If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 16 years is that everyone is different. I know many people who benefit from opioids for their pain and others for whom it helps very little or not at all. Same goes for surgery and every other treatment out there that I’ve tried.
I’ve met very few people who could name just one cause or type of pain. Chronic pain is a complex disease and needs complex treatment.
The best advice I can give is to not give up and be open to trying different treatments (not sure I’d include surgery in the list as I don’t know many who have been helped once the pain was chronic) — even trying something that didn’t work before.
An example is that early in my journey, my pain was so out of control that when I tried massage it didn’t help. Years later, it’s the thing that got me out of my wheelchair and walking again — but — it wasn’t the only thing that I did. I combined it with other things that helped until I found the right balance that worked for me.