Opiate Effects diminished by pain?

[junglistNside]

Anyone here believe that if you are in a good deal of pain. Say as an amputee or a severe injury. That it would reduce the effectiveness of IV -H? I have always been told when in actual pain opiate meds are less cognative and work more towards dealing with the pain. So I have to assume this is true with other forms such as H

[no0b]

many people take h to forget about the pain..

[Richard_smoker]

True... and think about it. If your baseline level of comfort is "OUCH! MY FUCKING LEG HURTS!", then a little bit of opiates is going to pull you up to 'normal' at best.

But, if everything's fine in the pain-perception sense, then your baseline is ALREADY normal... so, thus the opiates will pull you up ABOVE normal, into euphoria-land.

I've heard it said by a very well-accomplished teacher/practitioner of academic medicine that opiates don't really do anything to actually stop pain--instead, they simply create a sort-of dissociation of the pain from conscious awareness... as opposed to a tylenol which can stomp out a headache, the opiates will just take your attention away from the discomfort.
-RS