why does alcohol stop my back pain but medicine doesn't?

Alcohol is a known muscle relaxant. That fact is even a plot point early in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I digress.

It's also something of a mind relaxant. If your pain is made worse by tensing up worrying about the pain, then alcohol is going to help both ways, because you'll be less able to worry and you won't be able to tense quite so much anyway.

I'd be surprised if neither ibuprofen nor diclofenac have any effect at all - but don't take those with alcohol in your system. Liver damage is not something you want to add to your list of ailments.

Consult a physician, etc.

Degenerative disc disease ftw?

Generally, it depends on what's causing the pain as regards what reduces it.

Booze is a CNS depressant. It puts a damper on everything in the central nervous system, and that includes pain perception.

Heat typically works by improving blood flow to affected areas.

So, most likely, what's happening is that your muscle spasms are caused by the pain, rather than being the immediate source of pain. The tension does make pain levels increase, but stopping that without addressing the originating cause can't and won't eliminate all of it.

So, muscle relaxers can only do so much. I would argue that they're doing something, because there's not been any cases of total immunity to any that I've been aware of, and they're a first attempt for most chronic pain cases. But if they don't target the actual cause, then they can't do enough. In other words, if the pain is causing your muscles to tighten up, a muscle relaxer is only going to partially reduce that tension because only part of that tension is involuntary.

It may not be conscious tension, but it isn't something that is caused by the muscle itself. It's a response to pain. So a muscle relaxer is kinda like a bandaid, not stitches.

Booze, however, is going to work in your brain, blocking off the pain signals, or more accurately reducing your ability to perceive them. Once you no longer perceive the pain, that part of you that's holding those muscles tight to try and prevent/reduce the oh-so-lovely pain from bulging, slipped, or herniated discs start to relax almost all the way, as opposed to the tiny bit that the muscle relaxers can make them unclench.

Now, it's important to note that the use of involuntary here doesn't mean that the rest of your muscle tension is a choice. It just means that the part of your nervous system that is making it happen is a different section than the involuntary part. Now, you can actually exert conscious control over that kind of muscle tension, but it takes effort and practice. And, it probably won't reach 100% release because your brain and body are going to resist it. Plus, pretty much the second you stop doing the methods that relax the muscles, they'll go right back to trying to keep your back immobile. So it's never a permanent solution.

The key to finding a balance often means the long, hard road of physical therapy combined with training in progressive relaxation, breath control, and all the other tools that give you the ability to intercede in the process.

Alcohol isn't a long term solution. To the contrary, the longer you rely on it, the worse you're gong to perceive the pain, and the more it'll take to get relief.

There is, however, some good-ish news. DDD is progressive. But! Most of the time it'll reach a point of relative stasis. Things will bulge and slip more radically during the early part of the disease process. At some point, it'll slow down its progression, and the changes tend you be more localized than along the entire spine. So you'll reach a point where it won't get worse fast, and will usually only get worse in small sections. I'm in that phase of things myself, and it isn't exactly fun, but it means my pain and mobility levels are stable. There's a high chance you'll reach that point too.

Once you hit that point, as long as you haven't pushed things into addiction, stuff like muscle relaxers, Tylenol and the like can keep pain levels under control enough to get by.

Until then, keep on your PT program. You want to keep as much flexibility, mobility, and joint health as possible. It really is one of those things that if you don't use it you will lose it. But don't make the mistake of doing absurd shit when you aren't in debilitating pain. You can't actually move normally, you just can't perceive all the minor injuries you're causing that make the pain worse once whatever you use wears off. That's one of the reasons I quit accepting opiates. Yeah, I hurt less, but I couldn't tell when I was doing something wrong, so I was getting worse, faster. I'm just now recovering properly from fucking my back up the last time I took some of my opiate pain meds. And that was in November ffs.

So, if you need the relief to get by, use what you gotta. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that lack of pain means there's nothing wrong.

To piggyback on another comment. Massage. I'm a massage therapist who sees clients with disk issues all the time.

99% of the time it's because of shortened hip flexors (your psoas attached to your bottom vertebrae and as it shortens, is too tight to let your spine stretch which then just crushes your disks) due to both extended time in a seated position as well as a weak core. Stretch, get a massage, find a PT to help with chronic back pain. Start doing crunches before bed.

