My chronic pain was cause by a fairly substantial physical trauma to both shoulders. 4 years of high doses of oral narcotics got me hazy minded, constipated and very dependent. The pump solved all those problems plus provided pain relief that was wonderful (only those who suffer chronic know what I mean when I say "wonderful"). After 10 years or so I started to realize that my shoulder injuries were healing and getting healthy. This continued till about 15 years had gone by, leading me to entertain that I MIGHT no longer have chronic pain, at least not to the point of of being intolerable again. So I started to slowly reduce the pain relief. My anesthesiologist did this by weakening the morphine solution, by mixing the morphine supply with non narcotics such as ropivacaine and by decreasing the flow of the pump. After about 3 years of titration we got down to the weakest solution and the lowest pump delivery rate and no pain. So I took a gamble that, at this point, I hadn't sufficient pain that justified the pump so I had it removed. For quit a while I had this gnawing feeling that all this morphine 24 seven can't be a good thing, and I was right! A couple of days after no morphine, I suffered terrible withdrawal, which lasted for months and my anesthesiologist knew nothing of this type of withdrawal to help (I think most don't care about this aspect). I used prescribed oral morphine which only gave me constipation and nothing else! I won the gamble-no pain, but the total dependency of so much narcotic for so long was months of torture. Time revealed other subtle negatives never noticed while on morphine and when off got better. The point is, no matter what the delivery system, relief from chronic pain is life changing but must be balanced off with the negatives of long term opiate usage and eventual dependency or even addiction with all of it's difficulties and problems! I realize that for many their pain might never abate by itself like it did for me. Since I was so blessed, I must say It's great being narcotic free and I just wanted to suggest that this might be an option for some.