Funny, my wife and I were just talking about this last night, because we have an acquaintance who is addicted to Vicodin, but we remarked that it really doesn’t do anything for either of us. We’re both redheads, though I used to be a lot redder than I am now.
I have a memory of coming out of anesthesia when I was getting my wisdom teeth removed, which was the last time I was under general anesthesia. They put me under, and some time later I opened my eyes and saw persons in surgical masks standing over me. I clearly remember thinking, “Wait a minute, I’m not supposed to be awake!” and deliberately closing my eyes. Next thing I knew, they were laying me down on a recovery table.
I am a blonde. I have been given Demerol for migraines a couple of times and, while it makes me sleepy, it really doesn’t do anything for the pain; it basically allows me to crash until the migraine goes away. Vicodin will dull the pain a little if I can keep it down, but I often cannot. Tylenol 3 (the kind with codeine) is somewhat more effective.
I am apparently very resistant to opiates. As far as I can tell they just make me irritable, or maybe that is the unrelieved pain. After a few surgeries where I yell at the nurse for not giving me anything that stops the pain and the nurses yell at me for using up all my morphine, I just go with Ibuprofen. That stuff works better than any opiate I’ve ever tried.
Not a redhead and no redheads in our family according to my dad.
I am a reddish-head. When I was a kid I was actually hyper-sensitive to narcotics and would get Knocked The Fuck Out on them. Now, I seem to be like everybody else.
Not a redhead (but my mom is), but demerol, codeine and morphine don’t do diddly squat to relieve pain. (Doesn’t help that both make be break out in hives something horrible.)
Most narcotics make me queasy and they knock me on my ass. Sometimes, though, that’s better than the alternative.
I’ve had euphoria with 2 narcotics - Stadol and codeine. They gave me Stadol while I was in labor (before the epidural) and I was laughing my ass off within seconds once it hit my bloodstream. My reaction to codeine is the same, just less intense - more giggly than laughing.
I’m a redhead (what isn’t white) and pain drugs, with the exception of opiates, pretty much work as advertised. Opiates, on the other hand, are a crap shoot. If I can keep them down, they tend to make me loopy as hell. The problem is, most of them wind up on my shoes, so they don’t even have a chance to do their thing.
I should mention that when given Demerol when I had my wisdom teeth out I had serious “Fear and Loathing” hallucinations, which I gather other people don’t have. I mean, I saw penguins, and I don’t know how but a picture that was on my wall ended up on the floor with the glass broken. And there was bloody gauze everywhere.
Yes, unfortunately. And what’s worse, sometimes they ignore her and then get upset when they give her something that makes her hyper rather than knocks her out.
Now that other people have brought up some more drugs that I hadn’t thought about, I’m really glad that I haven’t needed to try anything stronger than Tylenol 3 yet. I have a fairly high pain tolerance, which is good, because most NSAIDs don’t really do much for regular aches and pains associated with minor injuries, arthritis or menstrual cramps.
For example, I injured one of my fingers (I think I might have partially dislocated it. no bruising or swelling, so I don’t think anything worse than that happened) on Wednesday by somehow getting it tangled in the lanyard attached to my belt loop when I stood up after sitting on the grass during break. I tried advil, aspirin and aleve, and none of them have done a damn thing to make it ache any less. Fortunately it feels almost back to normal today.
Oh, this article is interesting. According to it, brunettes can have a MC1R mutation - the gene mutation that gives me, mom and Vynce fair freckled skin and red hair - too, just not as often. It’s found in almost all redheads but also about a quarter of people with brown or black hair too, which is something I’ve never heard of before now. This mutation is what causes redheads to react differently to pain killers, so it stands to reason that those people with brown/black hair who have the mutation would also react oddly to them as well.
Now I’m curious if the brunettes they found with the mutation have fair freckled skin too, or if it’s different when you only inherit one copy of the gene, not up to two like many redheads.
Hm, brunette that turns fairly red when sunbleached, freckled enough that my dad nicknamed me turkey egg one summer and narcotic resistant. And I also have what some of my doctors have called an insanely high chronic pain tolerance.
Auburn hair here, I have a big “Resistant to Local Anesthetics” written on my medical chart.
Dentist have remarked on how much meds it takes to numb my mouth, and when I had my c-section the epidural failed to work half-way through when they were shoving my uterus back in there. Not fun.
I’ve always noticed that regular pain killers don’t seem to do much for me, though oxycodone seemed to help a lot after the surgery. Vicodin just made me paranoid and weepy, and didn’t kill the tooth pain I had at the time.
Benedryl and the like knock me out within a few minutes, usually.
Not a redhead, and local anesthetics have an imperfect history with me.
Lifelong terror of dentists because of a filling when I was 13 - 2 shots of novocaine and I think my toes were numb but the tooth was WIDE awake. Subsequent experiences bore that out. Now, dental work includes AT LEAST nitrous oxide and often a stiff sleeping pill as well.
2 kids, 2 epidurals, 2 epidural failures (one with a C-section!). “gallbladder pain worse than childbirth” my ass!
On the other hand, I have a low alcohol tolerance, and narcotics make me woozy and spacy. They work well enough, but so do most OTC meds. Tooth pain however is something special (just had a flareup of a soon-to-be-treated tooth and I was alternating high doses of ibuprofen and regular doses of Tylenol for several days, barely keeping up with it).
Narcotics (and most other pain killers, too) have verly low effect on me.
Dentistry, especially, is distressing in the extreme. OTOH, I’ve learned to cope.
Not a redhead, though.
