i had an umbilical hernia that i had been living with until deciding to get it dealt with. minor outpatient surgery. i went in in the morning, was put under general anesthesia, and i was being wheeled out to a car a few hours later, mere moments after waking up in a recovery room. this was in about 2015, and in a region that had been targeted specifically by the pharmaceutical countries to be early adopters of a "new" opiate formulation. so by the time of my surgery, there have been tons of headlines, speeches, and general noise made about the ongoing opiate crisis / public health catastrophe. i'm not a substance abuse guy (except weed lol), but you can only hear so many stories of people who got addicted after an injury before wondering how easily it could happen to you.

anyway, the discharge nurse hands me a bag with a bottle on my way out the door with enough pills to be absolutely blasted out of my skull for a week straight. i asked if i could use other pain meds, like tylenol/aleve, etc, and they just scoffed and said they were giving me better stuff. i took one the day after when whatever medication i was on for the surgery was gone. after that i just took regular over the counter stuff for a few days, and then was out of pain. my bottle of oxys also came with a refill. i guess so i could just be fucked out of my head for two weeks straight if i wanted.

when i went back in for the post surgery consult a month later, i was asked how the experience was. i told them everything was great, but i felt like i was overprescribed pain meds. seeing as how i only used about 2% of what i was allotted, and even that felt unnecessary. i figured i was doing the responsible thing by telling them, like maybe they didn't know. anyway, she turned to me, super pissed, and was like, "well, you got through it, didn't you?!" like i was an asshole for mentioning it. like, literally, it was all over the headlines at every institution how our communities were in crisis due to these drugs being thrown around like candy.