It was May of 1996 when a tearful Brett Favre stepped in front of the cameras and announced that he was addicted to painkillers and would be entering a rehab treatment program before training camp started in Green Bay. Favre said that it had been two years that he was abusing Vicodin–which had been prescribed to him by a doctor following a previous surgery. He realized he had a problem when he suffered a seizure in the hospital shortly after undergoing ankle surgery in February of that year. Little did we know that a press conference involving an MVP quarterback in the NFL would be a harbinger of things to come as a society–and should have been treated as a warning sign.
A week after that press conference, while playing fast-pitch softball, I attempted to make a diving backhanded play at first base and injured my back. After a couple of days of excruciating pain while trying to work, get in and out of my Jeep, lying down, standing up, and trying to do anything physical in nature, I broke down and actually went to see a doctor. I’ll never forget that he asked me to describe the location of the pain and how I managed to injure myself. He then had me bend over as far as I could, rotate my upper body as far as a I could in each direction, and then walk across the room on my heels. After that he proclaimed that I had likely strained a back muscle and he prescribed me a painkiller….Vicodin.
Leaving the clinic that day, I knew there was no way in hell that I was filling that prescription. Just a week before, a dude that many considered indestructible was crying uncontrollably on TV saying he was powerless to stop using the very same painkiller. And I did not want to end up in the same situation. So I just gutted it out instead. I was put on light duty at work, I slept on the floor some nights to make it easier to get back up, and I limited myself to Designated Hitter or pinch hitter duty on the ball diamond for a couple of weeks (you didn’t think I would miss any playing time did you?). And eventually, the pain went away on its own.
I don’t remember the name of the doctor that saw me that day in 1996, but I get the feeling that he saw a lot of people just like me every day. “This hurts really bad doctor”–and he had just done what he had done dozens or hundreds of times before: gave a cursory check to make sure there was no serious injury and then gave me what he thought I wanted–something to make the pain go away.
It was right around that time that pharmaceutical companies started promoting hydrocodones and oxycodones–like Vicodin–as “safe and non-habit forming” methods of pain relief. And as word spread that doctors now had “magic pills” to “cure” your pain–people wanted them. Not everyone got hooked, but enough did that it has since developed into the “opioid crisis” that we hear so much about today.
Of course, we would find out that the “codones” were not non-addictive. And the federal government and just about every state and county in the US has sued both the manufacturers, suppliers, and marketers of them for billions of dollars in “damages” caused by a society hooked on painkillers, and eventually heroin. But I can’t help but think those companies–while being deceptive–were still giving the people what they wanted. And I would be willing to bet that a good percentage of patients in that time, if their doctor had sat them down before writing the prescription and had told them “Now these are going to relieve your pain, but there is a good chance that you will become addicted to them, resort to faking injury to keep getting them, stealing from others and embezzling from your employer to buy them, wind up doing heroin as a substitute and likely killing yourself with an overdose. You still want it?” would answer, “It will take away my pain right? Yes I want them.”
The “opioid epidemic” is not rampant because drug companies lied about their products. The “opioid epidemic” is due to Americans’ belief that they should not have to endure any discomfort. And if highly-addictive drugs were the way to not deal with a little bit of pain, then we were more than willing to roll the dice. I know this sounds stupid at face value–but Brett Favre warned us.
