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[RC] Rider Drugs - k s swigartDiane Trefethen said: 5) Kat said, "Personally, I don't understand it. But that is probably because I have never had to drug myself to get through an endurance ride". Ahh.... and here is the crux of Kat's misapprehensions. She hasn't reached the point in her life when after getting out of bed in the morning, she must hobble for 10 or 20 minutes till she gets "warmed up". She doesn't know how it feels to need a mounting block because without it she could not get up on her horse - AT ALL. Actually, I do. A number of years ago I got flipped off my horse when he tried to jump a fence that was a fixed obstacle instead of one that comes down and he hit it with his front feet. I dislocated 8 disks in my lower back and pinched a nerve. It took me 45 minutes to be able to even stand up. Just opening and closing gates and getting in and out of my car caused me to fall to the ground in agony. Getting on the horse without a mounting block was a total impossibility...so I didn't get on any horses during the time that it was healing. It may be that I am a genetically altered being who doesn't injure as easily or feel pain in the same way as other people do (no way to know); however, it may also be that I haven't reach the point in my life when after getting out of be in the morning I have to hobble for 10 to 20 minutes 'til I get warmed up BECAUSE I have not made a practice of drugging myself through my pain so I can keep going but rather because I have taken pain as a signal to stop. I don't know this for sure, it could just be genetics :). However, I grew up in a household where the cure for pain (or illness for that matter) was rest not drugs. Drugs were considered a last resort (i.e. if the pain was so bad you couldn't rest). I have since learned that some drugs, especially anti-inflammatories also have some healing properties (which is why I took two aspirin after being dumped by the manic pony) so that you need less rest and am willing to use them a bit sooner than my mother would have. However, when I first started riding endurance, and the effort caused me pain, I took this as a signal that I was not doing something right and that I wasn't physically fit for the effort. Rather than just drugging myself through the discomfort I improved my riding skills and my physical fitness level so that riding endurance DIDN'T cause pain. I don't know if this will work for everybody, but I do know that it works for horses. I am fairly confident that drugging horses so you can continue to work them while they are injured or beyond their level of fitness will break them down and shorten their useful lives. I find it mildly ironic that there a number of people on this list who are younger than I am are talking about how they have to drug themselves through the ravages of old age. I don't know whether I don't have to drug myself through an endurance ride is because of genetics or because I haven't made the mistake of drugging myself beyond my capabilities. It is probably a bit of a combination of both. I have been to plenty of endurance rides and ride & ties seeing people do things to themselves that nobody in their right mind would do to their horse, and not just because it would be unkind to the horse, but because it would be a foolhardy thing to do with the horse if you want the horse to be able to continue down the trail for the years to come. Go ahead and drug yourself through your pains, but recognize that by doing so you are risking having to use more and more drugs just to get up in the morning until it gets to the point where all the drugs in the world won't help (that's what happens to horses that are drugged and worked through their aches and pains). Alternatively, you can consider the possibility that the pain is telling you to slow down...for now. And you MAY find that if you heed it, that in the long run you will be able to do more with less drugs and that your life will be more pain free for longer. I don't know this for sure, but it has worked for me, and one of the reasons it has worked for me is I constantly ask myself this question: "If my horse were in the condition that I am in, would I be asking my horse to do it?" And if the answer is no, I don't do it. Am I aware that there are some chronic pathological conditions that cannot be recovered from but that can be alleviated with the use of drugs? Yes, and in those instances, to not use drugs to do so is just masochistic (or sadistic if you deny them to your horse). However, much (not all) of what I am hearing about here does not come under the heading of chronic pathological condition but rather comes under the heading of physically under-conditioned. And, I contend, that the solution to this is to improve your fitness, not to drug yourself through it. And some of the conditions come under the heading of temporarily injured, for which MY treatment of choice is rest (or whatever the appropriate level of activity for physical therapy). So no, I didn't ride with a fractured liver, and I wouldn't have bothered to go and have the CT scan done to see if it was healed if I were still experiencing pain from it. Pain would have been a good indication that it wasn't fully healed. Not all pain is like this, but a lot of it is. I was chagrined (that is the word I used, and I chose it carefully) to read of the cavalier attitude that many people here seem to have about the use of drugs to further their endurance performance. Not just because they seem to be blithely unaware that by doing so they are "rigging" the competition through use of performance enhancing drugs, but also because they seem to be as blithely unaware that they may very well be shortening their useful lives (despite the fact that they are aware of the fact that it would have this affect on their horses). It IS possible to compete in endurance drug free. I know because I have been doing it for years and thousands of miles. Whether this is because I was born with more natural ability or because I have made it a long standing practice not to overuse myself I cannot say...but you may want to try it (emphasis on MAY, and it may not work for you). Whatever you decide, don't con yourself into not recognizing that drugs ARE performance enhancing or that anti-inflammatories aren't drugs. And if you are just starting in endurance and find that doing it is making you excessively stiff and sore. Don't just assume (like many people here seem to) that the only way to mitigate this is by using drugs. As long as you don't have some underlying pathological condition you can (and, I contend will be better off if you do) mitigate it by properly conditioning yourself for the effort. You know, like everybody recommends you do for your horse. And the reason I contend that you will be better off if you do is that if you don't but rather drug yourself so you can be comfortable without conditioning yourself for your effort, before long you WILL have an underlying pathological condition. kat Orange County, Claif. p.s. It is entirely likely that one of the reasons my liver healed so quickly from being broken in half and dumping what looked like three pints of blood into my abdominal cavity is that it started out very healthy (blood tests in the hospital immediately after the accident showed that my liver function even with it severely compromised in this way was better than that of most people's normal livers). And it may be that the reason I have a very healthy liver is that I haven't routinely been drugging myself, because rest assured, using a bunch of drugs is hard on your liver. But I don't know this for sure. I may just have been born with a good liver and all of this doesn't apply to anybody else. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. 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