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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is also associated with reductions in 'social pain'.[0]

> Thus, acetaminophen reduces behavioral and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection, demonstrating substantial overlap between social and physical pain.

It's a fascinating idea that social pain and physical pain are so strongly related. That depression can be viewed as a form of chronic pain, like a knee that still hurts long after the injury has healed.

And perhaps then positive empathy has something to do with literally feeling the social pain of others- blunt your ability to feel social pain and you aren't as affected by it.

[0]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761037474...

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Alcohol too. And both tough on the liver, mere coincidence I suppose.

As a drinker, I stick to ibuprofen. I wonder if it's as good for social pain.

I wonder if that's not also bad for your liver. Ifnyiu take if for the hangover, I really recommend drinking a lot of water before going to bed instead, it makes wonders.

It isn't just about being "bad for your liver" - combining alcohol and acetaminophen can literally kill you.

If you've drank enough over the years to permanently damage your liver, there are ton of medications you can no longer take (and ibuprofen is one of them), but if your liver is still working properly, taking ibuprofen is safe - even with alcohol.

No, I try to not get hung-over enough to need analgesics. But I have persistent back problems, and taking Tylenol for it regularly would probably cause some compounding liver damage. Ibuprofen is, fwiw, much harder on the stomach - but not toxic to the liver. That's why it's the go-to-side-dish for alkies with a breakfast burrito.

> drinking a lot of water

and b vitamins (b12 seems to have the greatest effect on reducing hangovers, and i've heard alcoholics tend to be b6 deficient so can't go wrong w that too)

B12 is indeed a hangover cure. In Las Vegas, there are food truck style vans that drive down the Strip in the morning and give people B12 injections. In Australia there's a dissolvable seltzer tablet called Berocca (made by Bayer) which everyone takes the night they're getting drunk. For some reason, the same Berocca tablets in America have less vitamin-B, and include ginseng, and are twice as expensive as they are Down Under. But in America there's a thing called "Emergen-C" which while not marketed as a hangover medicine has almost the exact same B6/12 and C proportions as Berocca in Australia. I figured this out after awhile when my band's drummer kept "smuggling" Australian Berocca back to the States for us. Which just shows it does work, a little.

FYI:

Acetaminophen a.k.a. Paracetamol N-acetyl-para-aminophenol (APAP) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol

Ethanol (Ethyl Alcohol) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol

Cytochrome P450 (Metabolism) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_P450

search: >list:'Cytochrome P450 Interaction'< @DDG : <https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=list:'Cytochrome P450 In...>

search: >scholar:'Acetaminophen (N-acetyl-para-aminophenol, Paracetamol, APAP) Toxicity'< @DDG :

<https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=scholar:'Acetaminophen (...>

Alcohol damage of liver is indirect. The blood from intestine containig absorbed nutrients and whatever else got into it goes to liver first for the first line processing and neutralization. Alcohol loosens the intestine epithelium and lets the gut microbiome to get into the blood. This causes an inflamation, which if is chronic leads to the liver disease.

>It's a fascinating idea that social pain and physical pain are so strongly related.

This reminded me of: "Social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain"

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1102693108

That’s been known for a long time, possibly centuries.

morphine was used to treat depression as late as last century, and probably remains a common folk remedy even today.

Morphine has more effects than just killing pain, however. It also provides a euphoric feeling. It's more interesting if a drug that was until now only known for removing physical pain can also provide relief for social pain.

It only does for a brief honeymoon phase. Then it's mostly a pain killer (chronic pain sufferer.)

Well yes, there’s definitely a reason there are problems with opiate addictions.

A differentiation between legal and illegal drugs is the legal ones poison you before they make you feel particularly amazing, the illegal ones poison you after. Take way too much acetaminophen and you get liver failure before you feel euphoria.

There are arguments to be made that many illegal drugs are safer at effective doses but have risks of abuse not present in the drugs that poison you before abuse is fun.

Depending on "who" you listen to Wild Lettuce is either no good or its better than morphine without the addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactuca_virosa https://erowid.org/plants/lactuca/lactuca.shtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactucarium#History

So with man made chemicals they tend to not break down as easily, you see this with man made pesticides like pyrethrin's yet the pyrethrin's in Chrysanthemum do break down easily, organophosphates (nerve agents at the right dose) are another group used to dip Sheep in, but might show up in trace amounts in lanolin based Vit D3 supplements.

Aren't emotions just thoughts with a linked physical sensation?

Why is it so fascinating?

Just?

I didn’t mean to downplay the intensity and effect of emotion.

I found it strange that others don’t acknowledge emotions for what they are at a basic level and instead talk about them like they are some supernatural perception.

What? Emotion doesn't have physical sensation, unless you mean "heart pumping strongly when afraid".

Most people experience emotional body sensations - “butterflies in my stomach,” “a weight on my chest,” “steam coming out of my ears” etc.

Really curious to learn how you perceive emotions. Maybe I'm reading into this too much, but this feels like the start of discussing an aphantasia analog.

Well, I don't visualize at all, so you could be on to something.

To attempt to answer your question, I don't know how to describe it. Until now, I would have attempted to use the language of "physical metaphor" that I had heard and read, but if those aren't metaphors... I have no idea how to describe something that is to me, by definition, indescribable. I can only really describe the effects I suppose, that being angry makes me desire violence, being sad or afraid makes me want to hide, etc.

Thank you for taking the time to share. I really enjoy learning how other people experience the world. There are so many times when I've made an assumption based on my own life and was greeted with a surprise when I came to learn something new.

Don’t people with facial paralysis say that their feelings of emotions are, not functioning at full capacity, due to inability to express them outwardly?

Or, something like that?

I have heard something similar.

People get together to fake laugh and end up happy at the end of the session.

@WaxedChewbacca re:meditation, if your advertisement for meditation is that it will make me feel physical pain when I experience emotions, then that's a great motivation to never ever try to meditate ever. It's also almost completely the opposite of anything I've ever read about meditation. Isn't the whole point to disconnect from emotion and suffering?

If you are practicing mindfulness meditation the whole point is just to observe.

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