Demon Vicodin

Posted on May 25, 2010 in Medications

What does House see in [[Vicodin]]? Sure there is a fleeting happiness and some pain relief. But afterwards you turn into a pathetic bit of rot floating in a cesspool. The loneliness of the night becomes an intransigent gulf of despair.

The white lozenges seem harmless enough. You can imagine chewing them. (I don’t.) I’m not sure if the pain truly goes away or if you are merely rendered too jolly to care about it.

This time the druggist forgot to attach the warning label which urges you to devour your painkiller with food. I remembered past regrets and put on a little weight downing bottled smoothies every time I swallowed. One incident stands out in particular: I took the meds without eating. When the nausea hit, I decided that the smartest thing to do was to avoid eating anything until it blew over. During this torture, Lynn took me to her grandmother’s house where I politely declined a meal and lay on a couch. On the way home, the uge to blow overwhelmed me. Lynn pulled over and I just opened the door, leaving a puddle outside the old cemetery in Menlo Park. At home, the warning label clearly rang out: take with food. That incident served forever after as my reminder to respect the Demon Vicodin.

So it amused me when, in a recent episode of House, Taub and Foreman chomped down a few tabs each on empty stomachs. They felt the exhileration but neither of them threw up. Demon Vicodin came out of myth and winked at me, secure in the knowledge that television will always distort and outright lie.