Re: Chronic Pain
Learning to live with it is a challenge in and of itself, as I said earlier I have chronic headaches, means I have a 24/7 headache that occasionally becomes so bad it is debilitating. Pain killers by right you cannot become addicted to if you actually have pain, because the body gets use to them if you take them often enough, so each time you will need more and more to pass that threshold and get yourself more of what you need, thereby making the body 'demand' more often by creating more pain. In effect trying to do a lot of painkillers can in fact equal more pain in most people, an irritating psychosomatic effect.
What I have done most of the time is a mix of oxygen (if you do not want to pay the large sum go outside, night air works too), dealing with it, and pain meds (a varying dose in order to avoid all the problems listed above), and together I often end up with less pain than otherwise.
As for things like my ankle, pain meds, "vitamin M" as the army calls ibuprofen, and getting off it and wearing a brace that restricts motion almost as well as a full cast, army got some things right.
and Ice/heat is always good, there are lots of packs out there now that you can both freeze and heat alternating, works great.