Pain medication is demonized by opioid hysteria
“Pain medication is the horrible stuff that only addicts use. If you depend on pain medication to function you are an addict. If you can’t control your pain through yoga, meditation, hypnosis, eating only kale, going on a juice fast, or standing on your head, then you are doing something wrong and you are an addict. Also, pain isn’t really a thing anymore, if you are in pain it’s because you don’t practice pain acceptance and you are catastrophizing your pain.”
Society’s obsession with addiction hurts people in pain (and people experiencing addiction)
I spent the first 1 1/2 years with chronic illness taking no pain medication. The general attitude at the time was not that addiction was a disease and that people experiencing it deserved treatment (luckily that’s started to change during the years I’ve been in pain). With all the messages of addiction being thrown at me, I became convinced that only a coward or an addict would take medication for long-term pain. I had taken narcotics before (after my c-sections) and I knew that they didn’t particularly do anything special for me and that I clearly hadn’t gotten addicted to them during the 3 weeks I took them postpartum. But somehow I thought taking pain medication long-term was different, that it was a sign of failure, a failure to be strong enough.
Painsomnia creates a pain cycle
Eventually, I had to give in when I could no longer sleep because of the pain. I was barely able to hobble around the house and I was so tired that the pain kept getting worse and worse. It was a vicious cycle of Painsomnia:
pain=no sleep=more pain= even less sleep=even more pain
So I gave in and started taking some pain medication when I needed it. Still, whenever I took some I’d hear a voice whispering you don’t need this, strong people don’t need help or pain medication. If you were really strong, you wouldn’t take anything. What’s wrong with you, you’re going to get addicted, is that what you want? And yet in desperation, I took it anyway and felt guilty about it.
Then one day I realized that I had felt fairly energetic that day and had gotten a lot done. I had been able to take my kids to the pool, babysit the baby of a friend, mop my kitchen floor, make a homemade dinner, and do laundry all in one day. I wondered how I had the energy to do all that. Then it dawned on me, I had taken my pain medication that day at its prescribed levels, instead of taking it only when I felt like I was going to die from the pain. I thought, wow, can I really function as a semi-normal person when I take pain medication? Turns out I can. No, it doesn’t take away all my pain or even half of it, but taking my pain down from a 9/10 to a 6/10 makes a significant impact on how well I can function.
Sometimes those downer thoughts still enter my brain when I take pain meds. You are better than this, you are risking getting addicted, why aren’t you stronger? But one day it occurred to me, you don’t get a prize for refusing pain medication when you need it. I need pain treatment in order to not to not bedridden, to be able to take care of my kids, to live a more normal life than what would otherwise be possible. Nobody is going to give me a prize when I deprive myself of medication in order to be strong.
*Update: Due to the opioid hysteria I can no longer get pain medication, but for those who can get it my point still stands.