"It's all in your head." "Learn to bear it." "That drug will make you a junkie." For the more than seventy-five million Americans affected by chronic pain, these are fighting words. Despite extraordinary medical progress in recent years, millions of people, debilitated by the pain of incurable cancer, crippling arthritis, unremitting headaches, and a host of degenerative disorders, continue to suffer needlessly. Here, in their own words, are the stories of more than forty people whose lives are dictated by pain--patients, healthcare professionals, ethicists, social commentators, and scientists--shining a powerful searchlight on America's most misunderstood health problem.