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 can’t fully respond right now but I’ve had 20 years in the pain funhouse and want to at least join the conservation.
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.
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.
Your genetics play a role in how you metabolize opioids. Here’s the study: www.acsh.org
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.
Cbg is great for migraines and daily use can reduce frequency and severity. Works much better for me than cbd or thc.
Interesting! I think the one I have now has cbg, too (my local pot shop struggles to keep a consistent inventory of tingtures, which means I get whatever they have in stock).
Check out lazarus naturals. Good, consistent products and they send you coupons. https://www.lazarusnaturals.com/
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.
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.
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.
