Im a physio of 20 years. I think leave the prescription to the medicos. I personally would not take a prescription DRUG when there are so many natural alternatives out there and people are a lot more educated on this now and have many other choices. Look at the opiates that are 'prescription drugs' they are killing more people than Heroine addiction and they are being prescribed more and more as the choice for people in chronic pain. This is because it is easy for a GP to do this.
This obviously is a can of worms about WHY we as a society are needing to prescribe so much for chronic pain. I personally have seen evidence in my treatments that if we find what is causing pain musculoskeletal ly NOT JUST TREATING A SYMPTOM WHERE THE PAIN IS FELT then we could begin to eliminate the need for these DRUGS which is what they are