I have taken more good from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me
“I have taken more good from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me.”
–Winston Churchill
I skimmed a headline the other morning that said something about 2 beers being better for pain relief than Tylenol (it actually said paracetamol, but I’m willing to bet the Yanks in the room don’t know what that is). Anyway, if that’s true then whiskey has to be way better than beer. I wonder if I can get research grant money to investigate that. My preliminary tests show that there’s a strong correlation.
Maybe you’re asking why I’m testing whiskey for its pain relieving properties. Well, some context is in order, I suppose. About a year and a half ago, I had an elective surgery. Things went kind of wrong and there was infections and swelling, essentially all manner of not happy. After antibiotics, my physician recommended letting it heal on its own. Things slowly got better, so I agreed to wait it out. After a year of continued pain I finally decided to try something else. I was transferred to a specialist for my… condition, and a surgical option was discussed. Basically, they’d cut out some of the (still) inflamed area and sever the nerves that were feeding the pain signals away from there. I decided I had nothing to lose. That second surgery was almost exactly a month ago, at this point. There is still a little residual surgical pain that is subsiding more and more each day, but the original pain is now completely gone.
Gone enough that I was able to take the motorcycle out today. It’s been over 2 years since I’ve been able to ride my bike, and being back out there makes me very happy. (I quickly remembered that there is still so much left to fix on it, but it was great nonetheless.) That’s not to say that tonight didn’t have consequences. Remember, I didn’t say the pain was completely gone. I don’t think I aggravated anything worse than before, but upon returning home tonight I noticed pain that was back at last week’s levels.
So that’s where whiskey comes in. After the narcotics ran out in the first week, I’d planned to just suck it up and go cold-turkey on the pain. I was still walking with a cane at that point, mostly to slow me down which helped the most. A couple of days into that plan, I decided to regroup and try something new. A nightly glass of whiskey has been working wonders to dull the pain, letting me enjoy my evenings and get some sleep.
So in the end, tonight earned a slightly larger glass than the rest of the week. Totally worth it.