I find acetaminophen almost completely useless for pain. Ibuprofen is better but still not very effective. Naproxen sodium is the only OTC pain medicine which is effective for me.

After going nearly a year without taking painkillers of any kind (not an aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen dose), I took some Tylenol for a bad headache, and it worked far better than it had ever worked for me before.

Granted, I've had to learn to put up with a lot more constant low-level pain in my day-to-day life. But I think that's a reasonable trade off for choosing between cooking my kidneys (aspirin, ibuprofen) or blowing out my liver (acetaminophen).

I had a really weird 1-in-ten-million side-effect with Naproxen sodium. It caused hard insomnia (confirmed under a doctor's care, this was before it was OTC).

>After going nearly a year without taking painkillers

I find this pretty shocking. Is this how people normally take painkillers, would you say? Speaking for myself, I normally go for years without taking anything.

Throughout my life I've suffered from significant allergies, so I've taken antihistamines for many decades (by prescription in my youth to OTC now). The allergies frequently cause sinus infections, which can include anything from minor pain around the ears and jaw, to heavy duty headaches.

It used to be the doctors would have me bomb my system with antibiotics, decongestants, and, yes, painkillers. Forty years on, we know a bit more, or at least I do, and I avoid as many medications (and the side-effects which increase with aging) as I can. I also suffered from tendonitis in the knees, so all of this put together meant I was regularly taking Tylenol or Advil for one or the other.

Then I stopped. I stopped using Tylenol unless I had a fever, or a really bad headache. When I got a sinus headache the first thing I'd reach for was a netty pot or sinus rinse instead of decongestants and painkillers. Physical therapy helped rehabilitate the knees, and when it rains, I just suck it up and limp for a day or two.

Those things and a few other medical issues add up to a steady catalog of pain that I just ignore for most of the day. In some cases, I stretch or exercise. I consider myself doing OK if I'm taking Tylenol or Aspirin once a quarter.

I'm happy you need no painkillers whatsoever for years on end. I think that's how it's supposed to be. For some people, it doesn't work out that way.

You probably don't have a chronic pain condition, but a fair number of people do, especially as they get older.

Many migraine sufferers will take pain killers multiple times in a month

People with chronic pain do what they have to do to get through the day.

accordind to the American Dental Association, 500mg of acetaminophen in combination with 200mg of ibuprofen is more effective than naproxen for pain relief.

https://jada.ada.org/article/S0002-8177(18)30117-X/fulltext (the result are in table 1)

Don't really care what the ADA has to say. I have conducted my own study on myself, my comment was regarding which is most effective for me, and naproxen sodium is by far more effective for my pain relief than other OTC pain relievers including combinations which I have in fact tried.

I'm not saying it'd be good if acetaminophen got you high, just that one of the reasons it's still OTC is that it doesn't get you high, so there's no one champing at the bit to crack down on it, the way they robbed us of the highly-effective and fairly-harmless pseudoephedrine for the one and only reason that it can be illicitly turned into a street drug.

That's reasonable. My concern is that during my lifetime I have had my access to useful medicines with zero abuse potential restricted because of (imo) panics that it could be turned into street drugs (pseudoephedrine), and also because of panics (imo) that it is too hard on my body (Torodol), and of course because of panics (imo) that they will turn me into a drug addict (opiates). The last class is admittedly worth being cautious about, especially with the more potent forms, but all of these drugs have legitimate medicinal uses and people suffer when they are taken away.

(Also, for drugs that you have to take to get through the day, the lack of a buzz is a definite benefit, and not just because it closes off one argument for restricting them.)