I have years of experience with opiates. I am a chronic pain sufferer - and while I usually only use my stuff for pain (and without the meds I am in pure hell - I have substantial permanent nerve damage that results in constant pain), I have used them for 'non-approved' recreational purposes on occasion. I am with the 'it's better than sober by far' vote. LOL. Call me what name you wish if you have some mightier than though attitude, I don't rightly care. I bet that nearly everyone has tried at least once, to get 'high' from something, be it pain medication, alcohol, weed, etc.. Some people get high by running - seriously - and it's exactly the same physically - as the body can produce enough morphine-related chemical under the right conditions to actually case a euphoric high(this is what runner's high is, btw). But I'll stick by the opinion that the right type and dose of opiate med(everyone has different subjective effects to different specific opiate types - so it's important to match to the person for optimum experience - and some people can not experience much positive effect from these from what I have read no matter what - but these are in the minority) can feel better than any other kind of experience(at least on the short term). The body's internal system of every day pain control and mood(happy, etc.) is actually controlled by excitation of the proper opoid receptors by internally generated chemicals. Using opiates is really/literally, just taking some manual control over the situation that normally happens naturally/automatically. If you were to block the opiate receptors of a normal person, they would likely be under some level of constant pain(as this is part of the body's natural pain management system) or at minimum experience more pain than normal and be under constant depression like effect, as these internal biological functions are critical to a human's normal operation.
BTW, it's far better than alcohol, and not just by feeling. It is perfectly safe in pharmaceutical grade, and does not cause body damage(unless you simply O.D. to the point that it makes your breathing slow to a critically low degree, and you suffocate), unlike alcohol, which has many damaging effects on the body when used chronically in doses to have substantial psychoactive effect(alcoholism). Before the bans on opiates OTC in 1914(the ban, btw, had nothing to do with any valid issue of 'addiction', etc.; in fact today addiction rates are more than 4x higher than when it was OTC!), many doctors would wean alcoholics off using opiates because of this, and supposedly, this had a very large effective result, unlike the popular 'AAA' stuff today.
But occasional use is not 'addiction', which is a whole other animal, and chemical dependence(such as I have, after years of daily use for medical application) is not addiction either; addiction is a psychological condition and an entirely different/separate issue.
O.D.s, though, from my research, come from mainly ignorance of the medication(s) and/or illegal substance(s) that have no quality control and can contain dangerous adulterants. Proper education and legal/safe sources would probably reduce % of O.D.s by a large number. OTC Legalization of such meds for any adult would save this nation billions in dollars and reduce the prison population by nearly 1/2, plus remove a huge sector of crime and stop a great deal of primitive persecution that tortures people today unjustly in this country, not to mention the substantial better treatment/management for chronic pain patients, which in the U.S. are generally treated very poorly. But that's another issue.....
I don't know a thing about Corey's issue, I'm really just commenting on general issues associated with opiates, addiction and associated issues. This is the Steam Vent, and I get really 'steamed' when I think of the irrational bull going on in this nation dealing with this subject.
-Chris
