In order to get any worthwhile news, I naturally have to sit through updates about Anna Nicole Smith’s posthumous legal battles, and Britney Spears going off the rails. As such, I saw an ex-SIL* of ANS talking about how, when they were teenagers, Vickie Lynn was not the hottest chick in town, but was perceived as such because she had such a magnetic, bubbly, captivating personality.
No, I’m not kidding; that’s what she said. And I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility, because as many drugs as ANS was allegedly on, I can see how they could wipe out her personality entirely and zombify her. She could very well have been charming and dynamic before she got hooked, even if you’d never know it to look at her for the past five years or more.
So I don’t get it. I do understand why people self-medicate, but why pills? I can understand alcohol for various reasons, weed because it makes you mellow, cocaine for the rush, and heroin for the blissed-out feeling. But what is it about prescription medication that makes the high worth the dependence and the detrimental effect when you’re not high?
*Never was able to figure out if this was her ex-husband’s sister or brother’s ex-wife. But jeez, people are coming out of the insulation for this, forget the woodwork.
Well some prescription drugs can give a similar feeling to illegal drugs. Adderall requires a prescription, is an amphetamine and so obviously can have many of the same effects that cocaine has on a person. But some drugs while not exactly getting you “high” can make you not really give a shit about any problems you might be having and relieve everyday stress. Once you realize that popping a pill can get rid of those thoughts about all your problems and stresses I can see how many prescription drugs have a high potential for addiction. Also you know for some people suffer from depression and such the alternative to taking prescription medication that “dulls your personality” might only be an eventual suicide.
Well, for me, (DOC prescription opiates - hydrocodone), the pills made me feel GOOD. About myself, about my lot in life, about my daily household duties, etc. It helped me have conversations with people and made me more outgoing. It made cleaning the house not such a monotonous job. It had a lot of positive effects. Which makes it suck all the more when you realize you’re hooked and have to get off the drugs.
For my cousin, it’s not so much a matter of preferring prescription drugs, but because he’s so desperate for a high that he’ll consume anything if he thinks it might give him a buzz.
I think that for a lot of middle-class people, prescription drug abuse doesn’t have the same stigma and it’s a lot easier to get. (At least, it’s a lot more legal to get.) It becomes a problem before they realize it, and then I think that same stigma kicks in: they don’t want to admit that they have an addiction because an addiction is something that “drug users” have, and they’re not drug users.
Opiate painkillers like oxycodone, morphine, hydrocodone, codeine, etc. give quite the euphoria to many folks, as noted by RSSchen. Not quite as good as heroin, perhaps. But pretty damn close. (And remember, Heroin was first marketed as a non-addicting alternative to morphine).
Benzodiazepines like valium, xanax, ativan, and others are quite notable for making anxious people feel very calm, comfortable, and serene.
I recall my first exposure to codeine at age 14 (in a prescription cough syrup, for a real cough) quite vividly. Shortly after taking it, all the worries, fears, and anxieties I’d ever had just melted away, and I knew that I would be all right, forever and ever and ever. It was like a great big hug from God.
They’re regulated by the government! Even when I was a dumb teenager, I was mystified that people would pay good money for street drugs, because who knows what you’re really buying? It could be anything. Prescription meds have to contain what they say they contain. While there is obviously the potential for dangerous reactions, relative to street drugs, you have a better sense of what you’re getting.
So, they have an appeal to drug users who are also uptight rule-followers and a little on the cheap side, which was a good description of my own fairly rare misspent youth recreational drug use.
There is the issue of consistency, as **delphica **pointed out. Opiates on the street could be great one day and a total drag the next, or even near impossible to find; with a bottle of methadone, you always know what you’re going to get, and just adjust the dose as necessary over time.
Then there is the “prescribed so OK” argument. Many an addict has believed that if the doc prescribed it, there’s no problem, never mind if it was a heroin addict taking shots of codeine cough syrup (my stepmother had this line of thought - imagine my surprise when Ms. Clean and Sober For Fifteen Years had a collection of empty codeine bottles beneath her sink).
