Get professional medical care. While people can offer helpful insights, we do not have your medical charts, and anyone who offers medical advice without your charts runs the risk of suggesting something that might not help or worse could make matters worse. Start with your GP, and if you can't find help there, go see a pain management specialist. I have a TENS, a STIM, and dozens of physical therapy aides, and have tried about everything out there for pain, and I have a long list of objective, easy to verify sources so getting care has been in some ways easier for me than others with things like fibromyalgia, which is much harder to verify using xrays or MRIs like all my orthopedic "bone on bone" stuff. I say all this as a chronic pain patient of 30 years, with a son who is a rising 2nd year MD student at a high ranked US medical school. So I have learned a bit from my years of multiple serious health conditions, and from my son in medical school.
NSAIDs burned my stomach up. My rheumatalogist used to say I had the "iron stomach" award for taking 200 mg a day of indomethacin and not complaining, but then the GI doc found out the acid I am barfing up is due to gastritis and esophagitis and he at least felt that the strong NSAIDs I took for over 20 years contributed to now permanent GERD. Which is why I advise against acting without having your charts to know what is causing your pain, cause some things work better for certain types of pain than others, and vice versus. I even tried smoking pot a long time ago in college, and the THC or whatever is in that stuff only made me hyper-focus on my pain, so made it 10 times worse. But some people get relief from CBD, HEMP, and even THC (plain marijuana). Its not legal in many states, but there is a growing push to make it so, but personally I don't plan to ever try it again, even if it becomes fully legal, cause as I said, all it did was intensify my pain. No thanks!
I don't drink alcohol because I have trouble with high tryglycerides, but for me when I was younger, I got more relief from a small amount of alcohol than marijuana I tried. However, I cannot drink now or I run the risk of stroke, pancreatitis, or a heart attack from the fact that alcohol at least in me makes my tryglycerides go through the roof (over 500 and normal is below 150 and 500 is without drinking). I take tons of fish oil pills to keep my tryglycerides below 150, which fortunately works for me.
Again, SEEK PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL CARE. You might have a physical problem that requires surgery, for example, and we cannot tell you without your full medical records, including labs, x-rays, MRIs, and other diagnostic workups to suggest a remedy for you. One size does not fit all, nor does the same approach work for all types of pain.
I tried to outsmart pain once. I thought I could jam the electrical shocks I get from spinal cord damage that causes electrocution-type pain from going down my arms into my thumbs (radial nerve). I turned on my TENS and STIM and cranked them both wide open (set on 10/10) with electrodes on my arms, and instead of jamming the neuropathic nerve pain coming from the damage in my cervical spine (called myelopathy), I instead set off an entire night of unending electrical pain down my arm. I never tried that dumb idea again. I didn't fully understand how neuropathic pain worked, and the fact the pain was in the damaged neurons in my neck and not the nerves in my arms being the problem, or I would have never tried such a crazy experiment to start with.
Another terrible thing about pain and analgesics. When we experience chronic pain, our nerve cells can "learn" this signal and become more efficient at transmitting pain signals to our central nervous system, aka our spinal cord and brain. So enduring chronic pain can cause you to develop a sense of central sensitization, making your pain worse in the long term. And opioids can cause problems as well. In addition to addiction, which happens in a minority of people exposed to long-term opioid therapy, the human body can downregulate the mu-opioid receptors, and so long term exposure to the same amount of analgesics in some people, can make the opioids work less well in the future. For example, I found methadone works wonders for me, but I refuse to take it, because I can get by with weaker medicine, and I want something that will work in case I develop cancer or face a horrific surgery one day.
In summary, chronic pain is not something to ignore or let go of, nor is its treatment something to learn about on the internet. There are just too many causes of pain, too many different ways to treat pain, even differences in the P450 cytochrome enzymes that convert active drugs into inactive states, which is why one person cannot take the same dose as another person. I'm one of those who have more abnormal cytochrome drug converting liver enzymes than normal ones, and I only found out because I paid for my own gene test. That much I did get from the internet, from a company called Color, but it cost me $250 out of pocket. A good pain doctor or GP will know how to order such a test if there is a need, so back to my general advice, to not try to be your own doctor, or listen to people on the internet, even those with the best of interests who want badly to help you, as many Christians like me would love to do. There are just too many variables and unknowns and you need professional medical care to diagnose and treat the sources of your pain, and if indicated, referral to a specialist like an orthopedic surgeon or rheumatologist, or gastroenterologist. See my point about why it is not possible for someone without all your medical records to advise you on chronic or even acute pain, despite the best intentions?
GET PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL HELP. In the meantime, I will be praying for you.
