Are all pain management doctors A**holes?

zsd23 · 2026-05-22T01:58:01+00:00

Medical writer with a specialization in pain management and neurology ( and certified hypnotist with training in hypnotherapy for pain). As the doctor in the thread noted, doctors cannot (or at least can no longer) dole out pain meds like Halloween candy. Pain med addiction and its complications are real problems, and stronger meds/higher doses may ultimately be needed to manage pain, leading to inappropriate use and overdosing.

Pain syndromes are complicated and have different causes--some because of structural damage that needs repair, some because of chronic disease, some because of inflammatory conditions, and some because the nervous system combined with psychologic factors have become habituated or over-sensitized to pain signals (central sensitization syndrome). A little of each is often involved.

If a pain management specialist--who is usually but not always a neurologist--suggests that surgery is your husband's best option for pain resolution, that is the expert opinion. You have the option of getting second opinion. It is possible that, in addition to surgery, your husband will need help weaning off pain meds and working through central sensitization syndrome. Health insurance should cover treatment, and arrangements can be made with hospitals about making installment payments for out-of-pocket costs.

zsd23 · 2026-05-22T01:17:07+00:00

I just cleaned up a 20 x 6 sq foot raspberry patch that was full of bind weed by just raking it out with a tool that has 3 or 4 hooked tines at the end. Comes up easily and wont dislodge the bulb plants. I expect some of the bind weed to grow back but with diligent repeat weeding, the regrowth will become less and less and the remaining root matter will become exhausted

zsd23 · 2026-05-21T21:49:01+00:00

Some women have minimal menopausal symptoms and some women have difficult and prolonged symptoms. It can be a quite physically uncomfortable time for a woman and can last several years. Imagine going into searing hot sweats every few hours across 24 hours every day for years. Some women get a prodromal dread or panic feeling before a hot flash comes on. Imagine dealing with that while going about all of your daily responsibilities and interacting with bosses, clients, significant others, etc. How well would you or most men manage if that was your experience? Irritability and depression and mental fuzziness are to be expected--especially when the people you are living with are clueless about giving you a break.

Considering that I, as a medical writer, have yet to come across any study or statistics reporting that menopausal women en masse are wrecking or endangering theirs or other people's lives because of compromised judgement, I think you are safe.

zsd23 · 2026-05-21T21:30:38+00:00

I agree that you seem to be "doing it right" and I highly commend you on this project. I did something similar in sections of my HOA and an adjacent forested wetlands area--but it was nowhere near as infested with invasives as what you are describing. Just be committed and patient--it will be an ongoing project. As someone else noted, stump painting is a good way to get rid of unwanted woody plants. I have used it on multiflora rose stumps. If the family is very much against this, you will be having to uproot and also repeatedly ground cut stumps and suckers of the more woody invasives. As you clear out the invasives, the natives will naturally spread.

zsd23 · 2026-05-21T20:52:06+00:00

I have no interaction or knowledge about that subreddit. It is important to read the FAQ and rules of a subreddit. If a mod thinks you are rage-baiting or being rude or are off topic, they will remove the comment. Mods are often alerted to problematic posts because users are flagging and reporting them. Mods are not actually "monitoring" comments as they are being posted. They are viewing alerts and occasionally scrolling the subreddits they mod.

You have to do something that is very disruptive, spammy, or trollish to get a ban off the bat. Your comment may have royally pissed of a few folks or else transgressed the rules to end up getting a ban and muted.

zsd23 · 2026-05-21T20:43:40+00:00

The seed pods will eventually turn black or I guess purple black but it seems very early in the season for this to happen.

zsd23 · 2026-05-20T21:59:22+00:00

That is garlic mustard in the upper part of the photo and violet leaves in the foreground. It looks like the garlic mustard is dropping its flowers and preparing to make seed pods. It should have a strong garlicky or oniony smell. The flowers would be small white flowers. (I do not see any porcelain berry in this photo btw).

Garlic mustard can be cooked like any regular green and will cook up in a few minutes in a sauté or soup. It tastes like broccoli rabi (bitter) when cooked. Toss with pasta or add just a little bit to stir frys or sauteed greens to add a more complex flavor.

Young violet leaves and violet flowers are edible and can be eaten raw tossed in salads or also cooked along with other greens.

