We’re Thinking About Pain All Wrong, NYT

Why do we attempt to rationalize pain as a deserved punishment or a fit of hyperbolized acting by the weak or lazy? Daniel Goldberg, an associate professor of bioethics at the University of Colorado, says that one important aspect is fear. We don’t want to believe we could be stuck in unremittable agony, so we look for differences in those who are afflicted and point to those traits as reasons for their suffering.

Moreover, the idea that pain could be randomly inflicted on the undeserving makes a mockery of attempts to find moral order and justice in the world. It’s easier to avoid this existential dread by assuming that other people must somehow deserve their pain — or be faking it to avoid work — than it is to face the fact we’re all at risk. (In psychology, this is known as the “just world” hypothesis.)
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RedFox said:
If you're in pain, they should just give you as much opioids as you need. It's better to be addicted to drugs than in intractable pain.
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I take an opioid (Tramadol). I was prescribed a very high dose (up to 8 capsules per day) in the beginning, and I rapidly dropped the dose in the first month I took them. I can't remember the exact details now, but I ended up on 2 or 4 per day for quite a while. Then the pain got worse. I discussed raising my dose with a member of this forum who suggested to me that taking too high a dose of pain killers can make pain worse. So, I experimented and dropped my dose to 1 - 2 capsules per day and it helped a lot. I haven't taken more than two in a day for quite a few years now. I'm still prescribed 8 per day.

One problem I had with the Tramadol is that I didn't realise in the beginning that my doctor thought she had to treat occasional severe pain (that she obviously didn't really believe in), when really I had pain every day, all the time. It was a life-altering level of pain, but having the means to manage it myself allowed me to reduce it quite dramatically, and has improved my quality of life a lot.
 

As with pain noted in the article, there is also othering done in searching for a harmful habit, that may have contributed to another's death.

Finding a suspected cause or causes of another's demise, that do not reflect our own lifestyle may falsely reassure us we are not at risk.
 
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