[verylittlemeat]

For me marijuana isn't so much about pain relief as pain distraction.

Allow me to get a little metaphorical about my chronic pain. Personally I don't think the major pain relief component of marijuana has much to do with physical reality. When you're a chronic pain sufferer your mind starts to expect pain and you build an entire world of psychological expectation around your pain. What marijuana does is it forces your mind to wander away from what it thinks it should be thinking about.

So in short what I'm saying is marijuana makes you forget you suffer from pain. I think it has something to do with how in clinical studies it's proven that marijuana has an impact on short term memory.

[sgspace]

I can see this. I deal with chronic pain daily and I smoke often. After I light up, I am still aware of the pain if I think about it, but as you mention, my mind wanders and I forget about the pain for moments at a time.

[amigoingtodie]

I think of it as one 'understands' their pain.