Yes it is. It is my biggest worry. I am on the case, though.
Maybe they’re not for you, but this is pretty much what the people who “like” opiods are looking for!
mc
I took percocet for about two weeks after my shoulder surgery last year. It hit me hard- I would doze off at any moment, even in the middle of sentences, and had very vivid fever dreams. It also made me itch something awful.
While it was really nice to be able to fall asleep so easily, I got off of it as quickly as I could. Didn’t even use the entire prescription.
While that’s not a side effect that’s universal when taking those meds, when it came out that Favre was taking large quantities of Vicodin, I did wonder, “wow, did he, like, not poop for a year?” 
Opiods are not just a problem for people:
“Mussels do not metabolise opioids, but some fish can become addicted.”
IMHO. if you are an addictive personality, get clean & sober and stay that way you will never have a question about this.
If Class 5 drugs do nothing for you, thank your lucky stars.
Many many are not so lucky.
27 year & doing well.
Gus
I have a high response to hydrocodone (and probably other opioids but it’s the only one I’ve taken). I was prescribed some when I had a tooth infection that I rated as an 8 on the pain scale – not quite as painful as someone continuously punching me, but comparable to someone continuously slapping me somewhat hard. 5 mg of hydrocodone + 500mg acetaminophen cured the pain right away. I only took around 6 of the prescribed 20. When I saved the rest and had the tooth removed they offered another scrip* but I said I already had some left over and I only used a few of those as well.
*This was more than a decade ago so I’m not sure if they’d do the same now, especially for tooth removal. But they had better write me some if I ever have that bad of a tooth infection again!
Valium was definitely strange, and I a good way. Not long before my first serious knee surgery, I was sitting there in the pre-op room waiting, and sweating bullets.
I was 17 and my orthopedic surgeon had told me that I definitely had a torn MCL that needed fixing, and that he couldn’t quite tell about my ACL because I had a prior partial tear, so he wouldn’t know about reconstructing it until he was performing the MCL surgery. The reason I was so anxious was because there was a calendar order of magnitude difference in recovery and rehabilitation time (this was 1989)- 6 weeks for the MCL alone, 6 months or more if the ACL was involved.
So there I was, heart rate, temperature and BP elevated, and just worrying like a crazy person about this. The nurse checked my vitals, and popped off, coming back with a Valium.
I remember it taking effect - I went from super anxious and scared to completely calm and good with however the surgery turned out. I remember thinking that the drug effect was pretty amazing if it could do that, and that fast.
That is a drug that I can understand why people might want to illicitly take it. Hell, if I’d had access 6 months ago, I probably would have myself, since I was anxious and stressed out about work beyond anything rational.
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I was prescribed hydrocodone after a hernia operation. I followed the label instructions. It didn’t give me a buzz, but it took some of the edge off the pain from sitting down or standing up. I think when you’re in severe pain, narcotics just work on the pain and generally don’t get you high. Unless they give you a shot of post-op morphine that’s supposed to last you 4 hours.
After a couple of days, I realized I was constipated. I thought it was most likely from the meds, but I did have surgery on my stomach, so I googled hydrocodone. The first hit let me know a side effect was constipation. the next 19 hits were for places you could go to to get treatment for an addiction to hydrocodone.
Ick - that’s hard to imagine. It wasn’t fun at all. I would think that “liking” a drug would involve either a) the drug making you feel GOOD, or b) the drug making you feel normal. Non-perpendicular floor was not fun (aside from my brain being a bit amused by the situation); staring blankly at a computer wasn’t fun either.
The one time I had a reaction to a drug that kinda scared me was about 5-6 years ago. Due to a number of sleep issues, I literally always feel tired.
I was given Nuvigil (a wakefulness-promoting drug) to help with the daytime sleepiness. This stuff is not in the “need paper scrip every 30 days” but is listed as having some potential for abuse.
So I took it for a few days, then got a nasty bout of bronchitis and stopped taking it for a bit. Then we went on vacation, and I slept 8-9 hours a night every night for a week (and was still tired). The day we drove back from vacation, I went back on the Nuvigil: a half tablet at 9 and another half at noon.
And I felt good.
Not WHEEEEEEEE LOOK AT ME I"M FLYING good, but, well, well-rested. Kind of like I imagine someone without sleep issues feels if they’ve had a good night’s rest. I had not felt that alert in decades.
It was so utterly alien to me, that I kept asking my husband if I was acting abnormally or seemed to be doing anything risky (I was driving). He kept assuring me that no, I was doing fine. I drove almost the entire day without needing to switch out the driving. It was wonderful.
So I could actually see developing a dependence / craving for that feeling.
Luckily (?) for me, I slept so wretchedly that night, that the negative consequences pretty well interrupted my brain deciding to develop that craving. And I’ve never since had that same feeling of “well rested” even when I’ve been off the drug for a bit.
I’d be surprised if it were NOT a universal side effect - the opioids directly affect the muscles that move things along.
After my gallbladder surgery, between the narcotics (only taken for 3 days or so) and the rummaging that had been done to my innards, things didnt happen for 3-4 days. Ditto with my recent wrist surgery. Even when I was tapering the painkillers to 1-2 a day, the gut was not back to normal until I was completely off them. My husband stopped his painkillers in less than a week (knee surgery) - sooner than he should have, but strictly because of the digestive effect.
I have a friend who’s been on narcotic painkillers for years. She buys Senokot and Miralax every time she has her scrip filled - the effect does NOT wear off with continued use. Another friend is undergoing abdominal surgery (she’s on the table right now, in fact) and was grateful when I warned her to have Colace and fiber supplements on hand.
I ran raw AncestryDNA data thru a third party app and it said that I was more likely to be resistant to opioids. They have lots of disclaimers and only refer to general probabilities.
Most people don’t instantly get addicted to pain killers.
That myth has been used on various drugs for decades. A lot of soldiers in Viet Nam did drugs heavily. It was a way of dealing with the war. The majority came home and resumed normal lives. Only some came back addicted.
Conservatives always want to emphasize addiction like it’s the norm and people can’t recover. That’s not true.
I’ve been on painkillers three times after operations. Never had any significant problem stopping them. Perhaps because the pain from surgery went away and I didn’t need painkillers anymore.
I can understand needing painkillers when you’re hurting. It’s cruel to make people needlessly suffer for a political agenda.