I was prescribed painkillers for a back injury many years ago, and before it healed I experienced all the signs of physical addiction - increasing tolerance and withdrawl symptoms when I stopped taking it. I currently have a presciption for generic Vicodin for occasional flare-ups of IBS. I keep a couple in my desk drawer at work, and the rest are in the medicine cabinet at home. There's maybe 10 gone from a refill of 60 I got around the first of November.
You must work with trustworthy people. I wouldn’t keep anything like that at work, unless its locked. But congratulations on using the painkillers responsibly. I’m the same way. When I get them for a tooth extraction or something, I tell them to give me just a few. If they want to give me a dozen, I tell them just 6 or 8.
Somebody earlier mentioned Rush Limbaugh. His story is pretty typical—it starts out with something like a back injury or surgery. For me it was a wake up call—if it can happen to him it can happen to anybody. It made me more vigilant.
Well, in your case you maybe weren’t very heavily addicted, or just have strong willpower? Some people can develop addictions and manage to resist temptation to relapse fairly easily, but that isn’t the case for most addicts.
Also, when opiates are legitimately being used to treat pain, their addictive effect can be less pronounced. So, if you really need that vicodin to alleviate symptoms, it may not trigger much dependency, so long as you don’t overdo it.