PAIN: MEDICATION or HEALING
Should we be medicating our pain or healing it?
A closer look at how we respond to pain as a society would show that we would rather medicate our pain than isolate triggers to identify the source. We feel a headache and grab the pain killers, or a couple of joint aches and we reach out for antimalaria meds. We are not inclined to identifying sustainable ways of eradicating the source of the malaria, we have become conditioned to anticipate falling ill and popping a few pills once we perceive the symptoms. The human body aches when something is wrong. How can we know what is wrong when we do not pay attention to tracing the origin of the ache? “That is a lot of work!” I hear you screaming out loud. “Just pop a pill, take a short nap and it would be gone.” Why do we do this? Are we in love with the effect of the ‘medication’ and the occasional relapse? Is it also possible we get a certain level of familiar comfort that you would not have were the pain completely healed? Are you addicted to pain?
How do you medicate your pain? Do you turn to an over-the-counter pill? An illicit drug? A glass of fermented beverage? Helplessly scrolling through social media? Calling a friend to whine about it? Do you turn to sex? Sleeping the day away? Would you be open to identifying the source of the pain? Would you commit to healing it once and for all?
What is healing?
I think of it as the most painful thing than the pain itself. How does healing start?
I’d like for us to consider a freshly sustained physical injury at this point. Say you had a rusted nail pierce through your shoes into the soles of your feet while hiking your favourite path. Would you go home, pop a pill, and take a nap? Tell me what you’d do in the comment section (winks).
To heal any scar, we must examine the extent of the damage done, know the cause and then appropriately apply specific treatment to allow it to heal. Some scars would require debriding, others antiseptic cleansers and creams, all of which are not pleasant. That dreading few seconds of methylated spirit coming on a scarred surface I can never forget, yet the benefit outweighs the temporal displeasure.
Pain is seldom talked about. In all our conversations, we mask it up so nicely like we have no pain in our lives. It is our common, shared experience as humanity, we all SUFFER. We all have aches in our lives, there is always one thing or the other we are all fighting for / with. How then do we seldom talk about it? How have we turned a blind eye on our hurt?
