I’m probably the type of person who, if you met me, would be the last you’d expect to be joining a forum like this. I’ve never taken an illegal drug, have been drunk just once in my life and have never smoked a cigarette. But I’ve had a terrible life full of terrible things. One bad thing, though in no way the worst, is a progressive neurological disease that began when I was a teenager and is steadily destroying every part of my body. And somewhere along the way of getting sick, I got addicted to codeine, prescribed by my doctors.
I’ve become quite tolerant to it, in the physical sense. Sometimes I take breaks from it to reduce my tolerance. I can still restrain myself from taking it when I want to, even when I have plenty to hand, which I do every now and then to test the level of my addiction. But some of my motivations for taking it are definitely not those intended by my doctors. Yes, it makes me feel much better physically (and not just from stopping withdrawal symptoms). It does relieve pain a little bit, but mostly I take it because it gives me a boost of energy, and energy is something I lack to an extent that a healthy young person couldn’t understand. Codeine gives me the energy to do basic things without everything requiring an overwhelming effort. I told my doctors about this effect, and they didn’t think I’d got it right because, they said, codeine is a sedative, but I’ve had enough opportunities over the years to see the correlation and I’m confident I’m not mistaken.
But I don’t just take it for energy; I take it to help my mood. While it gives me physical energy and a kind of buzz, it somehow manages to calm me down as well. I take it when I’m angry or when I’m bored. And I don’t take one 30mg pill at a time like I’m supposed to – I’ll take anywhere up to about eight 30mg pills in one go. Taking one at a time seems a waste because it doesn’t do anything then, even when I’ve had a break and my tolerance is lower. My doctors know that I don’t take it as I should. I recognise many tendencies of addicts in my thoughts and behaviour surrounding my codeine use, but I’m pretty open about it. My doctors kind of turn a blind-eye; I guess they think the severity of my illness makes it more understandable.
So this is how I ended up finding this forum, but I have been reading a lot of other threads out of curiosity. To be honest, I find it hard to understand why people experiment with drugs if they have a life which is ok. My health is a lost cause, so I am willing to take risks with medication that, if I was healthy and had a normal life, I would not, and as far as I (and my doctors) know, I do not seem to be suffering any physical damage from taking codeine. I’m also not sure how people dare to do something illegal for what seems to me as, in many cases, relatively little gain. I know many of the laws around drugs are arbitrary, and suspect there is a lot of potential benefits that could be provided by drugs which are being missed out on because of laws or because the drugs have been stereotyped as dangerous. Legal medications have done more for me than I ever thought possible, in treating both physical and mental aspects; in addition to codeine I’m prescribed an anti-depressant which has changed me completely – for the better, and medication has caused some of my physical problems to vanish, so I’m very much in favour of increasing research into drugs regarding both their physical and mental effects, including searching for the potential benefits of drugs that are currently classed as illegal. But as things stand with current research and legality, experimenting on oneself with drugs where there is little known about what is being taken and what its effects could be seems incredibly risky. So clearly I’m missing something, and I’d like to try to understand other people’s views on drugs, and learn more about the physiological processes that are going on with my own use of codeine, in particular the mental effects and the ability to feel more energetic from taking a sedative.
I realise that people here may read this and expect me to act superior or be judgemental about recreational drug-taking. I don’t intend to be like that, I hope to just find some information from people who know a lot more about drug use than I do. I probably know more than most lay-people about many prescription medications, but the extent of my knowledge of any remotely illegal drug-use, including the cultures surrounding it, comes solely from watching Breaking Bad. So I have a lot to learn.
- and Welcome to Bluelight. 