Aaron, I have been in pain most of life from an accident as a young person.Many years ago, a doctor told me not to take anything stronger than aspirin for chronic pain.  Today, I use white willow bark-it's the original herbal aspirin-you can find it at many of our local stores.  Daily exercise has also helped.  My thought is that our bodies are trying to tell us something when there is pain and if we mask it-we aren't listening.  Drugs have serious side-effects and I also found that the prescription drugs made the pain worse when they wore off; there was a ""rebound"" from the pain and it seemed even worse.   The willow and the exercise have made life tolerable.