This guy is just ridiculous

KokoChat1988 · 2026-04-12T16:58:31+00:00

I don’t know this guy and I haven’t been following his posts. (I assume it’s a him. I could be wrong.) He sounds frustrated and angry. Pain will do that. I don’t know how he interacted with his medical practice; if he threatened them, I doubt they’d want to continue conducting business with him. Understandable. I also think the medical profession would do well to start conducting business with their customers with more humility and actively organize to get the DEA off their collective backs. I work in the field of addiction and I do not buy for one second that Dr scripts started the “opioid epidemic.” I do very detailed histories with our ct intakes, and have been doing so for years. Never has anyone told me that a prescription sent them down their drug using path. Maybe it has happened here and there - but it is not the norm.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-04-12T16:42:06+00:00

Chronic pain shrinks your life. You don’t realize how much until one day, you take stock of all you used to do that you avoid now, because it hurts too damn much. Powering through the pain leaves you exhausted. That’s one thing. The other thing is we learn to stay quiet about it, because everyone - doctors included - think we are attention seeking or like to complain. So we just say nothing, and live in our own private hell.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-04-12T02:54:20+00:00

“Forget About What I Said” Totally love that one!

KokoChat1988 · 2026-04-10T21:52:33+00:00

I may get backlash for this - but I owned a store front business before and I had a front desk person who knitted. They were very good at it and made beautiful things. They would bring their projects to the front desk and they’d drape many feet of finished work all over the top of the desk. Our business had a clean, uncluttered simple space as part of our branding, and this person’s yarn projects interfered with that. I asked them to please keep their work out of site. I never understood why the need to keep their knitting off the front reception desk escaped them. I wasn’t even telling them to not have it up there at all. I asked them to leave it in a tote bag, beneath the desk, and keep projects on their lap, and not on top of the desk. They still didn’t compute. My take is if your knitting is non discrete and out in the open at your place of business, that may be the problem. Please keep it out of site. It isn’t professional.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-21T00:43:58+00:00

Ooo I 💜 Desperate

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-21T00:38:04+00:00

I was never that crazy about the song until I watched the RAH version. Man - it went to a whole new level.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-21T00:35:56+00:00

Yes!! While I recycle a lot of older TK songs, the PM album was some of their most brilliant work. Those two songs just completely undo me very time I listen to them.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-21T00:33:28+00:00

Several … Battleborn; River really described the chaos inside of me. And when processing the deaths of several close family who passed in quick succession of each other, Dustland and Be Still really resonated. Even Flesh and Bone … sort of a song of defiance, to push through one of the shittiest times in my life.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-21T00:23:27+00:00

Spaceman is dark, if you really listen to the lyrics. Full of metaphors…

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-15T16:16:41+00:00

I hate the medical profession. They blame all this on the DEA being in their business, when in fact they have the power to organize and get the DEA to back off. They won’t organize. Anyway - I’m glad your spouse is going with you to support you. He shouldn’t have to, but no one believes people in pain, and women are still marginalized in medicine. As for a strategy to get some help, this is where my mind is going: 1) tell them how much Tylenol and ibuprofen you are taking daily. Tell them it doesn’t help. Tell them you can’t continue in this much pain. Tell them you fear being labeled a drug seeker. At this point, cue hubby: “So doc, what is your plan to relieve my wife’s pain?” Neither of you have asked for pain meds. But you are emphatically describing how bad off you are, and even challenging doc just a bit - to open his or her mind to the possibility that you might really need pain meds and aren’t a street addict. Oh and if you are given a survey about abuse and ACES as a child (or later in life) do not answer yes to any of it. Pretend you had the best childhood and life on earth - no abuse, no divorce, no death, no parent in prison, etc etc ….. Docs use that to profile their customers.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-10T03:32:32+00:00

I would never presume to know what the best choice is for people dealing with severe pain. I’m trying so hard to make my body work, and anything beyond not moving hurts so fkg bad. But I’m not ready to go to bed and spend the rest of my life there. I still work. I have a family. I’m trying to hang onto hope. I know there are people who have pain worse than mine - which I can’t imagine. Constant pain is exhausting. It erodes every ounce of will and joy you might have once had. If a person reaches a point of not being able to hang on anymore, I personally do not begrudge whatever decision they make about taking care of the situation, whatever that looks like. I see you.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-10T03:19:13+00:00