Then there are the logistics of drugs. Not everyone knows how or wants to make the contacts necessary to get street drugs, so getting a crooked doc or conning the doc out of a prescription is much easier or more desirable.
Really? That’s idiosyncratic, right? I’ve used codeine all my life in the AC&C preparations for headache, cramps, etc. I feel no different before and after other than the sore stuff stops being sore. I do remember one episode of utter bliss due to codeine in cough meds, but it was because the meds finally stopped a rough, tearing, agonizing cough which had gone on for hours. It was wonderful to be able to sleep at last. That’s the only pleasant experience, though.
OTOH, when I was given codeine in a stronger preparation after a small procedure, it made me queasy and I had to drop the dosage back to my regular AC&C to control pain without feeling icky. And I only ever need one.
About 10% of people will have the sort of response to opiates that I did. A high number of people who react that way go on to have substance abuse problems.
Different people have different reactions to all kinds of drugs. I’ve taken Vicodin for toothaches, migraines, (yeah I know, didn’t do a damn thing. ER docs around here seem to only know how to write for about 4 things, Vicodin, Amox 500, Z-Pak, and Ibuprofen) and it dulled the pain, but didn’t give me a feeling of euphoria. But I have seen people do some crazy and depraved things to get their monthly script for it.
I’d imagine it’s the same thing as any non-controlled substance, like alcohol. Some people have no problem drinking a glass of wine with dinner, or going out to party on Friday night. Some people develop an addiction to the way it makes them feel.
YMMV.
OK, thanks. I was thinking I might be an oddball. Good to know it’s just you
I don’t enjoy the alcohol ‘buzz’ either, and if I manage to drink my one glass (or, at most, two) of wine quickly enough to start feeling it, I back off fast. It’s very unpleasant to me. So is the sensation I got around negative-ion generators. I wonder if these things are related in any way?
Amphetamines must be the most popular way overprescribed prescription drugs.
I take Adderall for a sleep disorder and, tangentially, for ADD. Personally I notice only the mildest of effects other than one: I used to be unable to wake up most mornings, by which I’m being literal; I set 5 alarm clocks [including the cell-phone] and there were still times I was 3 hours late to work because I simply could not wake up enough to get dressed; I even fell asleep in the shower a couple of times. Now, I wake up when the alarm goes off, pop a pill, doze, then when I wake up again I’m still really groggy but I can get out of bed. Otherwise, I can’t say I’m any more wired or organized than I once was, but then it’s a fairly low dosage (30 mg).
However, when student workers where I worked learned I had an amphetamine prescription (which isn’t standing- you have to pick up a new one each month) you wouldn’t believe how much they started hinting or outright asking for some capsules. (I didn’t give them any, of course- that’s a firing offense and understandably so.)
Then there was an editorial in the school paper about prescription amphetamine abuse on campuses and I couldn’t believe how many students chimed in to the comments with whines ala “But there’s no way you could be expected to have any social life and keep up with your classwork and a job without this stuff.…”. Oy. (If I can manage a decent GPA, a then undiagnosed neurological disorder that causes continual sleepiness, a full-time job and a full-time class load- and I’m one of the biggest procrastinators on Earth- so can you kids; my heart does not bleed, particularly when looking at data showing college workload and reading loads going steadily down over the decades while amphetamine use/abuse steadily rises.)
My sister’s a pharmacist and obsessed with the ANS case. I asked her about Methadone as I only associated it with heroin withdrawal, but she confirmed that she filled at least a prescription a day for it and most had nothing to do with drug withdrawals. She also said that when she began as a pharmacist (early 1980s) she filled a few amphetamine prescriptions per year for kids and by the time she retired (early 2000s- she still works enough and does CEUs to keep her license current) they accounted for about half of her prescriptions for kids. She said it was second only to Viagra in the type of medication explosion that occurred during her 2 decades of active duty pharmacy.
I’ve been given valium by my doc recently for nightmares and anxiety attacks. I’ve taken one since I was given them and while most of that day passed quite uneventfully what I remember most is how nice I felt for that whole time. I get anxious quite often and have issues dealing with a lot of stimulus, and it’s been a struggle not to just pop one of those pills every time I feel a “mood” coming on, I tell you that.
