canklecat , I was in pain management for a couple/few years. Basically, it went down (a lot) like this:
When I lost my left foot and half my shin, broken wrist, elbow, other ankle, forearm and so forth...they loaded me up with pain meds while I was in the hospital to a degree that I had to ask them to slow down. I am a redhead, which in itself leads to a higher level of tolerance, and a pretty big fellow as well. They were keeping me loaded all the time there with various pain killers by injection and mouth. I have a pretty strong reaction to morphine, in general and other opiates. Basically I went cold turkey off the strong drugs and asked them for nothing stronger than a percocet. The very second I got out of the hospital (early and mostly because I made them release me to go home) I got one small script and then was "cut off". I was in such astounding pain at the time that I couldn't function.
Right around this same time was the start of the knee jerk reaction to doctors for prescribing pain meds in relation to the overdose (and so forth) epidemic which required doctors to do much more paperwork and required testing and so forth, so many doctors just didn't want to mess with it. My regular doctor at the time wouldn't touch it, and sent me somewhere else where I asked them for something to help me cope with pain. We went with Tylenol with codeine at first and honestly that crap isn't good for a headache, much less severe traumatic pain. I went back, we had some discussions, they tried me on analogs which gave me poor results and I flat out asked for something more. My doctor accused me of "pill seeking" which was a term I didn't understand at the time. By that label they pretty much forced the hand of any further medical practitioner I was and will ever see to treat me differently in relation to wanting medication to help me with my pain. Thus, pushed to "pain management".
I went to meet with the pain management doctor and his RNP. I went to see a psychologist and did a few meets with him (great guy who I used again later for another issue) and it was come to the consensus that I really was in severe pain and needed meds to help. At first the medications were quite helpful. I was able to participate in activities that I couldn't do without them. I felt good again, not hurting all day and so forth. Of course, as you take pain meds you build a tolerance as well as an addition even when taking them as prescribed. Over time what started as fairly light amounts of pain killers ended up being time release Morphine, Percocet, Vicodin, Soma and one other muscle relaxer that I can't recall the name of. I was taking enough meds to give a rock star pause. Now, even at that, at first it was a good thing. As time went on the stronger meds end up making you very sick, they mess with your persona and well being, thought process, everything. Medical weed isn't a thing here, but not hard to find so I started delving deeper into that and less on the pills. I had the pain med clinic cut back my prescriptions. They had issue with me coming up dirty for weed on my monthly tests, since a medical option isn't available here. By this time, I was VERY sick aside from right after taking my meds.
I was basically given an ultimatum by the pain clinic that I either quit coming up dirty for marijuana or they would cut me off. I opted, at the time, that I liked weed better given its properties in regard to pain and lack of hard physical addiction. I used my last scripts to taper, in particular off the Morphine. It was SUPER hard, possibly one of the hardest things I have done in my entire life. Took a couple of weeks to taper down to a point of just stopping and was sick with severe diarrhea for several weeks, throwing up bile...it was pretty terrible. Took my guts probably a year or so to come back right again after all that. It was among the best decisions I have ever made, IMO.
As time has gone on, I have gotten way better at dealing with the pain. Mostly become background noise to my brain in spite of not really having gone away. The prohibition on weed in this area led to my house being raided and going to jail for a small amount of pot. (a lot more to that story, but for the sake of this telling...) I have almost entirely stopped smoking at this point and really just decided that toughing through is about the best I can do.