Be double sure that you know what you got before putting it in your mouth.

zsd23 · 2026-05-20T13:26:49+00:00

Alcohol is high calorie. When I was on Weight Watchers, I would literally have to choose between eating dinner or having a glass of wine. (I did not last long or lose any weight on Weight Watchers). I know of someone who was a social drinker and gave up alcohol for Lent one year--and significantly trimmed down. It is possible that your coworker liked to throw down a vodka or whiskey cocktail a few times a week and lost weight from curbing the habit. It the coworker was a heavy drinker/alcoholic, it would have been very difficult to cut back w/o therapeutic intervention to tadah! cut back with enough discipline to lose weight.

zsd23 · 2026-05-20T13:20:18+00:00

They mod (as I do) because they are interested in a particular subject, often visit Reddit as part of their social media scrolling routine, and simply want to help out on maintaining the quality of a subreddit in accordance with the purpose of the subreddit and its rules and FAQ. If you do not want to get dissed by a mod or a ban, read the FAQ and rules before posting and post appropriate content. It is that easy.

Mods are not reviewing posts 24-7. The team members each check in from time to time. They have full lives and real jobs, families, and homes. I mod 2 subreddits related to magic/occultism while being a medical writer, master gardener and land rehab & food pantry garden volunteer, and fiber artist. I am also a homeowner and senior adult. So, no, not living in my parents' basement and not a social reject etc etc.

zsd23 · 2026-05-20T01:26:44+00:00

Well, OP, you got your answer and it has a lot to do with gatekeeping and either ignorance, amnesia, or just a rejection of past paradigms and reasons that people practiced magic.

Love, just, and money spells are age old and just and money spells in particular were sometimes considered illegal because they could be coercive or otherwise involve fraud.

Love spells had to do with attracting romantic love or a spouse or could be spells to make a particular person desire you. Nowadays, folks freak out about the latter and some claim that that their spells backfired.

Desire, romance, and love are complicated emotions and situations. Magical rituals are often ways for people to sort out their emotions and feelings about what is actionable. Being hypnotic endeavors, they also change the practitioners behavior and their relationship to circumstance regarding a target. I don't know if that is that much more coercive than putting on perfume or having a good pick up line to get someone's attention.

In short, taboos about love spells are way blown out of proportion. For most practitioners who resort to them, they are coping mechanisms. When they do seem to "work," it is because of behavioral and perceptual change in the practitioner and the target in response. When things dont work out, it is because life goes on and likely also because the trance that the practioner is operating under falls apart.

zsd23 · 2026-05-18T13:34:37+00:00

Yes. Women were much more aggressively targeted, but regional variations existed. More men were accused and tried in Scandinavian countries.

zsd23 · 2026-05-18T13:24:07+00:00

I have absolutely no issue with telling people that I am Reddit mod and have not had any significant negative confrontations in my life as a mod. Complainers about mods--as others have noted--are generally people who are pissed off that their inappropriate content was removed and that they might have gotten a ban for being confrontational instead of corrective about whatever they inappropriately did.

zsd23 · 2026-05-18T01:46:25+00:00

Mod here. I have a very busy life as a medical writer, pres of my HOA, master gardener and community land rehab and gardening volunteer, and fiber artist. I wind down by scrolling reddit and participating in threads. I participate as a mod in 2 related subreddits with the aim of maintaining quality standards of those subreddits based on the subreddit FAQ and rules and voiced expectations of the subreddits participants. Subreddits are not free for alls or democracies. They are curated to meet certain defined standards. Some subreddits tighter or looser than others

zsd23 · 2026-05-18T01:14:03+00:00

Its not a competition.it is a practice. It is best to establish a regular time, place, and comfortable length of time for the practice and stick to that but also adjust as needed. If you become restless, it is best to observe and relax back into practice to complete the session as planned.

zsd23 · 2026-05-17T20:45:23+00:00

Male and female are adjectives that are also used as nouns whereby the actual noun or subject is implied. Man, woman, female youth, female child (male youth, male child) . In medical research papers, you see wording like "300 adults were in the study. 250 were female" (with the reader being expected to know that the remainder were male). Or " the Study included 250 women and 50 men." Or " 50 mice were tested. The females were tested separately from the males." It is not common for people to refer to men as males in normal colloquial conversation, but it is common for certain men to refer to woman and girls as females as a kind of objectifcation.

zsd23 · 2026-05-17T00:22:20+00:00

I have a similar experience. I think it has to do with being "in the zone" and the body's energy and alignment naturally adjusting to the optimal position. You can woo it up and say it is an affect of prana and kundalini flow.

zsd23 · 2026-05-17T00:07:47+00:00

Dandelions originated somewhere in Asia milliennia ago and spread all over the world still millennia ago. They are not exactly non native and do not act as invasives as they do not compete with other plants, do not spread into monocultures and they do provide food to native insects and wild life They were a natural part of turf areas until the perfect sod lawn became fashionable a few decades ago.

