Anyone who suffers from pain knows that a pill can mean getting through a day, or even getting out of bed. But Oxycontin and heroin create their own special sort of pain through pleasure, overwhelming the mu-receptors in our spines and brains, creating in us a craving for ever more. Opioids hinder the development of the frontal cortex of the brain, which is where the capacity to make choices forms in adolescence. Persistent opioid use makes it harder for people to learn from experience, or to take responsibility for their actions. The drug colonizes the mental and social space needed for children, spouses, friends, jobs, the world. At the extreme of addiction, the world becomes a mute and isolated experience of pleasure and need. Time collapses into a cycle from this hit to the next one. The shift from the sense that everything is wonderful to the sense that everything is dark and foreboding becomes normal. Life itself becomes a manufactured crisis, one which seems to have no end except life’s end.
— The Road to Unfreedom (Timothy Snyder), Loc. 3855–62