Me and Pain Don't Mix

I am a drug addict. According to a friend of mine, since I am taking narcotic pain relievers, I am a drug addict. I am no better than the homeless person begging for food but really wanting money to pay for his/her next fix. Because I am a drug addict, I am also a liar. Even though I have admitted many times over the past few days, since this subject came up, that my body is addicted to the pain medication, my friend insists I am lying to myself and others by not coming clean. What?

In 2011, I lost a friendship that I had cultivated over the course of six or seven years. Why? I made a joke about drugs. Having grown up in the 1970’s in Davis, illegal drugs abounded. Heck, most of the ceramics waiting to go into the kiln at my high school were bongs and pipes. That’s just the way it was. We wore red t-shirts that said “Enjoy Cocaine” instead of Enjoy Coke. There was a place set aside in front of the school for people to smoke cigarettes and anything else one might have. My brother was the biggest weed dealer in town. I had tried most illegal drugs before graduating high school. A good majority of the kids had. It was part of our culture. Think “Fast Times at Ridegmont High”. I graduated the same year that movie came out. Joking about drugs was just part of our DNA.

But this particular friend had served as a prison guard for almost 30 years. In her mindset, anyone who even thought about marijuana should be locked up for life. I know you are wondering what brought us together. We had similar thoughts on politics, though I leaned libertarian and she leaned right wing. She had told me that people who talk about drugs do drugs and therefore should be in prison. She didn’t even take aspirin. Which was fine with me; if she wanted to be in pain, well that was her problem. Me? When I was fertile I joked that if I found out I was pregnant I would get the epidural then and there because I am such a pain wuss.

One day at a meeting we were both attending, I made a joke, loud enough for everyone to hear, about pain medication. Most of the room laughed. She didn’t. In fact she took me out to lunch and told me off, that she did not want to be around drug addicts. Because in her mind, if a person talked about drugs, they must be addicted to drugs and need to be in prison. She didn’t want guilt by association.

Fast forward to my current friend. Once again, we became friends because of similar political views, though I am a little more libertarian. I ran out of my narcotic medication early yesterday and started going into withdrawal symptoms of shaking and sweating. It is not pleasant. Plus, I am still in pain. I mentioned that to her in a text message and the next thing I know she wants me to go to Betty Ford because in her eyes I am a junkie. Like I said earlier, I know my body is addicted, but my mind is not. If it was, I would be going house to house stealing whatever wasn’t nailed down in order to get my fix. Instead I am waiting for my doctor to split up the prescription because I have no insurance right now (so much for checking “urgent” on the box when I applied for Medi-Cal) and $40 to my name. My pharmacy will not sell me 40 pills now and the rest when I get some money, so I am waiting for my doctor to split the script. In the meantime, I keep getting texts from my friend telling me she knows that I am a liar, but that it’s the drugs that are making me lie. She said she doesn’t take any pain meds because she wants to live a long life. That’s great- for her. For me, a long life in pain does not sound like a whole lot of fun. A short life, lived pain free, is more my option. But in this cookie cutter world, we all have to be the same.

It’s sad, really, that people can’t just let people be. I know my issues. I know that after I deal with what is causing the pain and I am no longer in need of pain medication that I will have to wean off of it. But in the meantime, I just want to be out of pain. For now.