because anyone of us could find ourselves in this situation.
The Addiction Solution welcomes a special guest, Beverly Schechtman, Director/Vice President of The Doctor Patient Forum, to discuss The War on Opiates!
Our VP, Bev, Was a Guest On Pharmacy Podcast Network!
Part 4 in the series “Pharmacist and Physician Opioid Collaborative” on Pharmacy Podcast Network.
Listen as Todd Eury, from Pharmacy Podcast Network, asks Bev a question that is long overdo…”What is the patient’s perspective?”
“No one ever asks the patient what we think, we are kind of shoved out of it.” ~Bev Schechtman
“But what they’re missing, Bev, is they’re missing the empathetic bedside manner to look you in the eye and give you a sincere little smile, showing they’re there for me as a patient.” ~Todd Eury
“We feel like everyone around us is going to treat us as though everything we say is a lie, that we’re going to try to get out of whatever it is they think they’re trying to catch us in, and we can’t trust any of them.” ~Bev Schechtman
“The way they set up the system patients can’t be honest with our providers.” ~Bev Schechtman
America in Pain; Why No One Cares. Claudia Merandi and Beth Dost, RN
Caught up in a war against illicit Fentanyl and Heroin, 50 million Americans who suffer from chronic, daily pain have been marginalized and discarded.
“Doctors can get wiped out in one fell swoop.” ~ Claudia Merandi
Listen to Dr. Wrenn describe what happened to him when his patient, who he was treating for addiction, died. “If you prescribe Suboxone, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”