Drug Abuse?

It's Saturday night and I'm staying in. It's cold and dark, I have an appointment with the specialist on Monday morning and I thought it might be nice to give him a set of blood samples that are less than 14% ABV.

And I'm in a tiny bit of pain. And I'm bored. But does this justify having a Tramadol?

For those who are not aware, Tramadol is an opiate based painkiller, that, as I understand it, works by increasing the flow of endorphins to either block the pain, or to make you not notice it. And by being an opiate, obviously.

Now, I'm a lucky odditity, as was discovered after my surgery a few years ago. I had the standard morphine push button drip wired up, but was still so stoned post-op that I had misheard almost everything the staff had told me, so thought I could get a hit about every 25 minutes, and jolly nice it was.

Sometimes I didn't need a hit for pain reasons, but took one from time to time as the ward was pretty chaotic and grim, so I guess you could say I used it for mental health reasons.
The days passed and the pain managment team turned up to assess me. And were very impressed by how little morphine I'd used.

Turns out I could have had some every five minutes. Bugger.

This and my reactions to other sedatives led to the conclusion that I have overdeveloped opiate receptors, which means any moderate dose of opiate painkiller works exceptionally well, and I also get all the good side effects - improved mood, a deep fascination with small things and generally have a very nice time.

Consequently, a single Tramadol would do nothing for most people, or at best might give them 3-4 hours pain relief, but leave me happy as a sandboy for about 8 hours.

But opiates can be habit forming (i.e. heroin), so must not be treated lightly. In theory I could take some paracetomol and hope for the best, but if I take some tramadol, I know it will work and also give me a good night being delighted with the thread count on my Egyptian cotton bedsheets....*

So I guess I'm wondering, where is the line between prescription drug use and prescription drug abuse?




*I spent a happy evening in bed after some tramadol pondering the egyptian cotton, thinking about the Nile tide irrigation system, the family that had grown it and how it had got from the cotton field to my bed and being generally grateful for the whole process.