Pain management is such a complex problem

because it involves breaking the law sometimes, which is a crime against human rights. Or because sometimes, no matter how many drugs you take, no matter how hard you meditate, no matter how many lay hands on you, for you, sometimes it's never enough, the pain never goes away.


And what do we do for these people? The people with the constant ache? The sharp and unceasing pain?


What if you were laying there with your leg cut off at the knee, imagine yourself there, in a pool of your own blood, howling with pain, your leg your leg your leg! Can you empathize? Can you put yourself in that person's place? What would you do? How does your mind overcome the pain long enough for you to help yourself if no one else is there? Do you just sit there and howl and moan until you die? Or do you drag yourself off the playing field, do you rise above and find help? Do you crawl around your apartment until you find needle and thread and sew yourself back together, all on your own, find an iron and heat it up and cauterize the wound? ALL BY YOURSELF? Could you do it?


People are so petty towards other people's pain. I'm no better, I do it myself.

Imagine yourself in that pool of blood, and the howling, whimpering to yourself, your leg aching, your limb bleeding, you've got that needle and thread and you're right about to rise above and stick it in, sew your leg back together, do the best you can. Just as you're about to start your door opens and someone's standing there, your drug dealer acquaintance from a few doors down, and he's freaking out just as much as you are, seeing you with half your leg cut off, sitting in that pool of blood, howling and whining and about to sew yourself back together, and he doesn't know what to do for you. Let's say the phones are out. He's got no skills. But what he does have is a small pharmacy of illegal drugs in his apartment so he rushes out to get some..

Let's say you're a cop. You're a lawyer. You're the President of the United States of America.

Your drug dealer stranger friend offers you illegal substances that can end or at least greatly diminish your pain in a matter of minutes, maybe seconds. Your bloody stump, your hands slippery with your own blood, the gnawing aching stabbing pain, your heart beating like a jackhammer... the fucking pain, the fucking pain.. OH my god, the PAIN!!



Do you take the drugs?



***


OF COURSE YOU DO.

 There is no moral justification anyone can give to refute the loving desire to ease your own or someone else's pain.

 None.



Homo sapiens sapiens

The thinking man.



I wonder what we will look like, who we will be, when we become homo sensus sapiens.


***


I don't really break the law to manage my pain, I can get most stuff from the pharmacy. I don't take hard drugs. Opiates are fun now and then after surgery but they don't do much for the pain except sedate me. And I've never had my leg cut off at the knee. Never sat in a pool of my own blood. Thank the gods. But I have gone through 12 reconstructive surgeries. Have had my nose broken a dozen times. Have had bone graft surgery. Have had my body and face sewn together in various places a couple dozen times. Have had cavities drilled and filled without anaesthetic, hitting the nerve. I've had accidents. Fallen off a horse or bike or two. I've sewn myself together once or twice, just a few stitches for minor wounds. I've pierced my own ears without ice or booze. I know what pain is.

And I resent the ideology that makes pain relief illegal for human beings.

No matter what the substance is.