[pgrote]

I never understood how people could be addicted to drugs until the middle of the night screaming in an emergency room bed. A kidney stone was causing so much pain morphine wouldn't touch it. Unbearable.

The nurse came in and put something in my IV and I just stopped. The pain stopped. I stopped talking to my wife in mid-sentence. Everything was fine. My world just stopped and I liked it.

As the nurse left my wife asked what I was given and it was dilaudid, which is equal to heroin on the equianalgesic scale.

It was right then I understood how people become addicted to drugs. Like you, it convinced me to never try heroin or any other opiates outside of emergency medical care.