I can say from experience that class A drugs make pain seem more like something you can see, or you're aware of, rather than something you feel. You know it's there but it isn't part of you, you feel it objectively rather than subjectively.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, no place or purpose. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd be billionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning this fact, and we're very, very pissed off.