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There is a fundamental difference between taking any drug – legal, illegal, prescription, protected by the 21st Amendment or banned by Michael Bloomberg – for kicks and taking a painkiller for pain.

Not to your body or brain there's not. It's all the same. Otherwise, good article.

Ann: There is a fundamental difference between taking any drug ... for kicks and taking a painkiller for pain.

SG: Not to your body or brain there's not.

Do you really thing she meant it in that sense -

- or was she referring to the legal and moral aspects?

"Not to your body or brain there's not. It's all the same. Otherwise, good article."

Yes there is, to your body and your brain. Taking pain meds, to stop pain, is much different, in physiological effect. We give patients gobs of pain meds, while they're in pain, and the chemical/physical reaction is different than when taken with no pain. I have to explain this to my patients all the time, because so many of them ask "am I going to get addicted?" It's when you keep on and on, after the acute pain is gone, that the problems arise. There's much more to be said about this, which I don't have the hours and hours to type, but that's the gist.

Not to your body or brain there's not. It's all the same.

Well, actually, there is.

It came as a surprise to the medical profession that it requires truly remarkable amounts of pain-killers to OD if one is actually in severe pain. Basically, as long as you don't use other medications, drink, or otherwise activate synergistic effects, and you actually need the pain-killing effect, very large doses are not lethal (balanced to the actual pain level. Conversely, it was implied that if you took X amount for pain, and that a short while later the base level of pain (rapidly)went away, you could OD on the same dose because the pain level dropped. This effect was made more severe because of the body's rapidly growing resistant to such things by cutting back on its own natural supply (Endorphins and enkephalins), which encourages ever-increasing dosages.

As a result of this being discovered, pain management has now become a term that means something to more than a handful of specialists.

Previous poster said "There is a fundamental difference between taking any drug – legal, illegal, prescription, protected by the 21st Amendment or banned by Michael Bloomberg – for kicks and taking a painkiller for pain."

You replied " Not to your body or brain there's not. It's all the same."

No, each drug has its own effects, its own interaction with your body your situation. My father had back surgery, and it seems like it was successful (so far) he was in agony.

Yes Rush, or my father, might have to take the pain killers for the rest of his life. Consider: People with diabetes take insulin for the rest of their life. People with HIV take their cocktail of drugs for the rest of their life. People with hemophilia take clotting compounds for the rest of their life. So long as Rush can function, can love, and can work, he should be allowed (and I encourage him to) get relief from oppressive unrelenting pain, in a manner that is selected by him and in accord with his values and mores.

There are treatments for the constipation that is the sole major side effect of these drugs (since he is already deaf, he can not have that effect anymore.) I don't care if Al Franken-cheapshot says he is full of manure. We love Rush, despite the infirmities to which the human flesh is heir.

Certainly he has enough money that he should be able to afford proper medical care. If he is not in pain, then fine, he will be happier if he shakes the monkey off. But the drugs are not the problem, it is the sad combination of persistant pain, and federal law that places legal restrictions on life giving medication that are the problem in my opinion.