Optimal relief for pain at the end of life: a caregiver's tale.

The current opioid crisis-driven partly by medical overprescription and partly by illegal drug abuse-is a significant cultural and professional dilemma in the USA and elsewhere. It has produced a strong reaction in favour of restricting medical use of opioids for pain, especially chronic pain. The author for a quarter century has written about pain from a biocultural perspective, and in this essay-based on his experience as primary caregiver for his late wife-he approaches the question of appropriate opioid use at the end of life.