Also drink more water. Only kinda related but basically everyone should be drinking more water.

Maybe it has to do with its effects on GABA receptors? Have you ever tried something like gabapentin or pregabalin?

Because you're not taking the good pain meds.

I've lived with chronic back pain for 20 years, and I have 3 stages of medication I go through (though mine is alignment-related, so muscle relaxers help): aleve (the only OTC painkiller that touches my back pain), tramadol (moderate-strength opioid, can't take it for long or it causes plumbing problems), and tizanadine (the serious industrial-strength muscle relaxers; knocks me out for 8 hours and usually fixes my back the first time.)

If you're looking for alternatives, THC helps somewhat with my back pain, but I dunno what's legal where you are.

I'm not convinced OTC pain meds do anything, especially Tylenol.

What you’re really asking is “why do some drugs work for me, while others don’t?”

I’d bet there are some prescriptions that would work for you and probably a number of other “recreational” drugs too

I've read a lot of comments.

My personal experience is very different than what people are saying, maybe it applies to you, maybe it doesn't.

I have the same thing over my life with different types of pain. I would be given different pain relievers from surgeons, dentists, doctors, etc. For the most part it did fuck all.

Now that I am decades older and I've gone through all this bullshit, I basically learned that I'm immune to most painkillers. I metabolize caffeine very quickly and codeine and morphine are in the same family - so they're useless on me!

Freezing at the dentist always took double or triple. And very often the dentist would have to stop mid procedure and reapply freezing.

These are just a few, but certainly not all of my experiences, being completely baffled at the ineffectiveness of painkillers.

My friends could never understand why I was so blasé when I was prescribed heavy duty medications. And I could never understand why they were doing flying cartwheels to get them off me. It makes a lot more sense now that I figured shit out.

And like you, I turned to alcohol, actually at the advice of one of my oral surgeons who finally just said "look go home drink a 6 pack you won't feel any pain".

Let's leave all the completely unethical recommendations out of the discussion for now, and accept the fact that we now have more knowledge about painkillers than we did back in the day.

All of this to say, you may be just simply immune to painkillers. There's a variety of reasons for that, and it's no sense trying to explore those in the comments with laypeople like myself.

But on to any advice that I might give you? Perhaps not advice per se... but to tell you that what I did which helped me and perhaps it will help you.

I finally got over all my chronic pain by stretching and strengthening. I'm not going to sugar-coat it, certain parts of it were hell. I went to an athletic therapist who made me cry, but made me stand up straight. And I devoted myself to doing all the exercises and stretches... yes... 45 minutes every 2nd day for like 10 weeks. But damn did it pay off. That initial investment (not trying to half-ass it or go through the motions) got me to a certain plateau where I barely have to stretch anymore, my body is pretty happy.

I sincerely hope any of this applies to you and can be used but if not oh well maybe it will help someone else!

Sounds like the pain is coming from one of the systems inhibited by the GABAergic system.

http://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(16)30334-0/fulltext

https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/health-and-families/two-pints-beer-paracetamol-painkillers-pain-relief-study-university-greenwich-a7708991.html

However experts are also speaking out to clarify that the results of the new study don’t mean alcohol is good for us.

because alcohol relaxes muscles and all the medications doctors give as muscle relaxants in the past 20 years are placebos

Alcohol is a solution

Been pretty much 10 years with back pain and I also have arthritis and neuropathy.

I tried NSAIDS, I tried the other ones, I forget name, tried the brain ones. They were worse than the pain. Destroyed my gut or made me want to blow my brains out and 0 relief.

I don’t really like opiates. Not too worried about the addiction as I am Larry Flint type and don’t really care if I am on or off it. They help better (to reduce pain not alleviate) than all the other crap I mentioned. I also take Baclofen once or twice a week to rest me muscles.

I take cannabis for my Aphantasia(a longer story not for here) which as an added bonus it also helps alleviate pain. I eat fruit bottom Balkan yogurt once every 2 days and have no plumbing issues since I started the yogurt.

In your face, nondrinkers! 😂