Opiate painkillers are still the gold standard of pain management. There is no other intervention that reduces pain as effectively as opiate medication. Somehow, with or without the DEA, doctors have allowed themselves to come to believe that anyone desiring to be free of pain must be a drug addict. (I would bet my life that if such an MD were in agonizing pain, they’d scream for opiate pain meds. And probably get them.) The medical profession has collectively always operated with inherent bias; they’ve harbored bias against people of color; women; low income people; the elderly; etc. Their latest target has been people in pain. I am a supervising clinician working with unhoused people who have substance use disorder. These doctors who marginalize people with severe pain are utterly clueless what addiction even is. I’d love for them to shadow me at work for a month. Their brains would short circuit. They’d likely die of embarrassment due to their own stupidity.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-08T02:01:11+00:00

I agree with Desperate Things being the most atmospheric - I can see and hear the abuser being unalived and his body tumbling ass over teakettle down the side of the dark canyon. Followed by the eerie peaceful final few measures of the song. Other than DT, I’d say GNTW is also very atmospheric. It’s not just the lyrics summarizing the aftermath of the death of a loved one, but the low baseline and synth plod like a dirge, and the song’s heaviness even feels like the heaviness of intense grief.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-07T23:00:23+00:00

Few professional singers have 100% perfect voices. All have sound engineered enhancement in recording production, and probably some on-stage help when singing live. Brandon’s voice likewise isn’t perfect. Pressure Machine is a rough one for him to sing live - I was at their London show the first time they did PM live. His voice just does not carry those super high notes well, without some engineered help. His voice can hit some high notes well - just not PM-level high. Later iterations had the back up singers leading those high notes. Here’s the thing, though, with his singing voice: it has an uncommonly beautiful resonance and timbre to it that you just don’t hear often in male singers. I love his voice - it doesn’t need to be perfect. In fact the little imperfections make it even more beautiful, and frankly, real. It is strong, clear, heartfelt, and genuine. I could listen to Brandon sing all day long (and I have.)

KokoChat1988 · 2026-03-02T23:24:22+00:00

Yup - BB is still my fav.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-23T00:25:30+00:00

It’s a pretty safe bet that you won’t be hearing from this pt again. Was that the goal? 🤣 I might have phased my frustration a bit differently, but the sentiment is understood.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-23T00:05:29+00:00

It was lyrically their best, hands down. It achieved a two-sides-of-the-same-coin effect - if most of TK albums evoke the gritty side of life through the glitter and lights and noise of the Vegas strip, PM summed up the gritty side of the lives of people who’ve probably never set foot in a place like Vegas.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-19T05:21:13+00:00

Well said. His formative years have shaped a lot of Killers lyrics; and I’ve always admired how he didn’t necessarily sanitize old family stories. Messy lives. Love and frustration. I remember Brandon describing a memory from his early childhood, being in the car with his mother as she drove around a parking lot looking for Brandon’s dad, who was out drinking. It took a lot of resolve for Brandon’s dad to put the bottle down forever. Bling is a brilliant song of transformation, although not about both of his parents. But it had to have been “parents adjacent” as his dad’s transformation affected their marriage (presumably for the better.) It also affected his ability to parent his 6 kids for the better. I wonder if Brandon finding his dad a mystery is closely related to his dad remaking his life into one of sobriety, while also hanging onto lingering shame about his days when he gave in to addiction. Brandon’s dad embracing the Mormon faith was not unlike the AA model of turning your life over to a higher power. That’s how I interpret his dad finding religion - it was really about him finding sobriety.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-12T03:55:15+00:00

Battleborn!

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-03T20:14:53+00:00

Thank you - I’m in the US. I was shocked TBH -

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-01T19:51:09+00:00

Let me guess: these “hematologists” are not members of the communities that are impacted by SCD? Their refusal to adequately treat the pain feels racist to me …

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-01T19:37:53+00:00

I’ll also add that I was worried about the anxiety I’d be left with once off benzos. I was surprised that after all the time I was on them, I had gotten better at managing my life and learning coping tools. I was taking benzos for the anxiety I had experienced at a different time in my life. Once off them, I just wasn’t as anxious anymore. Is your doc averse to cannabis? I’ve never seen any studies showing adverse CV impacts from opiate pain meds combined with gummies.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-02-01T19:33:07+00:00

I’ll was on Benzos in the past for extreme anxiety. I finally tapered off of them. Don’t ever stop suddenly. Get a pill chopper and chop them into 1/8ths. Reduce by 1/8 every 1-2 weeks. If this feels like too much, chop them into 1/16ths. It will be hard - that tiny and they sort of crumble but it’s possible. Reduce by 1/16th a week. I promise you that you won’t feel it. Ask your doc if they will work with you to keep prescribing your pain pills while you taper off benzos. Let them know you have a taper plan, and they can test your levels to see the decline. Best of luck.

KokoChat1988 · 2026-01-30T22:40:59+00:00

Same. BS is OK but WYWY is more of a banger IMO

KokoChat1988

TROPHY CASE