I will have to be truthful to the faa on the day I go for a third class, so might as well share my experience here.
I'll admit this has happened to me after an injury. I was, at the time, entirely sober, and I am now for over a year, but I got hooked. Never thought I would be one to fall down that trap. I started taking Percocet because of the need and the fun, rather than pain, which was long gone. Never heroin or other drugs, just the pain pills.
I'm part a program, monthly tests and weekly therapy, haven't relapsed ever, got way too much to lose and so much to look forward to.
Thank you for sharing your story, and congratulations on being in recovery.
I’ve been curious to know what drives the attraction to pain pills. The times I’ve been on them following surgery or accidents, I’ve only taken them for about two days and stopped. I hated the grogginess (and other side effects). I understand pursuing euphoric or relaxing drugs, but not pain pills unless there’s chronic pain.
I'm with you. I've gotten vicodin a couple times - once for the "cap and stow" STC that prevents further children and once for wisdom teeth removal. For wisdom teeth I took no sedation (just Novocaine), drove myself home, and thought "I won't use any of the pain pills." Once the Novocaine started wearing off I thought "Ooh, that was a bad idea." But I took one or two then, one or two before bed so I knew I wouldn't wake up in pain, and after that I was done. Similar for my STC, although I think for that it was 2 days, and I decided to take a couple before the local anesthetic wore off. Didn't like them, didn't like the side effects, threw out the rest of the bottle - no issues.
A good friend from high school who recently died from cancer was a doctor, specifically a psychiatrist, and his area of focus was addiction. He said the biggest aspect comes down to how each person's brain reacts to the various drugs, and specifically how much dopamine gets released as a result. Some people, like you and me, don't get any dopamine (or at least not any significant amounts) released triggered by pain pills. For some people it's much more significant. He was saying that heroin for many produces a release of something like 100x more dopamine than an orgasm. So then even sex doesn't do much for you unless you're also on drugs during when getting to that point.
Another thing he told me about was how he would get patients come in who had many addictions, like 7 or 8. So they would work on them one at a time. He said generally the only one he couldn't get them to kick was smoking. I found that very interesting on multiple levels. One, I always thought of addiction as more binary, not talking about having multiple addictions. Two, I found it interesting that smoking was the one they couldn't kick.
This friend had always been unhealthy with more surgeries than I can count. As a result had been on many pain medications, pretty much every pain medication known to man at some point or another. Like us, he never had any addiction issues, but it gave him an interesting perspective, knowing first hand how essentially every legally obtainable pain medication impacted him as a person. He also was very clear that he felt doctors were who were at fault for the prescription opioid epidemic by prescribing opioids too often and in too big of bottles.
