It seems to me to be an issue of control. Addicts and recreational users - do anything to get high. I don't take anything to get high; like my epilepsy medicine, I take it to stay stable and to control seizures. I take the same daily dose of Klonopin every day that I have taken since I was seventeen years old. And though I shouldn't, some days I don't take it. I also take Ritalin for narcolepsy, and on days when I am sick, I don't take the full dose because it's okay to sleep. In fact, I have often taken less than my full dose of every drug I have taken, but I have never exceed the prescribed amount - not of any drug, including narcotics.

And for the record, I've gone without those for weeks at a time as well. At one point not too long ago, I was not having much pain so I did not take my narcotic scripts, but I filled them every month nonetheless to keep myself current. I had, in my bedside drawer, four hundred narcotic pain relieving pills. I never felt the sudden urge to swallow six or more at a time or take them for 'shits and giggles.' I had no fantasy of grinding them up and inhaling them in long, fine lines. No.

Instead, I knew they were there and I knew that if I got one of those three-day-non-stop-vomiting-meningitis headaches, my henchmen would keep me safe. They would beat pain to a bloody pulp, kick it out of the neighborhood, and if it came back again, they would take care of it again. Narcotics are the Mafia overlords of the drug world. They don't take any shit, and they deliver what they promise. So we should fear them, for they are strong. And as a person who has come to rely on them to keep me safe from various pain from epilepsy to cancer, I respect them. I can't imagine abusing them, because I know that, at that point, it is my ass they would be kicking, and they would take me out. Of this I am sure.

What if you take a drug for legitimate use but notice too an improved mood. Not the "Warm Fuzzies" but to be bold enough to say, You know what ... I also feel better on this drug! I know plenty of other cancer patients with chronic pain or fellow severe headache sufferers who have noticed the 'off label' and additional benefit of their painkillers. God help us if we admit to our doctors that narcotics not only relieve our pain, but also give us a sense of well-being. Isn't that the goal of Prozac and Paxil? Freedom from pain, worry about pain, anxiety, inability to focus, worry. Why should it be so verboten to say that narcotics and/or opiates, may bring the additional benefit of well-being and stability of character?