I really haven't said much yet about Rush Limbaugh's drug situation. It's kind of a difficult subject for me, because I have more than a bit of experience of my own with hydrocodone and other prescription painkillers.

Part of me wants to have compassion for him - drug addiction is a hard thing to deal with and can be very difficult to kick. Where I get hung up, though, is in my own experience, which has been that if you use the medications according to the doctor's instructions addiction can also be avoided.

In his Statement on Prescription Pain Medication Stories, Limbaugh points out that he was prescribed the painkillers following back surgery, and that he still has severe pain in his back. While he says he's not making excuses, the feeling I got from his statement is that he hopes we will understand that because he still has pain he "had" to take more drugs than he should have or that we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he's in pain.

I know what it's like to live with chronic, severe pain. Along with the depression and Tourette's Syndrome I've mentioned before, I also have severe arthritis. It's mostly in my knees, but it's starting to develop in other joints as well, and it's severe enough that it's the main factor in my being homebound for the last 5 years. To deal with the pain, I take prescription painkillers every day. I've always taken care, however, to make sure that I use them in accordance with my doctor's instructions. He prescribes a certain number of pills to last me for a certain amount of time. I make it a challenge to myself to make the pills last longer than I have to (and usually succeed). I take one dose when I first get up, because the pain then is at its worst. For the rest of the day, I only take more if I truly need it. There are some days I take the full allotment for the day and some days when, admittedly, I may take an extra dose, but there are also days where I take fewer than allowed and some where I only take the morning dose. Often I make a conscious choice to put up with more pain than I maybe have to, in order to ensure that I don't start abusing them.

Every time I pick up the bottle of pills, I make a conscious choice to take them or not. If I'm having an extremely bad day, and I choose to take more pills than would be allotted for that day, then I know I'm going to have to also choose to put up with extra pain another day to make sure I don't go through the bottle too fast (which would be a sign of a problem, as far as I'm concerned).

Yes, it takes some work to make sure that I don't take too many pills or go through them so fast that I run the risk of addiction, but I know the dangers and I deliberately choose to exert caution. By the same token, if I started taking more than I'm supposed to on a regular basis, it would be by my own choice - I'm the one that's in control, here. I decide how many I take and how often I take them. If I ran through my "stash" too soon and wanted more, I would have to make a deliberate choice to obtain more - whether it meant trying to find another doctor to prescribe them through a different pharmacy or finding someone to go make deals in the parking lot of the local Denny's. These aren't things that just "happen" on their own.