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!) I fight regularly with my professional "peers" about the use of narcotic pain medication when appropriate. Without this cocktail which a brilliant and brave pain management specialist in Beverly Hills found after much trial and error - I couldn't get out of a wheelchair. In fact, the depression from 12 weeks in a wheelchair had left me seriously contemplating suicide based on lack of quality of life! I guess I didn't mind a diaper at under 15 months of age, but found I hated it in my 40's! Truly hated it. Anyway, I never dreamed I would be personally "dependant" on narcotics. (BTW: Dependant is a physiological term - addicted is a or implies a psychological and a physiological problem. I contend that I have a definite physical dependency but doubt that I have the psychological component required for full - blown "addiction". But then I"ve never had to face coming off them, either. Would I rob a bank or steal to pay for the drugs? I don't think so. And thankfully I do not have to choose that one - either way. My dependency is handled nicely at the pharmacy one time a month. I also have legally prescribed versions of both drugs in injectable form - and the equipment to adminster them - in the event of an emergency (like a hotel room maid steals my regular bottles out of my shaving kit - it happened once in Dallas and I went through hell getting the meds refilled in a hurry there! Police report be damned - the stupid pharmacists wouldn't take an out of state RX from my own docs in NYC. So we had to find a local guy to write them for me. That incident made me damned glad I had and always travel with the injectables. (They were in the hotel room safe along with other valuables. So the crazy girl left the safe alone, but took the meds that were in my shaving kit and sold them all over town before the police busted her a few hours later higher than a kite. Seems she and her friends took in a day what I use in about a month! Yes - high is the right word for their condition. War on drugs? Hell, the only people who have any trouble getting opiates are those with a legitimate and lawful need for same. So that's my story. If you have comments/questions/ etc., I'll answer honestly if I possible can. About the medical and psychological effects of opiates - well I know what I learned in Med School, but I learned a Hell of a LOT more when I became a patient needing this kind of care and medication to even function again! I'm willing to share what I learned both ways, if it can help anyone here... and I'm sure I'll learn far more from you than I've ever dreamed of knowing about life before, and now, after the opiates got me out of a wheelchair and back into something like my old life before the accident.