I've had some really severe back pain in just the last four days or so, and I'm sad to say I've not had any cannabis with which to treat it or I'd know the answer to this from a personal perspective. Back when I was smoking in the summertime, I still found that OTC meds like Advil or Motrin did the trick on headaches or muscle pain better than weed did, but I didn't smoke much weed even when we had it on hand back in the summer.

I finally went to the doc today for my pain and got some heavier-duty prescriptions. Stuff that I won't go into here because it's not cannabis-related. But I'll have to rely on the legally prescribed approach since it's all I have.