I received a massage yesterday (for free, I might add, as I am frugal and not exactly raking in the dough) and asked the masseuse (who is a student finishing up her schooling and needed so many hours of practice sessions), “Are there people whose muscles are super tense, yet their pain tolerance is so low, that you can’t work them out?”
I was anticipating that she might say “no, not really”, as I was thinking that if a person’s muscle was so hard and tough, then their pain tolerance must be high. My reasoning was that such an individual’s muscles must be strong and surely they must be quite physically active.
To my (mild) surprise, she responded, “Oh, yeah.” But the real kicker was what she said next. “Those are the people who are usually on something (pain medication).”
Yikes. I never considered that as a possibility: people taking pain medications for the sake of dealing with their own bodies on a daily basis. Now I get that there are some people with legitimate pain from one thing or another, such that the pain can be disabling, limiting their ability to function day to day. Perhaps it is from a serious injury, or maybe from some kind of debilitating condition, or perhaps even a terminal condition. But don’t tell me that every motherfucker out there that’s supporting the pharmaceutical industry through pain medications has a legitimate need for prescription-strength pills. And I’m not talking about drugged out people who need their OxyContin fix. I’m talking about the majority of “patients” out there that are prescribed pain medications from their doctors. I mean, do you really need to be taking those things?
I especially love it when the legal druggy (aka, “patient”) is young, in their twenties or thirties, and they’ve already resigned their physical bodies to atrophy and entropy. It’s like there’s a serious disconnect for these folks. Yes, people only lived to their mid-thirties on average about 400-years ago or something, but now, people are living well into their 70s and 80s. Yet, so many people I’ve met are already physically defeated. Then they get their stupid little blue handicap tag they can hang from their car mirror, and milk it for all it’s worth. (In the United States, there are these little wheel-chair symbols on a blue tag, which allows the bearer to park their vehicle closer to the entrance of a building in a designated “handicap” spot. When you go to a fast food chain such as the global favorite McDonald’s, you’re bound to see an obese person use that spot so they can get into the store faster and fuel their insatiable hunger, to better reach their final destination of a premature death.)
Okay. While I’m on the subject of handicap tags and cars, what really gets my goat is when people drive to get somewhere that’s literally right down the street! At work, most people go out to eat almost every day. I generally avoid going out and pack a healthy lunch or leftovers. But once every couple of weeks, I might go out to eat. Anyone want to walk with me? Nope. No takers, as usual. C’mon! I mean, we’re talking a five-minute walk. Instead, they all cram into their cars (at least they car pool on these occasions) and then drive around in circles looking for either a.) a parking spot that’s closest to the restaurant doors, or b.) drive around in circles in a parking garage endlessly looking for a spot somewhere! Returning from a restaurant can be worse! I have one coworker who inevitably will drive around the block two or three times to find the closest parking space to our workplace instead of just simply parking her car in the parking lot that’s just across the street from our building. By the time she actually finds a spot and parks, I could’ve parked my car in the farthest possible space of our parking lot, walked across the lot in its entirety, cross the street, and walk up the four flights of stairs and be back inside my office!
Anyway, back to pills. I’ve always shied away from pain medications. I’ve been prescribed them on occasion, especially after surgery such as my knee surgery, or when I dislocated my shoulder and I was in serious pain while I waited for the X-rays to come back so they could confirm that there was no internal injury before they reduced my shoulder back in place. (The latter incident was so painful, two doses of morphine didn’t do the trick thanks to a pinched nerve that was hurting the bejeezus out of me. But once my shoulder was reduced, I was high as a kite.) Nevertheless, I still preferred to stay away from the meds because I always feared that it could ultimately result in greater injury for me. This is because pain lets me know that there’s something wrong. When that pain is masked, I may think that I’m better off than I actually am, making it difficult to gauge what I should or shouldn’t do during my recovery.
Again, I don’t claim to be some all-natural, pure individual, as evidenced in my earliest blog about alcohol consumption. However, it is a rare thing that I am so inebriated that I don’t feel pain! That’s pretty scary. But if you’re prescribed pain medication through a pharmaceutical whore physician (or nurse practitioner for that matter), hey man, it’s coolio, ‘cause it’s legal-o. Really, it’s not hard to get a doc to write you a prescription. Just look at the amounts of medication advertisements you see on television. You need a hard-on so you can fuck like a real man? Take this shit. You feeling down and depressed? If you take this, you’ll not only feel good like this perfect-looking model does on TV, but you’ll have beautiful tits like she does, too! Then the advertiser’s voice-model’s speaking tempo picks up suddenly: “Side-effects-may-include-sudden-hearing-loss-heart-palpitations-blindness-erections-lasting-more-than-four-hours…”
I get depressed just watching those advertisements because every model on there looks so damned gorgeous and happy, and I’m being inundated with the sense that my life, my looks, my body should look that way. It’s a brilliant sell. Get your viewing audience feeling down about themselves and they will self-diagnose themselves with clinical depression, proceed to go to the doctor and demand medications that are so new, even the doctors don’t know what the fuck it is.
It just amazes me as to what lengths people go through in order to forget that they’re living. Yes, yes, I too watch television and allow my mind to go numb. I too indulge in drinking. I rely on exercise as a time filler and distraction. However, I do actively try to engage in my life by thinking about things and trying to do something creative each day, no matter how trivial or ephemeral the act or thought may be. I find that I meet so many individuals who talk about their lives in the past tense, about things that they used to be able to do, or how good a shape they used to be in, and how really, they need to be taking such-and-such pills or else they would be suffering from this and that and some other thing. Really? But you’re constantly tired, forgetful, and more limited in new ways because of the meds. Okay. I guess that’s cool, if you’re cool with it. Just don’t forget to live your life in the meantime, because death will come to us all soon enough. There’s no reason not to live while you’re given the opportunity. Just stop pretending you’re already dead. It’ll do wonders…
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