(continued from previous Durward and Charles episodes)
Charles was a hard-living, hard-partying kind of man. But it took a toll on his body. Probably as a result of downing many, many shots of straight whiskey, he developed a serious stomach ulcer. It was life-threatening, and he needed surgery. The surgeon removed about 2/3 of his stomach. After surgery, his doctor prescribed Demerol for pain. Demerol is an opioid pain reliever and it has a long list of potentially fatal interactions with other medications—and alcohol, as you might guess.
Because of possible interactions, I don’t think it’s prescribed as much as it once was. But Charles was given Demerol in the late '50s when drug abuse was not such a hot-button issue. If you’re wondering what a shot of Demerol feels like, I can tell you: I’ve had Demerol after surgery and it feels very, very good. Demerol gives you a warm, relaxed glow all over. You feel sleepy. When it wears off, you want another shot. You know you shouldn’t have another, but you still want it. After two or three days on Demerol, my doctor switched me to Percodan, a combination of aspirin and oxycodone. (The similar drug Percoset contains acetaminophen and oxycodone.) Percodan is nice, but Demerol is on another level.
Charles liked Demerol. He liked it so much he began paying the doctor to give him a shot every week. His doctor became his dealer. For a shot of Demerol, Charles paid the doctor $150. This was in the late '50s and in terms of 2020 money, that $150 is the equal of $1300 today. As the weeks turned into months, the doctor had to increase the dose to give Charles the same effect.
It happened that Durward was visiting Charles when Charles wanted to get his shot. The two men drove to the doctor’s office together. Durward watched Charles get his shot and said the shot didn’t seem to affect Charles at all. Then Charles asked the doctor to give Durward a shot. And so the doctor did.
The next thing Durward recalled was waking up much later. The doctor had given Durward a “Charles-dose” of Demerol, a higher dose than a newbie should be given. Both Charles and Durward were alcoholics, and it’s a miracle that a large dose of Demerol didn’t kill them. Maybe both men were sober at the time.
When I think that, at one time, you could go to a doctor and buy a shot of something similar to morphine, I think, “Wow, times have really changed.” Today, it’s difficult to get a scrip for even a relatively tame tranquilizer like Valium or Xanax. The medical profession has “over-reacted”. It’s a side effect of the Big Brother mentality: Better to overprotect everyone than to risk someone, somewhere, possibly hurting themselves.
Things weren’t always thus, but things change. George Orwell saw the change coming and tried to warn us seventy years ago with his final book, Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel. Yet here we are. Big Brother is alive and well and watching you ... for your own good. Knowing that, don’t you feel better?
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