I’ve posted here before about a person in my life who is addicted to OTC codeine-based headache tablets. At the height of his addiction, he was taking 36-40 tablets a day - That’s over 460mg of codeine PLUS 7200mg of ibuprofen. Every day. We tried to detox him and he ended up going through a withdrawl not unlike that of heroin. The doctors are >thisclose< to getting him into a methadone programme to get him off of the stuff (he’s cut his consumption down to somewhere around 8 tablets a day, but he still can’t quit completely). He used to shop around pharmacies, going to three or four in a day just to get enough tablets.
He says he started taking the tablets to combat stress headaches. The tablets made him feel good, so he started taking them on a daily basis to keep him from going mental with the work he was doing. He kept feeling good for a while, until his body adapted. So he kept taking the pills, but increasing his consumption until he got to a point where he was taking enough to keep him feeling good, but also where he was at the point of destroying his kidneys if he continued. He was afraid for his health, but couldn’t stop taking the tablets because he was afraid of going back to the way he was before he started. I honestly believe if I hadn’t found the evidence of addiction and confronted him about it, he still would be taking the full dose that he was every day, if not more. He didn’t come to me with his problem, I caught him out and he had to 'fess up.
And I can see how he’s gotten addicted. At one point, I was taking the same tablets every day for “headaches”. On the days I took the pills, I felt great. Work stress didn’t bother me, customers were all fine, I was meeting my call targets and life was pretty smooth. On the days I didn’t take them, work was full of idiots, customers were shouting morons, I couldn’t meet my call targets if you’d pinned them on my head and I could just feel myself getting wound up over and over again. I started on three tablets, then went to four when I felt that three wasn’t working enough. It was when I was considering ramping up to five that I realised I was starting to develop the same problem as the other person and took steps to remove these pills from my presence, so I couldn’t take more.
But these are tablets that are available OTC, without a prescription, both in AU and the UK. They’re tablets that people buy because the advertising says “Strong Pain? Take these pills, they’re doubleplusgood with the power of codeine!”. The packet mentions “Do not exceed this dosage for this many days without seeing a doctor”. What the package and the advertising fail to mention, however, is the addictive properties of the drug in question.
I miss OTC codeine. Heh. And should probably be extremely grateful it’s not available here. I have enough anxiety issues that I could probably get a perfectly legitimate prescription for anti-anxiety medication, but I kind of know it’d end up being mother’s little helper so for as long as I’m functioning without, I’m staying away from that.
And that’s the appeal of prescription medications for me. I could probably get them quite legitimately. At least at first. I’d never even consider doing street drugs.
I’ve tried different meds for a few different reasons-- I’ve had Mepergan, Vicodin, and Lortabs prescribed, and I’ve tried Oxycontins, Adderall, and Methodone recreationally. I don’t really care for any of them except for Lortab, which I was started on after being rear ended last year by a driver going around 35mph.
I have the same reaction to it as some of the posters above…I don’t get tired, I don’t get “drunk”, I just get intense euphoria and feel generally like everything in the world is beautiful, and I act kind of goofy. For some reason, I absolutely cannot sleep if I take one too late in the day however. I can basically get a script for it whenever I want, but I have no real desire to, unless I actually am hurting or sore.
I’m fairly drug-resistant, which is good and bad. So all I got from my lovely Percocet prescription after my surgery was really good sleep. :-/ I have a 'scrip for Xanax, but I don’t take it unless I really need it. I guess I’m afraid of addiction, considering my family’s tendency to addictive behavior. (Alcoholism, smoking, pain meds, etc.) Which means that prescription meds are no more a danger to me than street drugs, since I’m equally scared of both.
I was on a prescription high blood pressure medicine for about a year. It worked fine on my blood pressure but it also had a mental effect. The best description I can give is that my mind was always mildly numb. I realized it when my prescription ran out and I ran out of the medication before I could get it refilled. On the third day after I stopped taking it, I felt like I was completely awake for the first time in a year. After that, I told my doctor I wanted to switch to another prescription.
