I took Demerol a few times as a kid, and heroin once as an adult. As an anesthetic, fentanyl was perfect. I was pain free, felt lucid, and then went right back

I took Demerol a few times as a kid, and heroin once as an adult. As an anesthetic, fentanyl was perfect. I was pain free, felt lucid, and then went right back to normal, no side effects at all. As a kid, I suffered terrible migraines, and I am old enough to predate migraine medication. My parents also suffer migraines (as do two of my three sisters, yay genetics). Dad had a Demerol prescription for his. They wouldn't give me Demerol, because it was a dangerous addictive drug. Instead, they gave me the safe, effective state of the art circa late 1970s - phenobarbitol. I'd take one, stumble to the couch, wake up 14 hours later, and not remember what happened. I'll never put that poison in my body again! (Later, as an adult, a drug counselor friend told me barbituates were the only drugs he'd seen to be more addictive than tobacco.) But if my parents needed me to be functional while fighting migraine? I got one of Dad's Demerol instead. Which was awesome, because I still had a migraine, but I didn't care anymore. I could stay awake and follow instructions and converse as needed, from my warm numb blanket of drug. Working from memory here, I was a lot more "high" on Demerol, and it lasted longer. Fentanyl was much cleaner. Best of all was the one time I tried heroin, though. Holy crap. Never touching that again. One of humanity's best and most dangerous inventions.