I’m not looking for medical advice, but more understanding. I have chronic back pain. I can alleviate it completely with only 2 things - alcohol and a heating pad. Ibuprofen lessens it but it’s still present. Muscle relaxers do nothing (which makes sense because it’s not muscle related, it’s spinal disk degeneration).
A tall glass of whiskey makes my back relax and I can move normally. Once it wears off tho, it’s right back to tense and painful.
Because you’re not taking the good pain meds.
I’ve lived with chronic back pain for 20 years, and I have 3 stages of medication I go through (though mine is alignment-related, so muscle relaxers help): aleve (the only OTC painkiller that touches my back pain), tramadol (moderate-strength opioid, can’t take it for long or it causes plumbing problems), and tizanadine (the serious industrial-strength muscle relaxers; knocks me out for 8 hours and usually fixes my back the first time.)
If you’re looking for alternatives, THC helps somewhat with my back pain, but I dunno what’s legal where you are.
Tramadol is quite nasty to come off as well because it functions like a combination of SSRI with opiod effects on your brain. I think it’s the mu-opiod receptors as opposed to the normal opiod ones so more similar to kratom in that respect too.
Yeah, tramadol is weird because it makes you not care about stuff. Which is kinda good because it makes you not care about pain, but also, ya know, the other stuff too. But it was quite easy for me to come off of honestly; I didn’t shit for a week and that was more than enough to make me stop taking it regularly. Now I take it maybe once or twice a month at the outside.
I believe it is like long term use of months or years which can be bad when coming off because it can feel like stopping anti-depressants at the same time as stopping opiates.
I am familiar with the constipation from those types of meds too. Not pleasant!
Oh, yeah, probably. I only used it regularly for like a month or two, 3 pills a day, so it wasn’t so bad for me.
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Meds don’t fix back pain
Depends on the back, and the pain, and the meds. No, they don’t fix the underlying issue, but for circumstances where the underlying issue can’t be fixed they make it a lot more tolerable.
True, but relying on the drugs is generally a bad approach
I take it you have some better approach than relying on medication when my back pain becomes incapacitating? Cause it’s not fixable, I’ve seen numerous doctors about it over the years, not to mention chiropractors, physical therapists, etc. My choice is to take pain meds when things get bad or to just be incapacitated for the rest of the day whenever it flares up. So if you have a better approach I’m all ears, but just saying ‘drugs are bad mkay?’ isn’t terribly convincing because so far my experience has been that not relying on drugs is all downside.
you know one thing about social media that’s really hard to deal with is that everybody seems to speak an absolutes about every single fucking topic on the planet. there’s room for the gray in almost every conversation that has ever existed and people like to just point out well what about my special circumstance, of course there’s room for special circumstances and other things why does everybody think everything is absolute?
Except I was doing what’s called ‘speaking from experience’, which means I was speaking about my experience. Which you then decided to weigh in on as if you know a damned thing about it, or me, or even pain in general compared to the four specialist doctors I’ve seen on the subject. So yeah, when you start slinging vague opinions and generalizations about something I have lived for 20 years I’m gonna have some shit to say and you’re just going to have to accept that I speak in absolutes because I am the authority on my situation. If you have any actual experience or expertise to share on the subject then I’m all ears, but if all you want to do is whine because somebody knows more than you do about the nonsense you’re talking than you do then I’m gonna go do something more productive with my day.
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!
I’m not convinced OTC pain meds do anything, especially Tylenol.
Tylenol is interesting - it’s a psychoactive drug. It reduces your brain’s ability to experience pain, or even understand the possibility of pain, rather than reducing the amount of pain you’re feeling. That means different people’s brain chemistry will result in very different results with Tylenol.
Studies were done that show people are slightly more likely to take risks when they’re on Tylenol. Wild stuff.
I think it very much depends on the type of and source of pain.
For me, Tylenol works for headaches and some cold/flu stuff but I’ve never really found it effective for strained muscles etc
Ditto what the others said. You might have just rolled bad RNG (DNA) at character creation (birth) and just gotten stuck with immunity to certain painkillers. It happens. Bad luck, friend.
I think it depends on the person too. Tylenol doesn’t work well for me, even prescription Tylenol; it kind of just makes me nauseous. Advil works great though.
My parents both seem to prefer Ibuprofen, but I swear by Excedrin as a miracle drug. But Excedrin is like, everything.
But Ibuprofen is better for muscle pain.
I have a type of rheumatoid arthritis (spondylitis) and nsaids have a pretty profound effect.
Oh, Excedrin and Tylenol absolutely help headaches. I’ve had some splitting headaches that weren’t migraines, and I can feel the pain get a lot better over 15-20. Of course water also helps, but it’s faster than natural, I think.
