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>if you find yourself in an unfortunate situation, my main advice is to pay attention and learn as much as you can from it.

It seems to me that this is the function of pain.

If one could voluntarily embrace this process, would this make opioids less necessary and/or desirable?

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> If one could voluntarily embrace this process, would this make opioids less necessary and/or desirable?

It certainly would, but "embracing" the process of pain is an enormous mental and physical challenge.

Entire religions, for example, are devoted to separating the mind from the experience of the body. But this takes years of conscious effort.

I've noticed that when I stub my toe the suffering is considerably reduced if I focus on the pain.

By focus you mean jumping around and screaming/cursing at the furniture. Agreed this helps me as well.

Those are the standard tools of distraction which I employed in earlier years. I actually mean standing quietly still and shifting as much 'internal attention' as possible to the injured toe.

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