(Hypothetically) How to manage unseen pain?

Say most pain medications were off the table as an option for you. The two options you did have were an addictive, strong, substance that caused highness and made you wonderful at the time but later worse. Either as a result of feeling pain again or possible damage to the body.

The second one blocked some of the pain but you were only perscribed one a day, the med didn’t last that long and when it faded you felt the return of pain very noticably. The bad thing is before taking the meds you knew there was level of pain but the threshold was high enough to filter most of it to background noise. However that took years of slowly building a tolerance and during that time the energy and vibrance you once had faded in some measure.

Would you take the medication and continue the roller coaster? Only on days when you were in so much pain you could hardly handle it, or when you had to do a lot more that day? Or would you try to never take it again? Are there other pain management techniques that you feel worthwhile to employ? How much of the pain would you attribute to psychosomatic thought?