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Of course, you can't simply pop a tab of acid whenever the need arises and trip balls through the pain circus, because that would make it difficult to function (and psychedelics take a while to kick in anyway). It's more of a prevention strategy. "I just use them when they start, and I'm good for nine months to a year. Unfortunately, you can't get a prescription for mushrooms or LSD."

So there's only one trip, and you choose the time and place, then you've got a whole season free of the devil ineptly trying to take your contacts out. On the slightly more functional end of the scale, John believes that marijuana not only helps to alleviate the pain of a cluster attack, but also eases the anxiety of the impending head-stab as well. Nickolus agrees: "There's too large a list of medicines that have been shown to work to ignore just because the government wouldn't like it if I decided to use them instead of the insane painkiller regimen they stick me with."

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"This one is for the pain, and this one is for the side effects to the one for the pain,

and this one's for the side effects caused by the side effects to the one for the pain. That'll be $6,000."

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Nearly everyone we spoke to sang the praises of one medication, though: oxygen tanks. Well hell, that seems easy enough, right? Why is this even a problem anymore if we've got such an accessible and simple form of treatment? Because, unfortunately, "it's really hard to get a prescription for that," Tyler says. "It's one of the most successful methods out there, but it isn't understood as useful for this treatment, so not a lot of people get to use it."