The CODEINE EPIDEMIC: Can Fire be Quelled by Smoke?

Hi Friends,

Image Source: Wikimedia, public domain licensed

How do you feel? Tired, depressed, weak, upset or in distressing pain? You know, basically, there is an emotion, some feeling running through you at this moment that is pretty much dominant and beclouds your entire system. Well, for some people, there is just too many of the emotional processes running within their system - like a long disarray of colours to choose from. All in all, these merge into making them feel high, lifted, with their heads touching the sky. Even from other end where you are reading this, you can very well tell that I am referring to the effect of the abuse of opiates- heroine, cocaine and codeine.

However, rather than just reach a conclusion that the issue regarding opioid is very much a covered field for most people, we could, just, you know, take a walk in the woods and talk about that particular sprout of leaves that is killing more people than the Sarin gas itself. Codeine is a narcotic that acts as a pain reliever for mild and moderate pain conditions. But unlike its near counterpart, the opioid which consist of morphine, hydrocodine and the likes, and are semi-synthetic or synthetic in nature, opiates, in this case, codeine, are naturally derived from the poppy plant. Codeine is embedded with pain relieving and psychoactive substances that can help deal with an average feeling of pain in the body.

One thing that stands codeine out is that it's very useful as a cough suppressant, something like, driving cough back to where it's coming from. This cough repressing feature is what most likely made codeine get the approval of FAV in 1950.

Codeine works mostly the same way as morphine. When codeine is taken in, IT diffuses or converts into morphine, which then goes ahead to have a suppressing effect on the opioid receptor (you've been wondering where the whole op... thing comes from, well there you have it), which is responsible for the sensation of pain in humans. Upon acting on the opioid receptor centered in the brain, codeine can possibly dispense relief to the patient. But given the complex transition process of codeine to morphine in the body, some people who can't tolerate the breakdown do not exactly get relieved from their pain. For the most part, though, codeine sounds like nature's gift to help man swallow the bitter pill of pain better and faster.

THE CODEINE EPIDEMIC

Image Source: Wikimedia, CCO Licensed- The codeine molecular ball.

But then, apart from the fact that codeine, due to its sleep-inducive quality, affects the breathing in irregular ways, it also seems to like the human system too much. This preempts the issue of physical dependence, so that once a person uses codeine for quite a while, it carves out a reasonable portion in the brain and settles within calmly. What this means is that the body acclimatizes to the use of codeine like it's the weather, and failure to take it at any point begins to make one feel like the sun has suddenly stopped shining. And what’s follows is some type of withdrawal, like hitting one's head against the wall, and feeling dazed all over. That's why the dosage of codeine is restrictive to 120mg in 24 hours. That's on one hand.

On the other hand, people who have had a roundtable rapport with codeine on a constant basis hardly want to let it go. It's like some obsessive love affair. The reason is not farfetched. Codeine steps into your body and you begin to have this feel-good sensation, you know, the sort of glittering colours thingy I earlier talked about. This illusionary ambience and aura of ecstasy makes the body crave more and more of codeine till, of course, it becomes a habit, or to put it more brutally, an addiction. And just like that, with this rather symbiotic parasitism, codeine has crept its way in, dusted its feet and fluffed a pillow to sleep in the lives of young adults who would give anything, even accommodating a conniving fox, to feel 'high'.

SWEET SWEET SYRUP

You would think that only people in urban areas swarming with destructive technology, stress, fear and several heartbreaks would give themselves up to the tingling throes of codeine. Well, not so. As covered by a BBC correspondent, many rural dwellers slugged in rough, hidden parts have taken to drowning their fears and unhappiness or simply sinking in their sorry economy by drinking in cough syrups meant for their coughs. Using the Northern part of Nigeria as a case study, the reporter threw more light on the obscure consequences of codeine addiction.

