We’ve had several people in earlier threads report they are naturally very anxious nervous people. Bad enough that they’ve been in counseling for years over crippling life-obstructing anxiety.
And a single Vicodin was a magic wand that simply made all that anxiety go away and they tasted for the first time in living memory what they think “normal” people feel like all the time.
That’s not about “getting high”. But you can sure imagine that such a person would dearly like to take another of those pills as soon as their crippling fear returned a few hours later.
There is a vast reservoir of people with those kinds of problems. And another vast reservoir that would enjoy a high if they could find one. Even if that’s only 20% of society, that’s 70 million Americans.
Then there’s the other 220 million of us who shrug and say “does nothing much for me.”
I just realized I’m about two hours overdue on my next oxycodone pill. I have plenty of depression and anxiety too, I have so much of that stuff I have to buy it by the train carload to be able to afford it. But oxys aren’t helping with that at all. If they did I’d probably be long gone from this planet. Everybody’s individual situation will be different, but life presents many dangers and making it all the way through to the other end requires the where-with-all to avoid instant gratification that has a brutal back end price tag attached.