[bobthepanda]

The US is uniquely oriented around pain elimination. For example, the opioid epidemic ravaging the US after the overprescription of painkillers is absent in most European and Asian countries, because they were not optimizing patient outcomes for pain elimination.

[epicureanideal]

It may also be that working conditions, poverty, lack of vacation, and differences in the practice of medicine, put Americans in more physical and mental pain than the average European, and so are more likely to turn to painkillers.