Web MD describes it as a magical pill that works in the brain.
Specifically, it changes how your body feels and responds to various amounts of pain.
What is it used to treat? What conditions?
Pain; with no further explanation accompanied.
Who is going to sit and pretend they don't know what pain is?
Who is going to question how much pain must be tolerated before this radical pill is prescribed?
I grew up in a house where narcotics were popped like candy.
Different colors and sizes.
Some coated, some crushed.
All known for being good fun.
I knew the smell of good kush before I knew the glorious smell of a new car, or "clean sheets air freshener."
Alcohol was my next door neighbor who would come over to the house quite often.
By the end of the night there they laid, on my cold kitchen floor.
They must have been old friends with the cigarettes because they often came together.
In fact I have memories of all three, holding hands singing children's songs, before deciding to take this fiesta elsewhere.
Those three were not law abiding citizens.
And psychiatrists did not believe this to be a healthy friendship.
Regardless they became a staple in my American household.
The three musketeers.
One for all, and all for the high.
...Yeah that was the saying, right?
Being choked by the smoke filling the house, I promised myself I would never part take.
You had weed, I had the web.
You had Molly, I had my puppy Rocky.
You had a bottle of Georgi's cheap vanilla vodka, and I had an extra tall glass of chocolate milk.
Young and inexperienced I was, but I knew pain.
I felt emotions that I didn't know what to do with while I was applying for high schools I didn't want to go to, while trying to figure out ways to get you to stop driving all yours cars into tall structures.... and to stop buying new cars.
The older I got the pain became physical.
I fought the blinding nightmares and bellowing voices with my fists.
Only realizing my body, was fighting itself in an entirely different way.
When someone asked how I was feeling I was honest and stated I was hurting.
Nobody did anything.
My mind started fighting more than voices.
It fought sleep.
It fought attention.
And oh how it protested bright lights.
My life had become a constant reminder of the pain.
Chronic pain that although the doctors acknowledged, they completely dismissed.
For fear of drugging me too young.
Because society knows opioids fuel abuse.
Forget about their abilities to diminish pain, clearly stated in hundreds of international clinical trials.
I was good on my promise till I met alcohol straight on at a wedding.
No date to accompany me, I agreed to live a little risky for once in my life.
I did this for me.
And god it was one of the best dates I ever had.
Picture this.
Short, dirty blonde haired, sixteen year old, white girl from New York City visiting the west coast for the first time.
An ex fat kid, with boobs popping out of tight fit A-line dress.
Heels so high, yet somehow still able to walk one foot in front of the other.
She and alcohol took some people's money that night, and took advantage of the alone time deciding to go for a walk.
She being me obviously.
A forty five minute leisurely stroll up a gravel hill, through a parking lot, crossing a dark road by somehow going through a locked toll bridge that would eventually lead me to signs in the grass pointing me where I needed to go... all while arriving at my hotel room around two in the morning and falling flat on my face the second I get my door open.
The only thing I remember from this adventure was standing in the middle of a road, moving my hips side to side moving my arms like a dramatic dancer would, from one side to another, up and then back down.
My eyes focused on the yellow paint parting the directions of the road, all meanwhile some poor driver had to stay honking at me to get me out of his way.
Did I mention the hotel was a fifteen minute walk from the party venue?
Alcohol became familiar to me and I began to see myself in a better light when she was around.
My favorite perfume was one that smelled like Malibu Rum.
It reminded me of how strong of a women I was.
How confident I could be, and how beautiful me and my body actually were.
I later met a boy who would become the sun my earth spun around.
My life, awhile later still is in orbit around him.
Him joining my life taught me more about myself that I initially expected.
For instance, love, although bipolar, and marvelous, and most importantly...real; does not have the power to fix everything.
The pain will not become tolerable just because there is some to tolerate it there with you.
And this is okay.
I haven't been visited by alcohol in some time, but temptations have risen since I made my promise.
Alcohol although being sweet, can be a lot of work to be around.
There is not much relaxing and breathing, more like experiencing and screaming.
The older I have gotten the more drugs I have become aware of.
I knew their negatives and viewed the only positive as self destruction in over dramatic cases.
Rappers write songs with assistance from these drugs, artists feel their paintings, poets read the plaque on their awards, but all this is canceled when one white boy in Ohio crushes too many up and mixes it in with his Bud Light.
Fatal.
In the weekend that just past the pain became too much.
My head felt inflated, and my eyes were near to rolling out of their sockets.
My big toe feels fractured while the top of my foot is numb.
My knuckles strong and sharp now felt immobile.
When standard pain medicine sold over the counter at Rite Aid failed me, and my doctors teetered on the ethics involving giving a young adult something that would for once rid me of pain, my childhood came through for me.
Out it came long thin and white, from a bottle labeled "Vitamin D."
They wouldn't tell me it's name till ten minutes after I had taken it.
It's like Tylenol they said.
Hydrocodone.
Twenty minutes later my eyelids drooped while my head laid on the chest of that boy I mentioned earlier.
Covered in a blanket.
My first time pain free that I can clearly remember.
Possibly my first time pain free ever.
Within six hours the effect had worn off but the thrill still buzzed inside me.
The broken promise didn't seem to bother me because I asked for another one.
It's been a couple of days since I've had my first taste.
Is this a habit I can shake?
Hydrocodone be my date?
