The subject of pain is often in the news. This week (23 August 2019) we notice the St. Louis Business Journal carrying an article about the National Institutes of Health giving a $2.1 million grant to a St. Louis University pain researcher “to help open up a new avenue for pain medication research.”
We have a suspicion that the whole subject of pain is not understood very well by many people, so we thought we’d discuss it here.
What is Pain?
The first order of business should be a useful definition of pain. As is usual with many English words, there are multiple definitions of the word. Pain is a perception available to living beings.
English definitions: punishment; an unpleasant bodily sensation; physical discomfort; mental or emotional distress or suffering; something troublesome; a result of loss; a result of causing bad acts.
[Middle English, from Anglo-French peine, from Latin poena, from Greek poin? “payment, penalty”]
Technical definitions: Pain is the randomity (misalignment) produced by sudden or strong counter-efforts (i.e. efforts opposing optimum survival); the ultimate penalty of destructive activity; the warning of loss; the threat of non-survival; the punishment for errors in trying to survive.
Memories of pain can be just as damaging as the actual pain itself. Unconsciousness to greater or lesser degree is a symptom of pain. Unfortunately for humans, any sensation is better than no sensation; so in the absence of any sensation one desires pain.
Pain can be synthesized as an electronic flow. Psychiatrists use the pain of electroshock and other harmful psychiatric treatments as a coercive control mechanism — a means of getting someone to behave as they have decided one should behave. A person can be so overwhelmed by pain that they become addicted to it.
Painkillers
Doctors prescribe pain killers to relieve pain. However, it has never been known exactly how or why these “work.” Research into pain killers generally occurs by accidental discoveries, and the results often have undesirable side effects. The actions of pain killers include impeding the electrical conductivity of nerve channels, rendering a person unfeeling. Pain drugs block wanted sensations as well as unwanted ones.
Psychiatric Drugs
Psychiatric drugs are prescribed for various types of physical pain and mental trauma. Read the manufacturer’s fine print for any psychiatric drug and it will say in so many words that “we don’t really know how this drug works,” and they all have bad side effects; although one could say that there are no “side effects” since these are the actual effects of the drugs, albeit unwanted. It could be dangerous to immediately cease taking psychiatric drugs because of potential significant withdrawal side effects. No one should abruptly stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent medical doctor.
Because of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), psychiatrists have deceived millions into thinking that the best answer to life’s many pains lies with the “latest and greatest” psychiatric drug. The DSM has led to the unnecessary drugging of millions of Americans who could be diagnosed, treated, and cured by non-psychiatric health care providers without the use of toxic and potentially lethal drugs.
Since psychiatric drugs do not actually cure conditions, but merely suppress symptoms, the patient may be lulled into a temporary sense of wellness; whatever condition has caused the symptom is still present and often growing worse.
A person in chronic physical pain may be misdiagnosed with a so-called mental disorder, labeled neurotic, and given a psychiatric drug which only makes the condition worse.
Authors Richard Hughes and Robert Brewin, in their book, The Tranquilizing of America, warned that although psychotropic drugs may appear “to ‘take the edge off’ anxiety, pain, and stress, they also take the edge off life itself … these pills not only numb the pain but numb the whole mind.”
Did we mention that the three Sackler brothers of Purdue Pharma, major enablers of the opioid addiction crisis, were all psychiatrists? A June 26, 2017 article on Kaiser Health News by Vickie Connor presents the information that, “Adults with a mental illness receive more than 50 percent of the 115 million opioid prescriptions in the United States annually.” We don’t really know which came first — the mental trauma or the physical pain; but it doesn’t really matter which comes first. The bottom line is that neither opioids nor psychiatric drugs are workable treatments.
What About the Suffering?
So how does one in pain overcome the suffering, as the ancient Buddhist proverb goes? Basically, understanding relieves suffering. We want you to understand that psychiatry kills. Find Out! Fight Back!
