I'm no big fan of painkillers neither. especially when your body gets used to them you always need to increase the dosage and yeah at some point it becomes a vicious circle. Instead i always try to fight against pain first mentally (by convincing myself and my body that it can heal itself). I also try to drink lots of water especially to prevent inflammatory pain or to help me through spontaneous hypersensitivity to pain that occurs in response to tissue damage cuz of several factors (dehydration, sun exposure, cold...) and sometimes but really sometimes i include some Natural nutritional supplements such as OPC vital or vitamin K from a fair trade shop https://www.vitaminexpress.org/uk/but that's it basically. I hope i could give some pointers to some of you. Best of luck