A migraine isn’t just a bad headache. A migraine is a big chunk of time where I can’t do life. I can’t cook, drive, shop, eat, or even talk well. And if I am not careful, I can cause much bigger problems for myself just by the way I act when I have one.

I don’t build up any sort of tolerance or immunity when I have a migraine. When I recover from one, that doesn’t influence whether I will have another at all, as far as I know. Yes, I have tried everything: plenty of water, OTC meds, meditation, acupuncture, dry needling, vitamins, adding and removing different foods, etc. And no, those essential oils won’t cleanse my salty chakra.

I don’t even look at migraines the same way as I used to. Even with all of the neurological and physical symptoms I have, and everything I have learned about how they work. A migraine has just become nothing more to me than a multi-day long period where I am a useless lump.

A migraine is that time period where I don’t get to do any of my daily life, that extends through to being a partner, a parent, an employee, or a even a reliable friend. And there’s a whole bunch of other side-crap I let pile up as well. I also don’t make lots of long-range plans, because everyone gets kind of sick of me breaking them.

Each time I have a migraine, I also get less healthy because I don’t move around as much. I certainly don’t exercise. I don’t eat right. I give in to cravings a lot more, and reach for easy stuff. And of course I end up taking lots of medicines. Eventually, those take their own toll on your internal organs, surreptitiously damaging my health in other ways. And, so many of the medicines that are designed to abort a migraine have such horrid side-effects for me that I realized I suffered almost as much with them, as I did without. Hey! How’s about a little dose of serotonin syndrome for your entertainment pleasure? Good stuff man!

Opiates have helped in the past, but they have a problem built into them. One, the body’s tolerance to them can climb like a caffeinated squirrel up a tree if you don’t use them exactly the right way. And even you do, you can still very quickly find yourself with a very persistent monkey on your back. Since the death of my own brother from an opiate overdose, I quickly realized that regardless of their effectiveness they must remain a “For Emergency Use Only” medicine.

Then there is medical marijuana. I mean, pot! No, wait… cannabis, right?!

How cannabis has been working for me on chronic migraines is a post all it’s own, since it’s deserves detail. And whether I personally think it can continue to be successfully prescribed as a medicine, I think, depends a great deal on what we call it (something I have already talked about before. It is a more important topic than most people give attention to, I believe).

Anyway, as I was saying: Migraines suck.