Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict Read Free

people in the United States using prescription painkillers recreationally for the first time than there were using either marijuana or cocaine combined. This wasn’t surprising to me at all. Americans take pills for everything. According to the FDA, pharmacists filled 3.1 billion prescriptions in 2003, up 60 percent from ten years prior. Add to that the fact that every year, approximately 15 percent of the top two hundred largestselling pharmaceuticals are expensive new drugs, with no generic equivalents. Even our own beauty department at Jane magazine was starting to tout different pills as an effective way to treat skin problems, rather than creams or lotions. So why not use them to get fucked up too? At different times in my life I’d been put on antidepressants like Prozac, Parnate, and Zyprexa. They did little for my depression, but here was a pill that really worked, one that by curing the physical pain of simply being alive, cured my mental pain as well. Even better, it got me high.
    Here’s how. Humans have opiate receptors distributed throughout the brain, with higher concentrations of receptors in areas such as the basal ganglia and thalamus. These receptors are proteins located on the surfaces of nerve cells, or neurons. Neurons communicate with each other by sending out chemical signals called neurotransmitters. In the peripheral nervous system, nerve endings that deliver pain signals to the central nervous system are called nociceptors. For example, nociceptors in your fingertips might tell your brain that you’ve just touched a hot stove, or that the joint you’re smoking has just burned down to your thumb and forefinger.
    This pain signal is regulated by the rapid entry of calcium into the cells through calcium channels, cellular gatekeepers that control the release of neurotransmitters. Calcium channels concentrated in neural (nerve) tissue are called N-type channels . Scientists are trying to find new ways to treat pain by targeting these channels. The challenge is to control pathological pain (that is, pain that is not useful in helping a person avoid injury) without the undesirable, yet common, central nervous system side effects of respiratory depression and dependence.
    Normally, opiate receptors are activated when your body produces endorphins, which are involved in a ton of normal body functions, such as respiration, nausea, regulation of hormons, and pain modulation. Morphine, heroin, and opioids (synthetic opiates) like Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet metabolize into replications of endorphin molecules that fit into pain receptors and flood into your body, making you feel euphoric. These endorphin replications differ, depending on the drug. Vicodin metabolizes into somethingcalled hydromorphone, and OxyContin, a controlled-release formulation of oxycodone, metabolizes into noroxycodone and other metabolites, but for all of these painkillers the end result on your body is similar. Your pupils constrict, your pulse slows down, your breathing becomes slower, and your blood pressure falls. Anxiety melts away and you feel utterly relaxed. Of course, pain goes away too. The reason why opiates can be so addictive is because after the brain starts getting them consistently, it stops producing endorphins on its own.
    All of this, of course, depends on a lot of factors. Not everyone’s body responds the same way to opioids. Variables can include age and weight, and in a lot of cases, totally unknown influences or something as simple as a sensitive stomach. I have a lot of friends who can’t stand Vicodin because it makes them nauseated. Other people can overdose and die if they drink alcohol on even one or two painkillers, while a lot of people (myself included) have taken pills as strong as morphine and Dilaudid, gotten wasted on cheap beer and champagne, and woken up fine the next day. That’s not to say it couldn’t still happen to me. It’s a total crap shoot, which makes these pills even more