Basically the only thing that help my headaches is caffeine. But that’s probably a me problem.
They only work for me if I take a much larger dose than what the label suggests, but I fear for my liver.
To piggyback on another comment. Massage. I’m a massage therapist who sees clients with disk issues all the time.
99% of the time it’s because of shortened hip flexors (your psoas attached to your bottom vertebrae and as it shortens, is too tight to let your spine stretch which then just crushes your disks) due to both extended time in a seated position as well as a weak core. Stretch, get a massage, find a PT to help with chronic back pain. Start doing crunches before bed.
Also drink more water. Only kinda related but basically everyone should be drinking more water.
Piggyback?! Bro, people are in enough pain in this thread!
Oh, take my damn upvote you punny bastard. 😂
Why crunches before bed? Physical exercise before going to bed seems like insomnia recipe.
Is it not better to do it in the morning or the afternoon?
Statistically, you should be doing more exercises in general.
But working out absolutely does improve sleep, as well as mood, digestion, memory recall, anxiety, and basically every other common ailment.
Please go work out more. Even if its just a walk or some crunches. Just get 15-30 minutes per day of continuous exercise. I promise you you’ll see a difference
No one says the opposite. I’m a very active person.
Just not at night right before going to bed. I feel like that could lead to bad quality of sleep.
Well it’s your feelings compared to the huge amount of scientific backing. And the article I linked to has a bunch of sources too, although I consider John Hopkins Hospital a valid primary source for medicine
The article you linked states that many people have trouble sleeping if they do exercise before going to bed, because the physiological response of doing exercise activates the body in a way that makes it harder to sleep for a while and recommend doing it a couple of hours before.
Like the other response said, some light exercise before bed is generally good for sleep. If you feel it’s waking you up, your brain might already be in go-mode. Do you limit blue light or anything before bed?
If you still feel before bed is no good, or don’t have the time or whatever, literally anything is better than nothing.
Hip hooks are also great for getting at those muscles, which are otherwise very difficult to stretch.
Strengthening my core literally straightened my spine significantly and improved my lordosis. It’s like putting on a corset.
But also, if you can’t really do crunches, leg raises and planks are good too.
Idk what happened but over the weekend my back went to hell in a hand basket. I’m usually in pretty good shape but this went from 0-100 immediately. I’ve heard some good things about the GIBoard for core strength and stability so I’m looking to see if that helps. It’ll help me with stretching too so hopefully that’ll do something…
Ok, that giboard actually looks kind of awesome…does it easily someone like 140-250lbs?
The only minor detail for me might be that my balance is totally shit.
GIBoard
You got me looking at these. Then I started looking around. Is there a reason to get one of the ~200 USD balance boards over a 20 USD wobble board? Other than durability, I guess.
Different applications mostly, this is a slackboard and those are balance boards. There are knockoff slackboards but so far this thing kinda kicks ass. There’s a lot of different exercises that can be done on them but idk, it’s your call. I’m satisfied with my purchase though.
If alcohol works it might be neuropathic pain and then this could work on it as well, using some of the same mechanisms of action as alcohol
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabapentin
But I dislike giving medical advice as am not a doctor. Something to research at least.
Gabapenten has serious side effects, dont just go get some and go “o we gonna be good.”
Gabapenten
hascan have serious side effects for some people, dont just go get some and go “o we gonna be good.”FTFY. Everyone’s brain chemistry is different. For some, it can be a lifesaver in low doses for anxiety, for some (like me) it can be used as an adjunct to acetaminophen/paracetamol in a combination that is more effective for pain than opioids (had a minor hemorrhage in an adrenal gland - not fun), and for others it can cause extreme depression and other behavior changes.
Noone should take it without the supervision of a medical professional.
Neither my partner or I have any side effects with gabapentin! I take it occasionally, and they take like 900-1200mg daily for spicy nerve pain that makes life horrible.
Uhm, I don’t think I did.
You shouldn’t take strong prescription drugs willy-nilly.
Wasn’t talking to you directly, but appending additional info to what you were saying. You kinda did suggest that taking gabapentin would help with their pain, so while Yes, its a terrible idea to take prescription stuff without knowing what you are doing, if they are gonna read what you told them and decide to ignore the part where you suggest you are uncomfortable providing medical advice and then go ahead and do it anyway, they should at least be warned that your advice is particularly dangerous due to gabapentins mental side effects.
I didn’t provide medical advice. I provided access to medical information.
I’m saying that pain that is neuropathic is often treated with Gabapentin, which in the long run, is healthier and safer than self-medicating.
Thus if OP looks up what neuropathic pain is and gets concerned, they should call a doctor and tell all this. Which is when the actual medical advice will come.
You can give people information about medicine without giving them medical advice.
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.
