A Fine Line: Painkillers and Pleasure in the Age of Anxiety

Painkillers were not always seen as dangerous drugs. Less than 20 years ago, these medications were largely regarded to be innocuous pharmaceuticals safely prescribed by the doctor. Since the early 2000s however, growing concern about the ability for painkillers to be ‘abused’ emerged alongside reports of spates of ‘illicit’ pharmaceutical opiate consumption and related harm in Missouri (Harris et al. 2002), rural Kentucky (Tunnell 2005) and California, among other areas (Whelan et al. 2011). Since the early 2010s, concern about the harms of painkiller consumption has only escalated, with the non-medical use of pharmaceutical opiates being referred to as the ‘opiate crisis’ and as a ‘deadly drug epidemic’. What has made this starker to health practitioners is the fact that opiate overdose trends in the US have seen the largest increases in deaths among populations that have traditionally low rates of drug use; this includes Caucasians, the middle-aged, those in the middle class and women (Rudd et al. 2016; Bohnert et al. 2011). The US context has seen increases in emergency room presentations related to opiate overdose (Yokell et al. 2014) and opiate dependence (Carise et al. 2007). Research also indicates that many of the country’s youngest generation of heroin users were first introduced to opiates through pharmaceuticals (Carlson et al. 2016; McCabe et al. 2007). Comparable patterns of harm have also emerged in epidemiological data from other parts of the world (Fischer et al. 2010)