I think that this is a difficult situation to clarify. I suffer from chronic pain in addition to FMS and fluctuating depression. When I first became ill my doctor gave me antibiotics, which I freely took because I trusted that they would put me back into balance. For a while they did, but then my symptoms returned, and two more rounds of ABs did nothing to help.

The pain steadily got worse. The two doctors I was seeing told me that I really needed to take something to control the pain, because the pain by itself could cause me complications. But I refused to take anything stronger than what you could get without a prescription, because I've always been afraid of drugs. Then, after about eight months, I developed the fibro, and my docs said that I got it because of my constant subjugation to pain. So I agreed to try the pain meds to see if they would help.

The narcotics did help to alleviate the pain to a degree, but I hated the way they made me feel, and dreaded the thought of addiction. So after taking them for about six months I insisted on going off of them again. Two months later I developed two other conditions, and again the docs blamed it on me feeling too much pain, so again I started taking them. A year goes buy with about the same results, except that my pain keeps spreading to a larger part of my body. But I was so sick of not being able to think clearly that again I demanded to go off the meds. This time I stayed off them for six months, but on Thanksgiving day I had a sudden flare of the worst pain in my life. It went from my lower left back all the way down to my ankle, and I couldn't sit or lie down or do anything which caused any pressure at all on this part of my body. Even if I barely pressed against it with a finger it made me gasp. And as far as sleep went, I had to come up with several various ways to prop up my left side. During the day all I could do was walk slowly around. And all of this lasted until Christmas Eve.

I have to admit that this pain was so bad that I would have done practically anything to get it to go away. I went back on narcotics, and increased the dose to the highest level yet, but they only marginally helped. That was a year and a half ago, and now I'm feeling desperate to get off the pills again. The only thing which is stopping me is the fact that I have not had a single major flare of pain like that in all this time. My doc says it's because it is much easier to prevent pain than to treat it. I just don't really know. So even though my heart and soul are totally in agreement with what you are saying, for someone like me it's an incredible difficult issue to deal with. So if anyone can control their symptoms by alternative means, I am completely behind them. I use them whenever I can. But I still don't know if I can live a worthy life without chemical help. Good luck and best wishes to all of you.