Misuse of painkillers on the rise, but why?

These rapid advances in medicine have fostered a cultural expectation that we have the 'right to be pain-free' and that this right is extended to medicine's ability to cure and control our response to social and emotional problems.

Emotional suffering

In my own research I have spoken to a broad range of people, from a diverse set of backgrounds about what they consider to be painful.

A young woman from Sydney's Eastern Suburbs said that the physical and emotional elements of pain can be "hard to separate" because when you're in pain "you're focused on the pain, and you're centred on it. Like mentally your thinking about it and wishing you weren't in it".

The feelings associated with a breakup are commonly evoked, for example by a 30-year-old man backpacking across Australia, who remarked after a recent break-up "I could definitely feel my heart hurting".

A young mother of two boys under the age of ten described using painkillers for headaches that she directly associated with stress from the demands of her busy life: "about ten years ago I had my first kid, and I started to get a lot of headaches, I suffered from migraines and I would take at least eight Nurofen® a day throughout the day just to get through".

Pain is clearly no longer simply a physical problem caused by torn or damaged tissue; it also has a powerful cultural significance when applied to social and emotional problems.

People are no longer simply consuming painkillers to deal with physical pain, they are taking advantage of modern medicine to control their responses to social and emotional problems. So the next time you hear research about the increases in the non-medical use of painkillers, bear in mind the way society now talks about "pain". The reasons why people reach for pills may include anything from the loss of a loved one to the emotional impact of homophobia or financial stress.