Morphine Lollipop

It was recently brought to my attention that a lollipop-loving acquaintance of mine has a morphine tooth, not a sweet tooth. That’s right, morphine lollipops. Perhaps I am showing my Luddite colors here but, Sweet Jesus, is nothing sacred anymore? Lollipops are for children and soft porn, as Norman Rockwell would have had it, not for “breakthrough pain.” I have a growing collection of once benign, now suspect objects in my mind: It includes thick-soled shoes, Easter eggs, class rings, white vans, and now, lollipops. Soon, my eyes will freeze in a side-long glance, imagining the sub plot of every household object I encounter.

This next idea forces me to use my least favorite word of all time: lozenge. (Actually, it is the plural pronunciation of lozenge that makes my skin crawl and I think I can get away without uttering said pluralized noun.) Why do we have to be so conspicuous about our addictions? Can’t a lozenge perform the same task as a lollipop without so much pomp and circumstance? Why do I have to see your tongue reaching for your morphine like a mouse, clenching with its back legs on a blade of grass as it reaches for a distant dew drop with its front?

Maybe I’m just bitter; while I obey the system and carve out my measly fraction of the proverbial pie, you stroll in, clad in second-hand smoke, blatantly getting high in front of me, and then ask me to expedite your disability forms so that you can get paid sooner to stay at home and dream up creative ways to ingest your narcotics. And I have to top it all off with a “sure I can” as much as I don’t want to. Who’s the real winner here?

I won’t deny your pain. Who am I to say it’s not valid and that you aren’t exaggerating if not fabricating an ailment to get your mits on the sweetest, designer painkillers on the market? I suspect this is the same conundrum the doctors prescribing face. What is one to do with “intractable, chronic pain” but diagnose, prescribe and treat. It’s a great patient satisfier. It’s also the lesser evil here. Believe me, as the one answering the phone when frequent flier number 73 calls, it’s best to have the written prescription at the ready, otherwise you’re in for painfully elaborate fairy tales about prescriptions resting precariously on toilet basin ledges (lost narcs), pain that makes one not want to go on (suicide threat), patients on their way over to sit in the lobby and wait (pain in the ass with a dash of threatening to my physical well-being), etc.

I am coming to realize that there are a lot more opiates and psychotropics being enjoyed than I once thought. Much of the adult population is on something mind altering. Drugs are ingested, if not licked in your face, to placate the soul, insulating one from the vulnerability of feeling things that are supposed to be felt. Aren’t we supposed to plod through life the old fashioned way; experiencing break through happiness every now again between all the pain and suffering?

Like a lot of fetishes, in a natural progression, drug use evolves from a dark secret into a glorified and endorsed version of itself. Like the continuum flows from a closeted gay boy to a gilded-gonad, gay pride parade, the zenith of our drug use is the tonguing of our drugs,  loads sexier than swallowing, injecting, inhaling, or dermal adhesion. The behind-closed-doors, household secret becomes a badge of honor, a personality trait, an eccentricity with a cute little lolly as a prop to boot. Welcome, “Morphine Lollipop Barbie.” Drugs are way more fun when you aren’t ashamed about using them.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve insulted someone out there. Like I said before, I won’t deny anyone’s pain. Pain is real. My version of pain is emotional. I suffer from depression and medicate minimally because the alternative is crippling- my couch has a gravitation pull stronger than the will I can muster up with a serotonin imbalance. But I also practice good emotional hygiene by recognizing feelings, allowing them to have a seat in my heart, and sitting with them until they pass on through, no matter how much I squirm and revolt. Medication can help us but we need to help ourselves too. And feelings need to be felt to some degree.

To be certain, physical pain is a completely different animal. And I can’t even begin to understand what it’s like to live with chronic pain every waking hour of ones life. Pharmaceutical action is warranted in treating this sort of pain. But how did we arrive at a lollipop delivering it? To me this signals the normalization of suppressing the flow rather than abiding by it.  Approaching pain with a stun gun and a cage rather than observing it, studying its habits. It may sound puritanical and even harsh but the morphine lollipop has ushered us into a world in which feelings are bad unnecessaries.

We should be licking our wounds with our tongues, not our narcotics.

Tags: Breakthrough Pain, Healthcare, Morphine Lollipop, Norman Rockwell, Opiates, Soft Porn