Disclaimer: Not an opioid addict! Not “asking for a friend”! Have had one opioid (morphine) one time in medically appropriate situation in hospital. Liked that the pain went away (a bit), did not get high.
This question is raised for me by the Dear Sugar podcast, episode not numbered, date given is Jan 9, but year not listed, named “Dear Sugar: I’m Addicted to Painkillers” and you can listen to it here.
The letter writer knows she is addicted to painkillers, is afraid to tell her husband, is afraid of going off them, though she says she refrained from them during her pregnancy with her now 18 month old child.
She says the painkillers make her the person she wants to be, make her able to function much better, and treat her anxiety much better than any anti anxiety medication she has ever taken. The advice givers think that is the addiction talking and tell her to talk to her doctor about ending her addiction.
We have a great bias against opioids in our culture, perhaps this is well earned by the behavior of addicts. I am not aware of personally knowing any. We don’t seem to balk at people being treated with medication for anxiety or depression for their whole lives.
Is there a case to be made that for some people regular daily opioids are the best treatment for what ails them…what if what ails them is not physical pain, but anxiety or depression? Or are they just too dangerous, for their sedation effect or their tendency to suppress breathing or other side effects I don’t know about?
Given the development of more and more targeted psychotropic drugs, it seems to me that using an opiate is, at best, a shotgun approach, and not worth the potential for abuse.
You can find a lot of examples of addicts who run companies or even in upper management but I think in the great majority of cases it will lead to someones downfall. My exwife was a surgical nurse for over 20 years while addicted to opiates, the last 5 years she became unemployable and eventually overdosed and died.
Part of the problem is that our bodies seek homeostasis. We develop tolerance for opiates and many other medications, requiring more of the substance to achieve the desired effect.
When I had one of my kidney stones, the doctor gave me Tylenol with Codeine, to take next time the pain surfaced again. It did, and I did, and I remember it well. I was still in pain, but I didn’t care – it was a wonderful high. I was thinking to myself, Now I know why people take drugs. Give me some more of that. The next time I had an attack, I tried it again. It didn’t work. The pain was just the pain. I never tried one again.
What is your definition of addict? quite a few people take pain-killers life-long for various medical conditions and depend on them to be able to function.
There are many functional addicts. Several studies have concluded that about 80% of heroin addicts are highly functional.
There are two types of addiction: physical dependency and pshchological addiction. Dependency is when you go into opioid withdrawal when you stop taking opioids, usually a 1-4 times a day user.
The typical junkie image is what most people picture an opioid addict to be, yet most addicts don’t inject.
It has been proven that opioids can help depression in most people and they definitely are about the best cure for anxiety. Opioids really have no adverse side effects save for the slowing of the bowels initially, but it wean back to normal fairly quickly, the only other common side effect is physical dependency.
Some studies have found that opioids may be good for your immune system but those studies are largely inconclusive.
Opioids will effect you diffenently depending on the opioid and the dose. A lower dose will loosen you up, wake you up, get you moving and improve your mood without any ill effects on cognitive skills or coordination and reflexes. Moderate doses will produse a noticible euphoria, minor sedation with very minor effects on your coordination. Moderate doses of opioids also allow you to get proper REM sleep if you’re an insomniac while other sedatives don’t allow you to get proper rem sleep. Large doses will give you major euphoria, moderate to severe sedation, and will cause youto ‘nod’ in and out of dreamland… When you ‘nod’ on opioids, you are in what is basically a lucid dream of which you are in complete control.
Most opioid addicts are highly functional, and very few will fit the junkie steriotype. the functionality of the addict is mainly based on self control.