This is mostly intended as a question for people with severe chronic issues of a magnitude that significantly alter their function to the point of relying on others for basic needs. However, anyone is welcome to reply. From personal experience this type of pain is hard to describe and hard for others to understand, especially the psychological side.
So I’m asking because I really don’t understand how cannabis works for anyone as pain relief. I have also been on most available opioids and they largely have no effect. They only impact my focus in such a way that I do not care about doing anything or about the pain. It is like they impact anxiety, but that does not do anything for the underlying physical issue. In some cases like tramadol, I get so disconnected from my typical self awareness that I could spiral into a dumber version of myself like being in a figurative pit I cannot escape.
Seriously, I use a few games and the times it takes me to complete harder levels to gage how pain or meds are impacting my cognitive function. Long term I use the scope, depth, and my project completion capabilities to gage if I am acting like myself long term. This is what has pulled me off of several meds long term; I simply was not myself in capabilities. The meds made me care less about the pain, but I am interested in a more productive life, not caring less about the thing that is ever present. The only drugs that made the pain go away are the kind that require constant monitoring in the Intensive Care Unit in a hospital.
Am I an outlier here; simply more self aware of the way pain treatments alter the mind and only indirectly impact the real issue? Does caring less satisfy your needs? Is anxiety a large part of your functional life?
I have migraines due to celiac (when I eat gluten) that are resistant to traditional medicine. Also, opioids fuck me up but don’t take the pain away, which I find deeply unpleasant (so, I don’t think you are an outlier). I discovered that the combo of Tylenol and CBD/THC make the pain go away (sometimes I have to do a few rounds). I do have a lot of anxiety around food as a result, just because it took me a while to figure out what was going on and how to treat it.
I’ve been very very lucky in life and have never had to deal with chronic pain.
They only impact my focus in such a way that I do not care about doing anything or about the pain.
About 15 years ago when I had oral surgery I was given a prescription for Percocet. When the pain started to get bad, I took exactly one pill and my experience was the same as yours. I was expecting the pain to go away, but it didn’t I just didn’t care about the pain. I was on the lying on the couch watching some kind of legal drama on TV. I was frustrated because I couldn’t follow the elements of the story because my head was swimming. I don’t consider my one and only opiate experience pleasant.
I was on vicodin for my first year after being diagnosed with spinal stenosis. It didn’t really remove the pain so much as made it more distant?
Like someone pounding on your front door when you’re two rooms away.
As you point out, opioids numb the spirit, not the pain itself. We stop caring about pain from its many sources, emotional and physical. Viewed at the level of consciousness pain is conceptual and can be manipulated to be diminished or magnified by the context and expectations. I’ve never consciously used cannabis as pain relief but I can imagine it operates in a similar way, making it easier to interpret the sensation as something other than negative. I know from meditation that removing judgement from my thinking has a similar effect. Pain is bad but we are not obliged to judge every painful event and compound the situation.
I have nerve pain and understand the feeling of the meds not taking the pain away, and the knowledge that there is a trade off with taking them. I have refused to up my dose, but try literally everything else.
Unfortunately I am allergic to codiene and natural opoids, and so tramadol is my long term pain management medication.
I also take broad spectrum cbd oil and flower, triple strength fish oil for inflammation, magnesium, etc. I have also been using lignocaine patches over the nerve roots after reading a study that showed promising results, and despite it not making any sense to me that they should work topically, it does seem to help.
Besides medications and supplements, I use a TENS unit, IR heating pad, ice packs, massage gun, and positioning to reduce pain on bad days.
I have tried every locally available treatment, experimental medication, therapy, consulted with pain doctors and surgeons. Unfortunately nothing has helped so far.
On good days, I can spend 4 - 5 hours up at most, and will pay for it the next day. Most of my time is spent in a zero gravity bed.
I don’t like taking the pain meds, but acknowledge that taking them means I can do more. Push further. It’s not a tradeoff I like either, so most of the time I don’t.
