Taking medication for pain is often necessary, but can be challenging in many ways. Here are some basic principles to think about when taking medication for pain control:

• Have a reasonable goal. It may not be practical to completely eliminate pain, especially if you don't want to feel drugged or over-medicated. Aim for a tolerable level of pain.
  
• Take medicine on a regular schedule. Pain is easier to prevent than to get rid of. Once you achieve an adequate level of pain control, continue your medication on a regular schedule to maintain that degree of comfort. If you wait until the pain gets bad again, you'll need even more medicine and it will take longer to get the pain back under control.
  
• Use long-acting medications for baseline pain control. If there are several medications or dosing regimens to consider, try to choose one with the longest duration of action. Not only does that mean fewer pills to take, but it also makes it easier to keep the pain under control.
  
• Expect to need more than one medicine. When one medicine doesn't work well enough, some people are tempted to give up on it and replace it with something else, trying to find the perfect one that helps the most. However, the safest medicines - those with the fewest side effects - often aren't strong enough to achieve adequate pain control by themselves. You may have to take a combination of different medications. However, the partial relief the first medication provides will help to minimize the doses of other medications. Also, a person may simultaneously experience more than one kind of pain. A combination of medicines may be needed, for example, to reduce inflammation and muscle spasm and nerve pain.

• Use short-acting medications for breakthrough pain control. It is rare for someone's pain to be exactly the same from one day to the next. Try to factor in an average of one extra dose of pain medicine daily - some days you'll need two or more extra doses, but at least occasionally you won't need any additional medicine.
  
• Be proactive. If you're getting ready to do something you know will increase your pain, take an extra dose of medicine ahead of time to minimize the expected worsening.

• Take advantage of potential side effects. There's an old joke about a computer programmer explaining that the latest version of his software program is free of a particular malfunction - because he has now made that annoying problem a feature! While medication side effects are nothing to laugh about, sometimes we can take advantage of them. For example, if you're having trouble sleeping, a pain medicine that makes you drowsy might be a great choice at bedtime. If you have constipation or diarrhea, a pain medicine that has the opposite side effect might be a blessing.

• Try to change only one thing at a time. Although to get adequate pain control you'll likely need several medications in combination, it's best to add or increase only one at a time. That gives you a better idea of which one or ones are helping you the most. It also makes it easier to know where to place the blame if you have an allergic reaction or develop an undesirable side effect.
  
• Watch out for interactions. Make sure your doctor and pharmacist know all of the medications you're taking, including those prescribed by someone else or filled at a different pharmacy. And don't forget about over-the-counter medicines and supplements. Only when they know all the drugs you are taking can they warn you of potential interactions.