I'd like to hear from anyone else who might understand what I'm experiencing. I've lived with chronic pain for many years, as a result of various conditions including migraine, orafacial pain/TMJ, osteoarthritis/old fractures in my spine, and fibromyalgia. Have also suffered with depression and anxiety (as you might expect) and was diagnosed as borderline (EUPD).
Although I've been a migraine with aura sufferer since my teens (now in my 50s) it was only this year that I really started to get the ocular version with 'holes' in my vision and the undulating colours on the periphery. Not sure if that's relevant.
Yesterday afternoon I had the onset of a migraine (stiff, painful neck and intermittent pain in the back of my head). By this afternoon I had the full right-sided migraine with jaw and sinus pain, earache, nausea and temple/scalp pain, but no ocular element to speak of. I took 1x30/500 cocodamol when the pain got too intense for me to bear, and an hour later, when the pain broke through again, I took 1x8/500. (I'm mentioning this because I don't think that's a particularly high dose, all things considered).
After a couple of hours of miserable agony, where even minor sounds in my environment felt like shock waves, the pain just went, as though someone had flipped a switch. I felt an intense clarity and peace followed by a sensation of excitement, as though I was on a drug high. I live alone, so I wasn't interacting with anyone, and I didn't act out how I was feeling, but for a while I felt a bit like I could do anything, be anything I wanted. I haven't used recreational drugs or drunk alcohol for many years and I'm not currently medicating for anything else, just painkillers when pain is acute, and even my use of those is pretty conservative, given how much pain I live with.
I suppose I'm asking if anyone else has similar experiences of coming through acute pain episodes. I feel a bit more balanced at this point but it has made me wonder if in future I might be at risk of acting disinhibitedly in some way. Don't get me wrong, it was a wonderful feeling and I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth 😄 I felt really relieved, of course, and that was definitely part of the euphoria. Part of me could've cried with the relief (no stranger to crying with emotion linked to pain) but I didn't because the feeling of being high was more dominant. I just don't think I've ever been quite as struck before by the marked contrast between the misery of pain and the beauty of it subsiding. In fact subsiding implies it kind of faded over time, whereas this was immediate.
Sorry for the long post!