Dreamland: Part 2: A Pro Wrestler’s Legacy Summary & Analysis

2007, Seattle: Alex Cahana, a pain specialist, visits John Bonica’s Center for Pain Relief at the University of Washington which has been all but abandoned. Bonica died over a decade ago in 1994. His successor, Dr. John Loeser, expanded the clinic, but fell on hard times when insurance companies stopped paying for therapy and began covering only pills. Cahana has been inspired by John Loeser, who believed “that pain is the essence of what we do as doctors, that relieving pain is basic medicine.” To Loeser and Bonica, pain was important, but it was also complex.

In 2008, Cahana is called on to resurrect the clinic. Immediately, he witnesses countless patients hooked on opiates. He is shocked by the lack of care and diligence that go into prescribing these pills: there is no objective way to measure pain or improvement. Cahana tries to reintroduce comprehensive therapy into these patients’ treatments, only to be stopped by what had plagued Bonica and Loeser before him: insurance companies will cover only pills. Cahana explains: “Talk therapy is reimbursed at fifteen dollars an hour […]. But for me to stick a needle in you I can get eight hundred to five thousand dollars.”