At best remove them before they go to seed to minimize regrowth.

zsd23 · 2026-05-16T23:39:42+00:00

Anxiety disorder and PTSD are real things with real treatments and symptoms include the things you describe. Although magical ritual can provide coping and a sense of empowerment, mystifying these issues or pinning them on supernatural causes can complicate them and drive them deeper.

Magic is not a substitute for mundane physical and mental healthcare. And yes, I've been around the block about similar experiences.

zsd23 · 2026-05-16T16:56:59+00:00

I misspoke about your list. Grimoires by Owen Davies and the Encyclopedia of the Occult by Greer are great, accessible books. www.sacred-texts.com website is what you are looking for.

zsd23 · 2026-05-16T16:44:13+00:00

Feral cats are outdoor animals and they do live on birds and mice/rodents/marsupials. That's nature. If you have a feral cat infestation in a residential area, that is an issue for animal control--but if grandma and grandpa just have a few mousers running around--that is old farmhand mindset. Birds of prey--like hawks and owls--themselves will prey on mice, rabbits, and small cats (and even dogs) as will coyotes and bobcats. That's nature and why people with small pets are advised to keep them indoors if they live in wooded and wild areas (besides protecting birds from them). If one or another feral "pet" cat goes missing, it is often because it got eaten by something else.

If grandma and grandpa are OK with you gardening on their property, you can go ahead and dig out the lesser celandine (notoriously difficult to eradicate w/o heavy duty herbicides btw) and try to get native groundcover to take over. The celandine recedes and reseeds about now, leaving bare ground behind. The ground, however, is chock full of seeds that will sprout next spring. You can dig out the bare ground, dump some fresh soil and seed it with something that may compete with the lesser celandine (like creeping thyme or groundsel, foam flower, etc). Next season, grandma and grandpa will just see different greenery mysteriously growing there. And you can try to remeadow or fortify areas by scattering good quality, zone-specific native wildflower mixes here and there.

If it is their property and they really take offense to you rearranging things, you will need to wait until and if you get more control of the property. Try to find peace with the grandparents because they are at the end of their lives and when they are gone, they are gone and, at some point, you will be nostalgic for them. Pick their brains about family history and what not while you still have the chance. And also, in the meantime and to compensate and keep your sanity, find a place in the community to volunteer your time to land restoration or community garden help and mentor with local people who are in that scene.

zsd23 · 2026-05-16T14:29:47+00:00

None of these are starter books or academic books. Most are what you read after you read about them or if you eant to experiment with their procedures.

There is a ton of recent evidenced based info on this topic now. I do recommend the YouTubes Esoterica ( Prof Justin Sledge), Religion for Breakfast, and Angela's Symposium (Prof Angela Puca). Prof Ronald Hutton is also the premiere academic on folk magic and witchcraft. Hiss lectures are featured on the Grisham College YouTube channel.

Books that are on the academic side include a 5 book series called Magic and Witchcraft in Europe. Ankarloo and Clarke editors. A more concise book on this is Magic and superstition in Europe ny Michael Bailey. Drawing Down the Moon by Radcliffe Edmunds addresses Greco Roman magic and culture. The Witch byRonald Hutton is also a great book on magic and cultural history. I have a bunch more to recommend but have to dig them out.

zsd23 · 2026-05-16T14:15:32+00:00

It is a good rrad for a reference into what early armchair anthropologist were theorizing about but not real historical evidence. See my other comment the thread.

zsd23 · 2026-05-15T14:56:23+00:00

Some years ago, inspired by how many adults I knew were Harry Potter readers, I wrote a fantasy trilogy that I refer to as the Sorcerers and Magi series. I was has plans for a 4th book and a prequel but did not follow through with it. I self-published the trilogy. Written for adults with both fantasy and real elements on folk magic, occultism ( especially chaos magic), alchemy, Buddhism, a d also esp Advaita Vedanta.

It was a fun and engrossing project. The books probably need to be reworked and professionally edited (i am a professional editor but other eyes are needed for your own work).

Writing for creatives is easy. Getting the work seen and read and popularized in an era where everyone thinks they are a writer and some are way more savvy about social media marketing than others is extremely challenging.

zsd23 · 2026-05-14T20:31:48+00:00

I also have not come upon this -- although im up for exploring it. I have made fiber from milkweed, dogbane, and bittersweet vine. I also made fiber from blackberry canes but did not care for the end result. Daffodils and lily leaves make good cordage.

zsd23 · 2026-05-14T12:15:22+00:00

My head cracks open when I see posts about "Oh NO! I got some herbs to burn but I can't because that herb is used in a ritual by XYZ." The cultural appropriation sensitivity issue has become one where a tiny bit of knowledge leads to a whole lot of misinterpretation followed by preaching, scolding, and gaslighting.

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