I'm a middle aged guy, living in NYC. I'm a doc by training but do not practice any longer. No, didn't loose my license writing too many opiate Rx's - quite the contrary. I had a fall at the office and crushed three vertebrea and broke both hips! (OUCH!) And learned all about the medical community and their fear of opiates when truly indicated first hand. Now four years later I'm living happily, out of a wheelchair and walking again, and have a pair of new hips (better than the OEM model!) and a badly patched up few vertebrea. I function quite well on 30mg of MS CONTIN four times a day and a 60 or 90mg MS Contin at night. The "short acting" component of my cocktail is Hydramorphone (AKA Dilaudid) 8mg and I use that 4x a day,too, as needed. Reflexes were tested after a three month trial on the pain cocktail and I was cleared to drive again. Also, I had a complete psych work-up afterwards to make sure the drugs hadn't rendered me permanently stupid. IQ is still quite sufficient to make it into MENSA and not into .999's (but it wasn't enough to get me into .999 before the drugs, either!)