I don't understand this either, so I think it might be a good question to ask him. (I'm a little curious myself, but that's up to you.) What's important is that you need to be able to function day to day.

Long-lasting opioids are usually only prescribed for conditions/diseases that are not expected to improve (barring some new development) so dependence (and some side effects) are deemed acceptable trade-offs for quality of life. If there were a safe & effective pain medication that did not produce dependence, all chronic pain patients (barring allergy, etc.) would be on it. It would be the miracle drug that medicine/science has been searching for for centuries.

[Non sequitur]
Yesterday, in looking for any possible new developments, I came across mention of a (not exactly) new formulation (MoxDuo®) that combines morphine and oxycodone (the latter being the active ingredient in percocet). The theory/claim seems to be that these two meds work better - with a better short-term safety profile - than either one alone. I'll reserve comment because this is new to me and I haven't dug into it yet. I mention it in case others may wish to look into it/comment.
[/Non sequitur]

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