Chronic pain

[Rich Koster]

A person is in chronic pain. Would it be better for them to attend Sunday school and/or corporate worship on narcotic pain meds or not fully participate by sitting in a special chair to retain mental clarity? I would say the latter, anyone else?

 

[Reformed Thomist]

The latter.

 

[Ivan]

I suppose it depends are a few variables but that being said I say the latter also.

 

[MrMerlin777]

I would say it depends on the intensity of the pain itself.

Either way the person wouldn't be "fully participating".

 

[lynnie]

Wilberforce managed to do OK with his opium addiction.

from 1788 on doctors prescribed daily opium pills to Wilberforce to control the debility of his ulcerative colitis. The medicine was viewed in his day as a "pure drug" and it never occurred to any of his enemies to reproach him for his dependence on opium to control is illness. "Yet effects there must have been," Pollock observes. "Wilberforce certainly grew more untidy, indolent (as he often bemoaned) and absent-minded as his years went on though not yet in old age; it is proof of the strength of his will that he achieved so much under a burden which neither he nor his doctors understood."

Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals, and the Political Welfare :: Desiring God Christian Resource Library

Personally I find extreme pain (throwing out my back a few times, and root canal abcess) to be so preoccupying that meds actually freed up my mind to focus elsewhere.

 

[Edward]

Not really enough info. The dosage and the impact of the narcotics would be a key factor. Tolerance of pain (and the amount of pain) would be other factors.

The person should probably try both ways, and go with the best option. It's probably not a decision that others should be making for them.

 

[PresbyDane]

The latter if that is in anyway endurable for the person

 

[EricP]

The chronic use of narcotics for chronic pain often leads to less and less of the euphoria for which they are famous; time-release or long half-life meds (for example, the Duragesic patch, dura-morph, etc) are long-release to help avoid the mental changes which go along with rapidly rising drug levels, as well. The word "better" would thus depend upon the degree of impairment the person is having from the medications vs. the impairment from the pain--agony causes mental changes, loss of concentration, etc too!