I mean, yes, for a lot of folks with pain conditions, they are a very useful or even essential component to health and life management.
However, that is not the same thing as me, on a bad pain day, mentioning that I need to go home and take an opiate, and having the person with whom I am conversing giggle and say, “At least you have the fun drugs!”
No.
These are medications that I take because the alternative, being in severe pain, is worse. This does not mean that said medications do not come with significant negative side effects of their own.
You want to know all the “fun” I get to experience while taking (one of the lower doses of one of the less potent) narcotics?
By Pöllö (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
It is actually not like this at all.
Nausea — For the first half of any given dose, relatively reliably. For me, it’s mild enough that I’m not actually worried about vomiting anything I may eat, but it’s also noticeable enough that I don’t want to eat much in the first place. I particularly appreciate the cruel twist of fate that is getting to choose between being nauseated from medication or being nauseated from pain.
Dizziness and Blurred Vision — Which probably can’t help but contribute to the nausea. And which in turn make the physical coordination necessary for any number of household or work-related tasks not something upon which I can rely. Given that one of my primary reasons for wanting effective pain management is so that I can continue to participate in precisely those everyday activities, this is something of a drawback.
Drowsiness — I realize this is not the most awful of side effects — and is indeed common to a number of other over-the-counter and prescription medications. But with my drowsiness comes delayed reaction time, which affects activities like driving (particularly if I’m already away from home when I need to take an opiate), making dinner (knives and fire and things made of glass, oh my!), and feeling comfortable consenting to sex. Though this certainly could be worse, none of this is actually what I would term “fun.”
Sweating — Mine comes with hot flashes. Heat therapy is another important component of my pain management regimen. I live in Arizona. It is summer. Any time now, the monsoon humidity will render our swamp cooler useless. You can see how all of this might build to become really fucking unpleasant.
Constipation — Do you even know what I’m like when I have not shat in three days?
Certainly, it’s not that I don’t appreciate having access to my opiate medication as one component of a more comprehensive pain management plan. But I don’t take them because I’m seeking out that relaxation or euphoria some associate with narcotics. I take them at times when, despite disliking the side effects, I recognize that the straight-on pain I am feeling is worse.
I take them to relieve some of the desperation that comes with severe and lasting pain. I take them when my pain is at that desperate place. But that is not a recreational activity; that is not “fun” for me.
