Jeannie -

With all respect, I must disagree. I think that a medication that could reduce the "suffering" component of the pain experience would be wonderful. I mean, people spend years seeking that kind of equanimity through meditative practice, and having attained it from time to time, I can tell you that there's much to recommend it. If it can be put in a bottle, why not?

Put it another way, if there isn't a magic potion that simply takes the pain away, isn't having the ability to work around it - not in some old fashion and nasty cognitive/behavioral model - but to really and truly do so, the next best thing?

And for what it's worth, Apkarian is the last guy to believe that pain is "all in your head" having proved that chronic pain pain actually results in the loss of gray matter over time. Which is to say, that it's organic as hell.

Mike