He Had Tried to Quit for Twenty Years. Then He Asked Me One More Question.
Dr. John Erickson, DC | Laser & Chiropractic Center of the Rockies | Loveland, CO
Case 015 | Series Post #15
He Came In for Sneezing. He Left With Something He Hadn’t Expected.
He was in his early 70s. The persistent cough and sneeze had brought him in. After fifteen sessions, those were largely under control.
Then he sat down one day and asked me a question I wasn’t expecting.
He wanted to know if this type of allergy work could do anything about a medication he had been dependent on for twenty years.
A Patient Who Had Already Seen Real Results
Dan came in with a familiar pattern – persistent cough and sneezing tied to environmental allergens. He had worked through conventional allergy approaches without success. Medications hadn’t resolved it. Desensitization protocols hadn’t either.
Initial testing revealed multiple environmental and food-related sensitivities. We began the foundational NAET protocol. Within a relatively short period, he reported that the sneezing had decreased and the coughing had diminished. After fifteen sessions, the primary complaint he had arrived with was largely addressed.
He had gotten what he came for. Then he leaned forward and told me about the Fiorinal.
Twenty years earlier, he had been put on Fiorinal – a combination medication containing aspirin, butalbital, and caffeine – for headaches. It had helped. But over time, his body had developed a dependence on it.
He had tried to wean himself off multiple times over those twenty years. Each attempt brought severe headaches and an inability to sleep. The withdrawal was bad enough that he had eventually stopped trying. He had resigned himself to taking the lowest dose he could manage and staying there.
What If the Problem Was Sensitivity to the Medication Itself?
We talked through the concept. Medications, like any substance entering the body, can produce internal reactivity. The drug may be doing something useful – dampening a symptom, altering a pain signal – while simultaneously producing a push-back the nervous system registers as discomfort.
The goal was not to take him off the Fiorinal. That was clear from the start. The goal was to see whether we could reduce his body’s sensitivity to the medication – to change the signal the nervous system was sending about it.
We were not attempting to treat his dependence. We were addressing his body’s reactivity to the substance. Those are different things – and the distinction mattered.
We treated him for the Fiorinal.
Central Sensitization Runs Deeper Than the Chemical
Research on medication overuse headache has documented that long-term use of certain headache medications produces central sensitization – changes in how the nervous system processes and amplifies pain signals over time. Published in Nature Reviews Disease Primers, this research confirms that pathophysiological mechanisms of medication overuse include altered descending pain modulation and central nervous system sensitization – not just chemical dependency in the classical sense.[1]
In NAET, we assess the body’s response to any substance – including pharmaceuticals. What the assessment identified was that his nervous system appeared to be in an ongoing reactive relationship with the Fiorinal – not just dependent on it, but in a complex push-pull the dependency model alone didn’t fully explain.
Addressing the sensitivity to the medication meant working at the neurological level of that relationship – not the pharmacological one.
Patient-Reported: A Week Without It. Then Off Entirely.
His history was specific and measurable. Prior to treatment, going more than two days without Fiorinal produced noticeable and extremely uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms – severe headaches and inability to sleep. That had been his ceiling for twenty years.
After the first Fiorinal treatment, he reported being able to go an entire week while only taking the drug twice. That was a change he had not been able to achieve in two decades of trying.
After a follow-up treatment, he reported that he was able to safely and comfortably discontinue the Fiorinal entirely.
The Nervous System’s Relationship With a Substance Is Not Always What We Think
Medication overuse headache is recognized in peer-reviewed medicine as a condition involving central sensitization – the nervous system itself becomes part of the problem, amplifying and sustaining pain signals in ways that outlast the original trigger. Research published in Nature Reviews Disease Primers by authors from Harvard Medical School and other major institutions confirms that these neurological changes are real, measurable, and central to why withdrawal from overused medications is so difficult.[1]
Research in the Journal of Clinical Investigation has established that neurons and immune cells are physically colocalized throughout the body – the nervous system directly regulates responses to substances at a cellular level.[2] When a medication has been part of the body’s daily chemical environment for twenty years, the nervous system has formed a deeply encoded relationship with it. Addressing that relationship at the neurological level is a different intervention than simply reducing the dose.
Here is the question worth sitting with: how many people are locked into long-term medication use not purely because of pharmacological necessity, but because the nervous system has developed a reactive relationship with the substance that has never been addressed?
He Asked One More Question. It Turned Out to Be the Right One.
He came in for sneezing. He got that handled. Then he asked a question most people in his position had stopped asking.
Twenty years is a long time to carry something you’ve tried to put down. He was in his early 70s and he tried one more time. It worked.
If you are managing a long-term medication relationship that has become more complicated than the original problem it was solving – it may be worth asking whether the nervous system’s relationship with that substance has ever been examined.
— Dr. John Erickson, DC | Laser & Chiropractic Center of the Rockies | Loveland, Colorado
To learn more about NAET at Laser & Chiropractic Center of the Rockies, visit laserchirorockies.com or call 970-412-3212.
Individual results vary. This story is de-identified and shared with permission. It represents a reported patient experience and is not a guarantee of outcome. NAET is a complementary wellness approach and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition.
Important note: Nothing in this story constitutes medical advice about medication management or discontinuation. Any changes to prescribed medications must be discussed with and supervised by the prescribing physician. This case is presented as a reported patient experience only.
[1] Ashina, S. et al. “Medication Overuse Headache.” Nature Reviews Disease Primers. 2023;9(1):5. PMID: 36732518. DOI: 10.1038/s41572-022-00415-0
[2] Veiga-Fernandes, H. & Artis, D. “Neuro-Immune Crosstalk and Allergic Inflammation.” J Clin Invest. 2019;129(4):1475-1482. PMC: PMC6436850. DOI: 10.1172/JCI124609