Methods for Spelunking through the Abyss.

After a certain threshold, pain makes you lose it a bit.

Some methods for dealing with pain:
1. Wiggling.
2. Taking drugs.
3. Taking more drugs.
4. Hurting yourself in some unrelated way, to distract from the original pain.
5. Sometimes number 4 takes the form of throwing up because of too much number 3.
6. Rationalizing. Sometimes this is just saying "no pain no gain." When I was a kid, I would rationalize in terms of what pleasures I had experienced which were somehow causing this pain. I imagined there being a kind of pain/pleasure equilibrium being reached whenever I would suffer, thereby somehow justifying my pain. But this doesn't work anymore. Now the rationalization tends to take the form of explaining to myself that this pain is temporary, and that in a matter of time I will not feel the pain and will even have trouble remembering what the pain was like/how long the pain lasted/etc. For instance, now I do not have a toothache. And all I remember about hanging out with Daniel, Max, Laura, Brianna, and Jenny is (a) that I was in pain (Though I Don't Remember The Experience At All Vividly--And It Was Three Days Ago) and (b) Daniel was damn funny. This kind of rationalization does not help much in the moment, but at the very least it is something to do.
7. Hurt yourself more in the very location/manner in which you are already hurting. Spike the pain, so that when it levels back to a steady degree of intense pain, it will feel, for a time, as less.
8. Pray to God. Plead. Demand Reasons. Beg for Mercy. Curse. Weep.
9. Quote Oscar Wilde: "Lord, spare me the physical pain; I can handle the spiritual pain."
10. Search for anything good about the experience of the pain. Sometimes, if the pain is throbbing, it will begin to follow a pattern. Just the pattern of the pain can make it a little more bearable. That it is somehow organized and that expectations can form around it make it itself somehow more manageable. Like a terrible music.
11. Go for walks.
12. I think of this now, wishing I had thought of it before: Get Krunk.
13. At some point, I think the brain starts trying things out itself. It loosens some connections. It simulates getting krunk. You can't reason the same: memories blend, priorities fade, you fail to grasp exactly what's going on. The brain just unplugs a few gizmos here and there to save the whole system, hoping the renegade bit will sort itself out. Cuts the engines and sends power to shields or whatever. This is where you lose it a bit. Categories and objects begins to blur in such a way that the pain has no constant, discernible background to stand out against. All that exists is the pain, but you don't recognize it as pain. It just is what you're doing. It is what is going on. It's the environment. Everything else jars against it, rather than the other way around. Just having to interact in the world hurts, while the pain establishes itself as the steady norm to which you want to return undisturbed.
14. Oh yeah, your face swells up like a balloon.
15. You call your mom. She tells you, in her all-knowing way, cool as cucumber way, what to do and how to do it. She doesn't whimper or pamper you. She just acts as efficiently and directly as possible to get you out of that pain. To fix you. I love you, mom.