No Stupid Questions

I've read a lot of comments.

My personal experience is very different than what people are saying, maybe it applies to you, maybe it doesn't.

I have the same thing over my life with different types of pain. I would be given different pain relievers from surgeons, dentists, doctors, etc. For the most part it did fuck all.

Now that I am decades older and I've gone through all this bullshit, I basically learned that I'm immune to most painkillers. I metabolize caffeine very quickly and codeine and morphine are in the same family - so they're useless on me!

Freezing at the dentist always took double or triple. And very often the dentist would have to stop mid procedure and reapply freezing.

These are just a few, but certainly not all of my experiences, being completely baffled at the ineffectiveness of painkillers.

My friends could never understand why I was so blasé when I was prescribed heavy duty medications. And I could never understand why they were doing flying cartwheels to get them off me. It makes a lot more sense now that I figured shit out.

And like you, I turned to alcohol, actually at the advice of one of my oral surgeons who finally just said "look go home drink a 6 pack you won't feel any pain".

Let's leave all the completely unethical recommendations out of the discussion for now, and accept the fact that we now have more knowledge about painkillers than we did back in the day.

All of this to say, you may be just simply immune to painkillers. There's a variety of reasons for that, and it's no sense trying to explore those in the comments with laypeople like myself.

But on to any advice that I might give you? Perhaps not advice per se... but to tell you that what I did which helped me and perhaps it will help you.

I finally got over all my chronic pain by stretching and strengthening. I'm not going to sugar-coat it, certain parts of it were hell. I went to an athletic therapist who made me cry, but made me stand up straight. And I devoted myself to doing all the exercises and stretches... yes... 45 minutes every 2nd day for like 10 weeks. But damn did it pay off. That initial investment (not trying to half-ass it or go through the motions) got me to a certain plateau where I barely have to stretch anymore, my body is pretty happy.

I sincerely hope any of this applies to you and can be used but if not oh well maybe it will help someone else!

Do you do chair exercises? You sit on a chair and then bend your upper body forward as low as you can. Not sure exactly what it does but seems to help. I had sciatica for 3 years and that helped get it fixed. I still get pain in my back when the weather changes or when I get sick like the flu or cold or covid. But otherwise my body learned somehow that the sciatica is not pain.

It was on a weekend when I went swimming with family and then the next morning I could not get up from bed due to back pain. And the exercises from a Kaiser permanent pamphlet were the thing that worked. But dude, they were painful as hell. I hope It helps you or someone else.

I'm not convinced OTC pain meds do anything, especially Tylenol.

Been pretty much 10 years with back pain and I also have arthritis and neuropathy.

I tried NSAIDS, I tried the other ones, I forget name, tried the brain ones. They were worse than the pain. Destroyed my gut or made me want to blow my brains out and 0 relief.

I don’t really like opiates. Not too worried about the addiction as I am Larry Flint type and don’t really care if I am on or off it. They help better (to reduce pain not alleviate) than all the other crap I mentioned. I also take Baclofen once or twice a week to rest me muscles.

I take cannabis for my Aphantasia(a longer story not for here) which as an added bonus it also helps alleviate pain. I eat fruit bottom Balkan yogurt once every 2 days and have no plumbing issues since I started the yogurt.