Amen to **Senegoid **& (ETA) QtM. At the risk of a well-meaning pile-on …
Some folks have more aptitude for meditation than others. But lying in bed with the mind racing is not the time to decide “I think I’ll try to learn meditation.” That way lies frustration and failure and negative reinforcement.
Mind racing is a habit. So is “multi-tasking” and impatience and anger. Like any habit, it’s a mostly unconscious and hence mostly unbidden feedback process that was (often inadvertently) consciously cultivated.
You, any you, can cultivate other replacement habits. But it takes diligent effort. And hence the willingness to be diligent for as long as it takes.
That study is about as close to fake news as you can get without actually stating false information. Pain associated with inflammation is subject to management with NSAIDS, but that’s about it. A sizable portion of the pain that’s out there “may” fall into this category, but NSAIDS are irrelevant to large chunks of the pain management field.
I have a chronic pain issue due to disease and have taken opiods daily for 10 years. I take only enough to permit me to function and to be able to think about anything besides the pain. I have never experienced euphoria from the drugs, because I have never taken a higher dosage than the minimum required. When an Insurance mixup left me without any med for a 2 week perood, I didn’t have withdrawal issues, just plenty of miserable pain.
During this time period, in spite of my responsible use, my access to the med has continued to be restricted. Insurance will now only release 20 days of pills at a time, and each fill has to have a real, paper prescription. My doctor’s practice requires that I undergo physical therapy, periodic sleep studies, and regular drug testing in order to keep receiving the scraps. I have no concrete objections to most of this, but it isn’t free. Insurance covers some of it, but the rest is left to me. While the periodic sleep studies may have preventive value (sleep apnea is possible with lobg-term opiods use), the physical therapy has no real value (I can’t get better through PT), it has more of a punitive value (we will give you the drugs but you will have to work for them). I can only wonder what further hurdles I will be made to jump in years ahead. It worries me. I will need these meds for the remainder of my life, 20-30 years, if I am lucky.
I have done everything right and everything asked of me. I am neither a criminal nor an addict. Surely a second standard can be used for people like myself, responsible patients with responsible physicians. In the rush to blame everything bad on opiates, I fear that people like myself and my doctor are getting lost.
Ugh. Ehm… I realize most people have never heard of it and please if you’re going to punch me give me time to use a pillow as a shield, but there is something called active meditation, which is the opposite of “empty your mind and go ommmmm”.
Active meditation is selecting a subject and thinking about it. Thinking carefully about it. If you’re trying to go to sleep, it can be for example a telling a tale to yourself kind of thing: think about a book you enjoyed (and which didn’t have any particularly dark and horrible parts, ok?), reminisce about a sunny day in the park… don’t just think “sunny day in the park”; picture the grass, the trees, the flower beds. Remember the smells, the noises, the silence. Remember the way the light hit the water.
I’ve got a few stories that put me right down under. Been telling myself the same tales for years. One of these years I may find out what happens at the end, but I doubt it.