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?
So something I tell my patients after they have had a surgery is that our goal with pain killers is to make the pain bearable rather than gone. Paracetamol is a great painkiller and helps opioids to work better. It’s also non addictive and provided you don’t take more than the packet recommends very safe.
For chronic pain the current thinking is it’s multifactorial, but basically your brain gets set with your pain threshold too low, there is also a huge psychological element to pain and therapy or things like CBT can be hugely beneficial.
For me paracetamol and codeine have been enough to manage all the pain I’ve had, the worst being when I fell off my bike and smashed my ribs (pretty sure I didn’t break any), luckily I’m in the 90% of people who can metabolise codeine to something more useful. Didn’t make the pain go away but meant I could breathe a full breath without flinching. Codeine at lower doses just makes me a bit drowsy and slow. Good for getting to sleep.
I take naproxen daily for knee pain. I don’t think it helps but i keep doing it. Now I’ve developed terrible stomach pain from ulcers from the naproxen. I use thc cbd most evenings, helps some with the pain but mostly distracting and let’s me relax a bit. I’m not good at using stronger pain meds- on the first dose i get itchy and irritable when it wears off. The last time i started taking a half dose twice as often to avoid that feeling, couldn’t remember what i had taken when, and decided i should probably avoid them. Pain sucks.
Pain does suck.
We’ve moved away from nsaids (naproxen and ibuprofen) because of the stomach ulcers. If it doesn’t help try taking regular paracetamol instead it might help a bit and won’t mess up your stomach.