I do understand your doctor's reluctance. I never thought I'd be an addict - I've never taken an illegal drug in my life, never smoked a cigarette and have only once been drunk. I was prescribed codeine for the perfectly legitimate reason of controlling pain when recovering from surgery. I kept the codeine I had left for many months after recovering from the surgery. Later I was feeling awful and remembered I still had, took it, went to the doctor for more - now I've been taking well over the recommended dose, on and off, for over four years.
I can't say what your doctor thought of you, but is it possible he wasn't saying that you are a "pill-popper" but that he doesn't want to turn you into one? The fact that you have genuine pain and will only use the pain meds for that reason will not alter the fact that you will develop a physical intolerance to or addiction to certain pain meds if you use them, and if you use certain pain meds long-term, a physical addiction/tolerance/dependency is almost inevitable. "Tolerance" simply means that you will stop deriving the same benefits from the med and will need to take a higher dose in order to produce the pain-relief effect. A physical addiction means you will experience withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking the med. Even if you have the will-power, or whatever it is, to stop yourself taking it when you want to, and even if you have no desire to take it to alter your mood in any way, your body will become tolerant and addicted.
I'm very sorry if this sounds like a lecture! Pain relief is very tricky for doctors to get right. Effective pain meds are generally the ones that are addictive and that come with side effects. More benign painkillers (paracetamol, Ibuprofen, Aspirin) tend not to be so good at reducing pain (and Ibuprofen and Aspirin shouldn't be taken by people with Crohn's as they irritate the stomach). If your doctor was wrongfully suspicious of you, that was unfair of him, but I'm not sure he could have helped you even if he'd been willing. The best thing is of course to try to tackle the disease itself - the inflammation - rather than controlling symptoms only, but sometimes that's not possible.
I do think there is a place for pain meds - even addictive ones and even long-term - for myself, I've come off codeine many times and feel that I still derive more benefits from it than not. But if you can manage without, it's almost certainly preferable.
