Many people will use analgesics (painkillers) in order to self-medicate for pain and this is considered normal. If you can use a paracetamol in order to help yourself cope with a headache or back ache then this is a good idea and will have relatively few consequences if any.

At the same time though it is still important to use caution and this means making sure to speak to your doctor about your use of medication and not to overdo it. Paracetamol like anything needs to be taken in moderation and can cause death if you overdose too radically. Likewise over use can also cause problems – lowering your pain threshold for instance, or in the case of ibuprofen causing damage to the stomach lining and liver. Another reason not to use painkillers too readily is that completely eradicating pain is a bad idea in itself – pain has evolved for a reason and serves and important purpose in the body. If you have a back ache for instance and you medicate to the point of not noticing it, then you will be less careful and less aware of which movements can cause injury – and this may of course result in your setting back your recovery.

A soothing backrub was a nightly ritual for my sister and I. Those backrubs warmed us during the cold winter nights and helped us doze quietly off into a deep sleep. Thoughts of my nightly backrubs have created a sweet, soothing childhood memory for my sister and myself.

Has our increasingly busy lifestyle contributed to the lost art of self-soothing? I wonder; if we engaged in more self-soothing, would we have less anxiety, restlessness, and insomnia? Does our health and wellbeing suffer as we become more disconnected from the practice of self-soothing? Has technology displaced our deeply rooted need for touch, connection, and feeling soothed? How does the rise of using medications for stress, anxiety, and pain reflect our diminished relationship to self-soothing?

This is mental health awareness month. Which means, in my experience, that it is still, to some extent at least, alcohol awareness month. Many people who suffer with undiagnosed depression or anxiety reach for alcohol or drugs to calm their nerves or relieve them of emotional pain. In other words, they self-medicate. Rather than seek out some help in managing depression, anxiety or chronic resentment, they seek their own solution -- a solution which, while it works pretty well for a while, eventually complicates the issues and leads to more pain. It's the same sort of premise as having access to your own morphine drip: You administer your own dose whenever you begin to feel pain.

Self-medication is a human behavior in which an individual uses a substance or any exogenous influence to self-administer treatment for non-clinical physical or psychological ailments.

The most widely self-medicated substances are over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements. The psychology of self-medicating with psychoactive drugs is typically within the specific context of using recreational drugs, alcohol, comfort food,and other forms of behavior to alleviate symptoms of mental distress, stress and anxiety,[1] including mental illnesses and/or psychological trauma,[2][3] is particularly unique and can serve as a serious detriment to physical and mental health if motivated by addictive mechanisms.

Self-medication is often seen as gaining personal independence from established medicine,[4] and it can be seen as a human right, implicit in, or closely related to the right to refuse professional medical treatment.[5]