ON THE ISSUE OF PAIN

What seems to us as bitter trials are often
blessings in disguise
                                                   ~ Oscar Wilde.

One of the most sensitive issues in the recovery process is dealing with pain.  The relationship we have with pain is complex and layered, not only for people in recovery, but for almost everyone in our society.  We are a culture that takes great effort in avoiding pain, both mental and physical.  And, in our avoidance, we often make things worse, either by burying our pain so that it explodes out of us at unexpected or inappropriate times, or by covering that pain up with drugs, alcohol or other substances that can lead to addiction and other problems.  Health care professionals agree that pain must be confronted and dealt with in a positive way, or they will surely lead to further, more uncomfortable episodes down the road.  But what if your pain is truly unbearable?  What if you are one of those people in recovery that are enduring the kind of catastrophic physical agony that able-bodied people simply cannot understand?   Where do those people go to find relief?  And why should they even bother to face their pain?

For one thing, many people in recovery have no choice but to live with pain.  Speaking for myself, no amount of painkillers could ever fully mask the pain I went though.  Even heavy doses of morphine didn’t work entirely.  Being doped was better then nothing, but even under medication I was never free from pain.  It was constant and relentless.  And it made me resentful and angry.  I used to take out my anger on my family, and felt perfectly justified in doing so.  I would yell at them, and verbally abuse them and the friends who come to visit me.  I told them that they had no idea what it was like, and so their sympathy meant nothing to me.  Sometimes I was so angry about the pain that I was inconsolable.  Nothing you could say or do would make me happy.  Everything was a source of rage.  If you came to see me during one of my bouts with anger, you were in for some trouble no matter how good your intentions were.  Eventually, I began to alienate even some of my best friends.  My anger was making me even more miserable, because now I was alone.  But my relationship with the pain was such that I felt justified in being mean to people.  And, as long as I held to that attitude, my life, and the lives of the poor souls who came into contact with me, could only get worse. 

To change one’s relationship to pain, I find it helpful to make a distinction between pain and suffering.  It is my belief that there is a pronounced difference between the two.  You can be in pain, but you don’t have to suffer.  Pain is a physical state, where as suffering is a mental one.  Pain is inevitable in everyone’s life.  But suffering can be avoided, or, perhaps better put, suffering can be dealt with, and we can rise above it.

Consider the athlete who finishes a marathon.  His or her body is wracked with pain, but they feel joy, because they have taken on a hugely demanding challenge and have emerged victorious.  They are in pain, but they are happy.  They are not suffering.

The difference, of course, is that the athlete chooses to take on the challenge of the marathon, and therefore accepts pain as a condition of this choice.  But no one decides to be in a bone-crushing accident, or to be burned nearly to death, or to survive unspeakable trauma.  The source of much of the anger that one feels in recovery is that life is ridiculously unfair.  While all people suffer, there are those who simply suffer too much, for no other reason then that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  While criminals get away with murder, and sometimes profit from their wrongdoing, innocent people in recovery will lie trapped in bed, overwhelmed with pain.  The stark, bleak, horrifying unfairness of life is often just too much for them to bear.  Speaking for myself, I can tell you that this was the true source of my suffering.  Life had treated me more unfairly then anyone I knew, and I was mad at the world.  I was mad at God.  And no one could tell me they understood, because no one knew pain as I did. 

But learning to deal with the pain can be one of the most significant breakthroughs in a person’s life.  While pain is unfair, it can also be a doorway to deep spiritual understanding, and a great insight that is simply not available to people who live normal lives.   I know this to be true not just from my own experience, but from the people that I interviewed, who went though recovery, while I was developing this material.  From cancer survivors, to accident victims, all of them claim to have experienced something beautiful in their recovery, something that they describe as deeply spiritual.  They each found some level of inner peace that other people will never know. 

Once you are ready to accept your pain, and be at peace with the fact that you have endured far more then your fair share, once you are ready to accept life in all of it’s distorted unfairness, you will discover that, like the marathon athlete, you have the ability to deal with pain in ways that normal people will find unbelievable.  You will discover that you are an extra ordinary being, and someone who lives life head and shoulders above most of the human race.  You will know what it means to be exceptional.

Most people are happy to merely survive in life.  Maybe you were once one of those people.  But, if you are in recovery, the circumstances of your life have changed who you are.  You can no longer simply be normal.  Your pain will never let you be normal.  As long as you are in recovery, your pain will force you to choose between two options; to be less than normal, or to be phenomenal in your greatness.  

            If you choose to be great, you will achieve an understanding and a love for life that others will wonder at, and you will find joy in places where others are merely bored.  You will have a deep understanding of the words of the Buddha, who said:

Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.

You may some day come to pity those who are “lucky” enough to have the option to live “small,” and you just might baffle people when you say, as I have often said, that my accident was the best bad thing that ever happened to me.