So what an opiate seems to do is: it makes humdrum things see rather interesting and exciting, and it significantly takes the edge off miserable thoughts. As for morphine, I cannot praise it enough, the best week of my life having been one in which it was pumping through my veins (after surgery). I remember thinking: So this is what optimists feel like all the time. I dashed to a party (still bleeding slightly from the operative wound), full of enthusiasm to meet new people (otherwise an ordeal); cheated without shame at Pictionary at the same party (even though my mother taught me never to cheat at board games); set up a date with the best looking girl in the room (need I add that in a morphine-free world, this would never have happened?), and in general was the life and soul of the evening...or thought I was, which is more or less the same thing.
So the most recent medical condition that warranted an opiatic intervention was - a common cold. Man, those heavy duty cold medications are something else. They're great. Every dark cloud, such as my flu-filled week, has a point it seems - and in this case it was to make it clear to me that my perception of cold and flu as bad things was a big mistake. No, you get to lie-in and pop those magic pills which put your body in a state of sleep, but your mind in happy bliss. I didn't even need the usual supply of stupid fantasies in order to make the day bearable. Why are people with hay-fever always complaining? They must be popping the stuff all the time.
