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Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

Surely I'm not the only person for who cannabis just makes pain far worse. In fact I know I'm not I've heard it from other people.

Opiates are spooky, but ... they work really well.

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When you deal with large populations there's a _guarantee_ a solution won't work for everyone. Addressing the opioid epidemic is very difficult and you have to take what wins you can get.

Unsure why but when I read this I had Jimmy Car narrating the comment in my head. Not taking sides or voicing opinions. Best regards Joe Wilkinson

No, you're not the only one. Whenever I've taken THC for pain it actually makes it, not worse, but more noticeable. I feel like it's a perception thing and it really just heightens my awareness of whatever pain I was dealing with.

I imagine it has a lot to do with the type of pain. I don't think I'd want canniboids for a sharp pain, and certainly not for anything intense. But for a chronic pain or some kind of ache where you're taking medication over a long term, a daily dose of cannabis has got to be much better than any kind of opiate.

Nah, I have chronic pain. Muscle stuff (back, hips). And arthritis.

They're insantly worse the moment I consume.

I know it's hard for those who enjoy cannabis to understand this. But for me it's a highly unpleasant drug. Maybe the most unpleasant of the various recreational substances I've taken over the year. For me it's pain and paranoia.

In the milieux I was in in my 20s it was constantly around, and wow, was I ever happier once I just stopped trying it.

When it became legal here I tried it again. Nope, still sucks.

I don't know if this will help you but:

Cannabis tends to amplify whatever you are thinking about. If you are mentally focused on the pain that will almost certainly be counter productive.

For paranoia, a trick that works for me is to mentally/consciously call out the paranoia and acknowledge that it is exaggerated/not real and instead caused by the cannabis. As soon as I do that it disappears.

K, yeah... but why?

There's little pleasure in the substance. No value to me.

Sorry, cannabis lovers, but you need to stop proselytizing.

I get you like it. But it also kind of sucks.

100% legal here I could walk down the road and buy it... and I couldn't be bothered.

I used to be a frequent user, and began to have the same issue where it would make my pain feel worse. I took a long break and recently tried again and actually noticed quite a bit of relief from pain. I think there are a lot of factors at play here including how it is consumed, strain, mental state, etc.

Everyone is different, and no drug is for everyone. Caffeine gives me migraines

Me too. I enjoyed weed recreationally for a long time, but I had to quit because it caused full-body muscle aches (and I experimented with many strains, CBD/THC amounts and ratios, edibles, the works). Any pain I have is more acute, muscle soreness in my back, hands, abs, shoulders and jaw that last for days after use, nasal congestion, and long-lasting anxiety and sleep problems. All regardless of strain and CBD content.

I appreciate the positives of legalization and how well it works medicinally for some people, but proponents often act like it's a no-brainer panacea that is universally applicable, and that's just not the case. In my experience, it affects a lot of people extremely differently, and for some people it's effectively not a real option.

after a bad knee injury i was given the 512 variant of percocet, after a month, i was so hooked to the point of constipation and needing medical intervention.

At my worst point after switching to medical cannabis, the worst i have had is a groggy day.

Opiates work well, too well i would say.

I have both experiences. Sometimes it dulls the pain, sometimes I think it focuses my mind on it.

Particularly intense pain seems to be amplified.

You're not the only one - it does me as well. But unfortunately, the people who make the rules don't care about our suffering.

This is a little known problem now. But it's big in the chronic pain community. Doctors hesitate to prescribe opiates now because of the consensus of the public in threads like these. But there are people with very bad chronic pain who can't get it now. People for whom life is torture without proper pain management. This led to a rash of suicides in the community from people that couldn't handle it. Unfortunately people naively think because Marijuana worked for them it'll work for everyone. There's a reason humanity has been using opiates for literal millenia; the are the only truly effective painkiller we have

One more here. I'm very glad that I experimented with cannabis while healthy, and not when needing relief from acute pain.

What an odd statement. I had shoulder surgery not all that long ago and they prescribed me 100 Oxy's (far too many) and I took one of them. I was woken up with waves of paranoia and nausea... obviously the dosage was too high. I'm 5'7 and 170-180 lbs, so not large. I took Acetaminophen for about a week and was fine.

If I was to say that no one cared about suffering because people are prescribed Oxy for pain simply because it makes me nauseas and paranoid, that would be ridiculous on its face. People simply react differently to different medications, including marijuana.

You're several years behind on the status quo. 90% of the time they don't even give pain pills anymore post surgery, and when they do they'll give you a 1 to 3 day supply at most. If you need more than that, "Tylenol extra strength".

When I say the people who make the rules don't care, that's what I'm talking about. And a bunch of people who support this new model will say "just use cannabis." You can find examples all throughout this thread

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