The story of a suburban mom in Staten Island and the effects of her descent into heroin use is outlined in the New York Times. It's even uglier than you might imagine.
Oddly, she wasn't using prescription pain medications, as is often the case these days. That's another thing I don't quite get; how people become addicted to oxycontin or oxycodone is completely beyond my ken. I took the stuff for a couple of days following surgery, hated it, and decided to just tough it out instead. Worked fine for me, as I can most often just tune pain out to a point where, although aware of it, it's not a huge influence.
One thing that simply astounds me is the incredible array of pain relief stuff I pass by on my way to the dog-food aisle at Freddie's, and that's just the OTC stuff like aspirin, tylenol, advil, and the various other stuff. A lot of folks must buy it, or the store'd not devote so much space to it. They must have really low pain thresholds, or maybe they're just suckers for advertising.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just insensitive.
