[saiya-jin]

I think you might be onto something. Today's folks, me including, take suffering, be it physical or psychical as something exceptional, the worst of the worst situation in life and will do just about anything to get rid of it. And in many cases we have some ways to help with it.

Compare it to times where you had to simply endure suffering (and everybody suffered somehow), be it headache, badly healed fracture, being gang raped during some war/raid by bandits, seeing your wife/child dying during childbirth and so on. And nowhere to escape to. Apart from alcohol/natural drugs which produced many addicts - drunks were part of many societies since ever and story was often the same as today