BBC Correspondent adressing Codeine Addiction in Northern Nigeria

At first, all I saw were the swarms of houseflies and the chains that bore all the memories of the relics of slavery... Then slowly, my eyes opened up to the itching, the anxiety, the restlessness that gripped these ones. They could not sit down or stand up, they were just there hating their minds for being plunged into a disarray of colours. It would appear that, without any former predisposition to codeine itself, the narcotic is plagued with some side effects which includes skin allergies, constipation, confusion, slow breathing, parched lips and the likes.

Now, imagine someone grinding in codeine, alongside its side effects, into the system, it is bound to evolve into a long term crisis for such one. The euphoria and altered feeling of drunkenness for which it was once embraced swerves into utter dysphagia, the lips begin to change colour as well as get dehydrated more often and the person feels immense pain when not on the drug. Vertigo, insomnia, hallucinations and depression, suicidal inclinations and death, these are the things that await those what are at the height of codeine addiction.

And you know, like with every drug addiction, the victims don't see these, they only see the drug. Nothing more. So these folks confined here in Northern Nigeria, are undergoing the process of detoxification. This is a harried attempt to get codeine to dissipate from their system, and return them to normalcy and probably, abstinence too. The period of detoxification, for any drug addict, is a pretty tough one, like being thrown under a burning bus, and then trying to pull a trapped shirt, as well as reaching for a scrap of vibranium you found near the car tank. Now, that's some sensitive situation. You don't get out from under the bus, you burn. But you don't get the vibranium too, you sulk. Codeine addicts try to make the two happen. But news splash, vibranium is not even a thing in the real world, it only comes with watching too many a Marvel movie! Vibranium is as illusionary as the euphoria codeine grants.

CAN FIRE BE QUELLED BY SMOKE?

Everyone, say hi to Joe Schrank.

Image Source: Pixabay, CC0 Licensed

• And no, this is so not Joe Schrank.

He is the founder of High Sobriety, a rehabilitation centre for opiate and opioid addicts planted amidst the obscurity of Culver City, in Southern California. Now, this rehabilitation centre is no coo-coo spot aimed at both detoxifying addicts as well as granting them the power of abstinence. O well, not in that sense at least. High Sobriety is targeted at helping addicts feel better - more humanized and adaptive to the society, and then, maybe in the long run, helping them stop their addiction. How is this being done?

Backtrack to 2011, Joe receives a call confirming the death of one of his close buddies, Greg. Greg does from an overdose, the humane way of saying addiction. Joe took this to heart excessively and remembered all the abstinence programs his friend undertook just to find redemption. Well apparently, no redemption came through and Greg finally dies. At that point, it occurs to Joe that maybe attempting to force addicts into abstinence with the whole softball program and decorum lessons ain't exactly the solution. Maybe giving these addicts a false sense of being high, of still being part of the larger, badass society is the solution? Maybe Cannabis, what is called Marijuana or 'pot' is the solution?

And so, with a deep feeling of regret for his friend's death, Joe Schrank, a former social worker, established High Sobriety and found it on the principle of integrating regulated cannabis intake into the therapeutic program for addicts. His point which is fairly logical is this -

Nobody has said Marijuana is killing anyone yet. Check all the medical bad books, and there ain't too many cases of people dying from Marijuana. But no one is willing to whitelist pot or put it on the good books because of a generally preconceived perception of its evilness and wrongness. So rather than let people die from serious opiate addiction, why not temper them with a good, holy dose of Marijuana while they are on their way to detoxification and recovery?

Honestly, I see all the good in this method of addressing addiction, but not being a doctor or knowing too much about medicine will definitely make me see the good in any logical point made. So I am putting this out to those who are quite in the know how - what do you say about this? Can fire be quelled by smoke?

Leave a comment below. Thanks.

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References

The Science of Medicines

Can this man successfully treat opioid addiction with Marijuana

The Effects of Codeine Use

What is Codeine Used for?

All images are gotten from Wikimedia.