I’ve got a degerative disease called Anklyosing Spondylitis, bit of a tongue twister but also my pelvis is splintering due to arthritus associated with the condition so very painful. I find dicofenac works pretty well for flare ups but sometimes I’ll switch over to booze if I’m going out since that works better. NB: I don’t mix booze with the NSAID if I can avoid it, might just intersect at the tail end.
Opiates work better for the pain too but that’s a whole other can of worms I try to avoid opening.
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.
Sounds like the pain is coming from one of the systems inhibited by the GABAergic system.
What you’re really asking is “why do some drugs work for me, while others don’t?”
I’d bet there are some prescriptions that would work for you and probably a number of other “recreational” drugs too
alcohol is a muscle relaxer. Go to chiro or massage.
Go to chiro
If OP does do that, please, please, please get informed on what the history is around chiropractic adjustment, and then determine which practitioner (not doctor since they aren’t medically licensed) fits your needs and acceptable methodology.
Chiropractic practice originated around spiritualism, and to some it’s a con man’s version of osteopathic treatment.
Chiropractic adjustment reportedly works for some people, but there are many practitioners out there that may do more harm than good.
While I do agree to an extent. This isn’t true across the board. My chiro is also a license doctor for example. Definitely do some homework. But Chiro, generally, works great for back\spine issues. I would be a complete mess with out my chiropractor.
But Chiro, generally, works great for back\spine issues
citation needed, because as far as I know, no efficacy from ‘chrio’ has ever been demonstrated, this is not surprising since its not science based.
Well, I know people like to say this, but I’ve been going to Chiro for over 12 years and I would say the “not based in science” thing feels false largely. I’ve had slipped discs, nerve compression, and a misaligned vertebra that I get treated for. The adjustments bring me great results time and time again.
Even the Mayo clinic agrees that chiro has benefits. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/chiropractic-adjustment/about/pac-20393513
Don’t just believe whatever you hear about health stuff. Too much misinformation out there.
Chiropractic was literally invented by a man who didn’t feel like he needed to go to medical school. It is not based in science. This is not some new misinformation campaign. It has been well known, since the inception of it. Do some research on it if you don’t believe me. It’s quackery. It’s nice that it seems to have helped you. But again, not science.
It’s considered complementary therapy in modern medicine, much like physical therapy or massage work. I understand where you are coming from, but chiropractic work, when done by LEGIT practitioners is immensely helpful to millions of people and is also recommended by doctors and physical therapists all the time.
Perhaps you should brush up on the modern takes on chiro. https://www.healthline.com/health/is-chiropractic-pseudoscience https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/chiropractic-adjustment/about/pac-20393513
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At times, it’s like doing physical therapy. It helps but doesn’t cure things, usually you are doing it in conjunction with Physical Therapy. I only go when I need to personally. Sometimes I don’t go for over a year or two, then I’ll have short stint of treatment, then back to time off.
But they’re a doctor. They get the title Dr from being a doctor and not a chiro. Chiros are allowed to call themselves doctors in many places for some damn reason.
No, he is an MD\Physician and a Chiro (in my case)
That’s what they are saying.
It’s on his fucking wall. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Don’t act like you have everything all figured out when you don’t. You just sound like an ass.
Neither options will solve the problem though
Solve is kind of a strange word to use, because it certainly CAN solve it. For instance, relieving compressed nerves for sciatica for example, something I have treated on and off in my life, chiro has helped me with this more than ANYTHING else I’ve tried.
In your face, nondrinkers! 😂
because alcohol relaxes muscles and all the medications doctors give as muscle relaxants in the past 20 years are placebos
Alcohol is a really strong painkiller, essentially.
Alcohol is a known muscle relaxant. That fact is even a plot point early in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I digress.
It’s also something of a mind relaxant. If your pain is made worse by tensing up worrying about the pain, then alcohol is going to help both ways, because you’ll be less able to worry and you won’t be able to tense quite so much anyway.
I’d be surprised if neither ibuprofen nor diclofenac have any effect at all - but don’t take those with alcohol in your system. Liver damage is not something you want to add to your list of ailments.
Consult a physician, etc.
While we’re talking about OTC NSAIDs, might should mention aspirin and acetaminophen/tylenol have even higher risk of liver damage when used with alcohol
Yes, having paracetamol for the hangover after you’ve been binge drinking puts a lot of strain on your liver so best avoided.
I knew someone in uni who’d have a xanax if they felt they would have a hangover the next day. Had to tell them it was a borderline suicidal “trick” because they were potentiating all the booze in their system, SMH.
Holy shit, what a “trick”
When I was younger I found out that if I ended the night with a few lines I’d wake up the next morning with a nose bleed, but no hangover.
Not a pro tip at all but your comment took me back to my younger and much much stupider days haha
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