OWW! (or WTF have I done to my back?)

[Jadzia]

I've never found paracetamol to be good for anything other than sending me to sleep. I think it's a rubbish drug. Aspirin has an unpleasant effect on my mind, so I avoid it. NSAIDs affect my facial sinuses and cause me pain, so I avoid them. I prefer codeine as a pain reliever, which is the same thing as morphine actually.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Paracetamol does help me with pain, but taking the standard dose actually makes me feel lower than before. I think it's to do with the way my liver metabolises things (it's also particularly sensitive to anti-histamines).

Ibuprofen for me is a more effective painkiller, but I am aware of its gastric side-effects including increased risk of stomach ulcer and bleed. (Heck, NSAIDs are also implicated in an increased risk of coronary events, hence why no-one in cardiology dares prescribe them anymore.) As Bob correctly stated, NSAIDs are bad for pulmonary hypertension as they are (generally broad) inhibitors of prostaglandin synthesis and activation, whereas prostaglandins and their agonism are essential treatments for pulmonary hypertension (e.g. iloprost-based inhalers and medications) in order to keep the pulmonary circulation going.

I've only taken aspirin once or twice before, but for me it's good for upper tract pain including toothache and sore throat. Again, bad if you're prone to stomach ulcers, as it also can predispose to both ulcer formation and (through its antiplatelet function) increased (sometimes serious) gastric and duodenal bleeding.

I've never taken codeine much before, but as an opioid-based analgesic (like morphine) it's pretty good. It's the constipation that can get people down, though, for the most part. I wouldn't recommend it for some headaches - from what I've seen, tension headaches can sometimes be made worse by opioids.

 

[Geckothan]

NSAIDs work ok for me, if I've got any minor aches or pains, I usually just take an Ibuprofen if I've eaten recently (though I've taken it on an empty stomach plenty of times without issue, I do think the ulcer risk is a bit exaggerated). Paracetamol does absolutely nothing for me. It's almost like my liver doesn't know what to do with it or I'm immune to it, but it's absolutely useless.

Codeine is my OTC painkiller of choice, though the mere 8mg you get in the OTC pills is worthless even if you've got no tolerance so an extraction is usually in order, and I'm usually too lazy to do that now. When I was younger (14-15ish) me and my friends used to have a super high tolerance to it, kinda negating it's usefulness. We'd always crush up packs and packs of 8/500s and remove the paracetamol from them (paracetamol solidifies in cool water, so you can guess how that works) so we wouldn't vaporise our livers so we could take hundreds of milligrams of codeine when we couldn't get hold of anything more fun

 

[StolenThunder]

I feel retro. When I feel the need to take a painkiller I usually take 600mg dispersible aspirin.

Not as hardcore as laudanum I suppose.

 

[Deckerd]

My sister's a pharmacist and she reckons the over-the-counter codeine (as opposed to prescription which can be a much higher dose) is just enough to give you constipation and not much else.