I also had a right hemicolectomy, and I guarantee for the first three postop days dilaudid was my friend, but I switched to Advil at the end of day three, and although the pain level increased it was tolerable. I was more worried about the constipation effects if I stayed on dilaudid than I was about the pain.
Not saying it's the right thing to do, but China had a severe addiction problem prior to the communist takeover. They solved it by the brutal expedient of executing every addict they could catch. I'm not advocating this solution here, but it's illustrative of the fact that drugs don't cause addiction, because after the addicts were dispatched the drugs remained, but China no longer had an addiction problem. The problem was the addicts not the drugs. Likewise the problem here is the people abusing the drugs, not the drugs themselves.
I had to travel by car cross country when I had mine. It was pretty expedient.
I have sympathy for people who get hooked on prescribed meds. A friend recently lost his son to that. Got hooked and then couldn’t break it. Very sad.
I tacitly agree with the sympathetic law enforcement approach to get the distributors, not the users. If they can control the flow, users can’t get the stuff.
The son of another friend was clean for 5 years, he used once and OD’d. Survived. His friends broke his ribs doing CPR and it got infected leading to a long hospital stay. Best thing that could have happened. He moved to a farm based rehab ministry to get away from the temptation.