Screw the Pain Medication

• Main
• All Subpages
• Create New

Someone is hurt pretty bad, yet still conscious. They need medical help, likely need surgery. They're getting ready for a major operation, but they order the doctor not to use pain killers, let alone major anesthesia. Sure, they know they're in serious pain and need to be treated - but for these folks, whatever the reason, pain isn't much of a problem -- to the point that they may outright say, "Screw the Pain Medication!"

This trope is often used to show one of many things: the patient is a badass Made of Iron; they simply don't feel any pain; or, in some cases, pain killers are in short supply, and they want them saved for someone who really needs them. Maybe ego -- or the need to look tough for someone -- won't let them. Or maybe there are downsides to taking the meds that are worse than what the pain will entail. It's often seen when a character engages in Self-Stitching, where such medication is either rare or not present. This can go Up To Eleven if it's a Life or Limb Decision.

See also Macho Masochism.

Examples of Screw the Pain Medication include:

Fan Works

• In the Real Person Fic Just Taken, Melanie strictly requests that she isn't given pain medication after she is severely injured in a fight, which included getting ran over by a car. She even woke up during the middle of emergency surgery, which she just shrugs it off. Of course, this request was later denied when she finds herself in a different hospital, whose staff administers the medication by force. Melanie complains that the medication was making her even worse, wanting to vomit at one point. However, considering one of the reasons for admission against her will was due to her eating disorder, she wasn't able to do so.
• In Spice Fortress Series, none of the women are given any medicine, even during surgery, yet seem not to care.
• Though understanding why she had to be on them, Emma wants the doctors to either reduce or stop giving her medication when she got out of a coma in Astral Journey: It's Complicated, as they were just making her very sick, even worse than being in a coma.

Film

• In The Dark Knight Gordon mentions in the hospital that Harvey Dent refuses to take any pain medication, despite having half his face burned off. He isn't willing to get a skin graft, either.
• Revenge of the Sith has Palpatine forbid the medical droids from using anesthetics or pain-killers while they rebuild Darth Vader, leaving him fully aware of what is happening to him during the multi-day surgery.
• Tank Girl: Kesslee is badly injured, resulting in the loss of his arm and face, but he orders his doctor not to give him painkillers.
• In The Wolverine, Logan skips pain killers to perform open-heart surgery on himself and remove a parasite that was compromising his Healing Factor.
• In No Country for Old Men, after destroying a car to steal antibiotics without being seen, Anton Chigurh goes forward with performing Self-Stitching on his knee in a very calm matter.
• Cast Away had Chuck removing a bad tooth with an ice skate and rock without any anesthetic.

Literature

• The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy: After getting shot, a state trooper notifies his superiors about those who shot him and their hostages. He declines to take any medication for pain.
• In Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, Lok's Protectors of the Law can draw on the Heart of the Mountain to increase their strength, speed, stamina, senses, healing, and pain tolerance, but can choose how to distribute it among all those benefits (thus one using it to boost both strength and speed will be slower than if they exclusively focused on speed and weaker than if they used it to increase just their strength). On a few occasions Protectors are shown using the Heart's power exclusively to heal without using it to dull their pain to maximize the healing they receive, either to heal faster or to survive very serious injuries. Additionally, Ashok, the main character, receives a few injuries whose pain he could use the Heart's power to dull as well as heal, but since he knows the Heart's power, while vast, is ultimately finite across all users (so it will eventually run out someday) he refuses to waste its power dulling pain.

Live-Action TV

• This is true of Barry Allen in the CW series The Flash. Thanks to the effect his Super Speed has on his metabolism, pain medications wouldn't work for him anyway.
• In the Breaking Bad episode "One Minute", Hank beats Jesse so badly that he puts him in the hospital with a horribly bruised face, leaving the battered and broken Jesse in a state of near-feral rage. He's so hellbent on suing Hank's ass that he refuses to take any pain medication on the off-chance that the detective tries to use his history of drug abuse against him in court.

Video Games

• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: The cyborg warrior Raiden is impaled by a sword during his fight against Monsoon, and he asks his support team over radio to "turn off his pain inhibitors". The rush of pain he receives proves beneficial: it triggers his Ripper Mode for the duration of the fight, as well as allowing it to be used in short bursts from that point on.

Western Animation

• Cotton Hill from King of the Hill, which very much overlaps with Macho Masochism, when he justifies his refusal of pain killers at a Virginia hospital.

"Did Lincoln ask for girly gas when they blow'd his head off?"

Other Media

• A joke circulating during the late 1960s and the 1970s (and still occasionally seen today) invokes this trope: A yogi goes to his dentist to get his teeth worked on. When offered Novocain, he declines, saying, "I transcend dental medication".

Real Life

• During World War II, Colonel von Stauffenberg refused to take morphine, out of fear of developing an addiction to the stuff.
• According to I'll Take Your Questions Now, a 2021 tell-all book by former Donald Trump White House staffer Stephanie Grisham, the then-President refused to be sedated while undergoing a colonoscopy, because he could not bear to let go of the power of the Presidency, however briefly.