Life with pain, without pain meds

[nick30]

Hi everyone,
I'm surprised I didn't think of doing this earlier but I know that many people on this forum are people with real pain issues and I am wondering what you do to manage your pain without opiates and/or other addictive medications? I'm not talking about temporary pain or mild/moderate pain but those of you with persistant severe pain. I ask for two reasons. firstly because I am curious as to whether there actually are any specific things that can be done to manage severe pain w/o meds and secondly, becuase if there are any techniques that work for people who aren't on opiates then it stands to reason that it would also be beneficial to those who still do take opiates to manage thier pain. Of course I know that there are things that can be done to ease pain to some degree, but i am really wondering if anyone has found anything that really has made a significant reduction in pain levels. Thanks.

Nick.

[candothis247]

ICE! (Natures best pain killer) i found these new ice packs at CVS they are shaped like a bag of peas, so it molds around my neck where my pain is. It works well for me. Good Luck!

[outotown]

There are diff. kinds of pain like with Terry she has migrains, i have neck pain from having 2 disc replaced and 4 fussed togather, also have 2 herniated disc in back with spurs around them. so there would be diff. types of management tho both are in pain. for me I drive alot for work and im out of town alot and its very time consuming to do what it takes to manage my pain. Like exercise or walking heating pad ice musle rubs and a patch  that works well but i cant reach where my back hurts to put it on. I take alot of OTC meds sometime they work sometimes i suffer

[beatingthis]

Hi Nick,

I get really bad migraines almost daily. Tried everything known to man to stop them.
Thats how my addiction started.Other then keeping my house at 68 degress year round
I can do nothing except take a triptian and hope for the best. Hydro did give me my life back for awhile but we all know how the little devils work. I had to take more to get the same relief and then they were no relief at all.
I guess I really don't have a anwser for you and for that I am sorry. I am going to do a migraine study. Well thinking about it anyway.

Terry