MOH – Medication-Overuse Headache – the very substance designed and prescribed to alleviate pain, if taken in a dose higher than what the manufacturer and the doctor recommended, acts as a migraine trigger!
There’s migraines’ aversion to extremes again. In this case, too much of a good thing is not good! Another case of “if a little is good, a lot must be better – yes?”
Errr… not in this case. What irony – what is meant to make you feel better now causes you to feel worse.
Try to delve deep into your solid self-preservation instinct – despite being sorely tempted at times during a particularly bad days-long migraine attack (oh, yes, even one of three and four days’ duration!), despite mulling over whether you might try – just this once! (really?) that illegal drug that was suggested (or worse – offered!) or take that extra dose of prescription painkiller after you have taken the maximum recommended dose, I urge you to please never, ever give in to that temptation and never indulge in either.
What is your preferred method for learning? Accepting the wisdom of someone else’s experience or wrestling with the negative consequences of disregarding sound, expert advice? Do yourself a big favor – by so doing, you already had enough pain with migraines – do not add to the pain you are already suffering with the pain of overcoming illegal drug addiction or prolonging a migraine by taking too much of a painkiller.
I’ve worked for enough manufacturers to know that producers know their product’s limits, and if they incur the expense of giving advice on their product’s use, they speak from experience. Their corporate survival depends on your having the best possible use and experience of their product.
What should we do in the case of attacks that are intolerable (because they are) and permanent (they are NOT)? Don’t strain your brain – it’s already too inflamed, thank you very much.
Take out your list of countermeasures – the one you drew up during pain-free moments or days – and select the most appealing pain relief method to you at that moment. It doesn’t work? What else appeals to you? Do it. And so on, repeatedly work the list.
One of two things is likely to happen: your method is so brilliant, that the pain stops (bravo, you genius, you!) or, you become so exhausted that you fall asleep despite the pain and wake up exhausted, groggy, feeling hungover, nauseous or ravenously hungry and thirsty (pick one!) – but you wake up pain-free!
Maybe your head is a bit tender in spots, but a warm shower with the spray directed at your face, nape of the neck, shoulders, and upper back (all those efficient acupuncture points on the gallbladder meridian!) will reinvigorate you and help you relax more profoundly.
You need to keep yourself strong – and the discipline of having resisted the non-prescription or illegal drug or the prescribed medication overdose, even if you do not feel an emotional satisfaction at having overcome the attraction, your body is smarter than that, and your immune system will give you credit and stand you in good stead.
So you’ve woken up from (it seems to you) a permanent pain condition and discovered to your exhausted relief that you overcame that insurmountable pain? Take out that list of pain relief methods and work some more strategies.
You need to be more relentless than your migraine condition. Feeling better? It’s not enough! You deserve to feel even better! Reach out to a therapist, get a massage, change the bedsheets for some fresh ones, open the windows, do some relaxation exercises, meditate profoundly, call someone you love, and tell them you love them. Find renewed energy in the excruciating pain being in the past behind you. Obviously, you overpowered something with your residual strength.
Write yourself a compliment in your pain relief diary. How would you react if your best friend reached out to you and shared that experience? I’m sure you would be most inventive, very creative in finding the words to motivate them.
Excellent – now look at yourself in the mirror and repeat those healing sentiments to yourself. Why out loud? Because you need to hear the positive sounds and remember those – they counteract what you heard during your migraine attack.
They become the positive hormone and brain chemicals your brain produces instead of the cortisol it created when you were suffering.
You, deep inside the most positive part of your intellect, are your own best believer and speaker of truth.
