Finding the source of the pain and correcting it is definitely the way to go. I never liked what opiates did to my brain and so, for me, it was the choice of pain and some clarity of mind which I preferred over reduction of pain and foggy mind. It wasn't the easiest choice and there were certainly times when I did accept pain relief meds, because I have suffered intractable pain for most of my life, but I always considered that to be a failure on my part, that I wasn't "tough enough" to cope.
So yeah, I was HIGHLY motivated to figure out the source of the pain and I've described that elsewhere: pain is inflammation; find out what inflames you and eliminate it from your life.
It's that simple and difficult at one and the same time. It's simple to formulate the theory, a bit more difficult (especially in this world of medical/health lies) to discover the practical application.
I live an almost pain free life now. I say "almost" because I'm still working on finding ALL the things that cause inflammation and sometimes that is not so easy. One thing that is getting easier is having the will to do it. When you understand how it all works, when you see the direct correlation between something you eat or use on, in or near your body, and resulting pain, it's a great feedback mechanism. You become highly motivated to NOT do that again! But you have to get the body response system to work as it was meant to in order to be able to do that which means that you have to remove all "drugs" from your system first - those things that mask the inflammation and inflammation causing elements; you have to eliminate all gluten and casein (which acts as gluten, binding to the opiod receptors in your gut) and then begin working on individual inflammatory factors one at a time, testing and identifying.
What is cool about doing that is this: usually it is the gluten and casein that is responsible for most pain so when you eliminate those two elements, you are half-way there.
So, that's my take on it.
