A last-ditch treatment for migraine.
Seriously. When all else fails - when you have no migraine medication, prescription or otherwise, and no access to an acupuncture clinic - get angry.
That's my situation today. Stuck at work, with no medicine, unwilling to try to make it home, and just pissed at having a fourth migraine this month. I've lain in bed weeping in the dark too many times. Missed too many days. So I repeat the treatment I discovered in France, 1995.
I was traveling by myself, and had made some friends on the train to Paris. Found a hostel with them, and planned a day of tourism; but made the mistake of drinking the massive bowl of breakfast chocolate served in the hostel cafeteria/discotheque. We got to Notre Dame and wow, I was trippin on those stained glass rosettes. Trippin a little too hard; soon all I could see were the bright flashing diamond arches of a migraine aura. Couldn't go back to the hostel, because they required us to leave for the day; so huddling in bed wasn't an option. Not sure what else to do, I followed my new friends to a cafe and tried to wait it out. Lucky for me, I was soon harrassed by an asshole French waiter who insisted that I purchase more beverages or leave. I got pissed, super-pissed. I walked away blindly, sat down in the middle of whatever park we were near, and wept with passionate hatred of migraine, travel, and all things French.
It worked.
The pain didn't completely leave, but the sensation of being hit repeatedly in the eyes with the baseball bat of nausea was gone. I rejoined my travel buddies and went on with my tourism.
I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV. I know that migraine is electrical in nature. I feel like anger is also electrical. This is all very bad science, but getting mad really does work on my migraines.
Give it a try: Visualize your anger rising in a hot wave up your face, zinging your eyeballs so you feel like crying. Go on and rage a little, until you feel better. Today I worked myself up to fever pitch of righteous indignation over the incompetence of the highly paid people I work with. Can't think of anything to get mad about? May I suggest bad customer service, world hunger, your ex, or the United States government.
Somewhat amazingly, my observations have been corroborated by someone somewhere in Oliver Sacks' book Migraine (Vintage, 1999).