Ignoring the recreational pipeline, opioid addiction usually comes from chronic pain. You're a manual laborer. Your body gets slowly worn down by the job, and

Ignoring the recreational pipeline, opioid addiction usually comes from chronic pain. You're a manual laborer. Your body gets slowly worn down by the job, and over time you get more and more dramatic joint and muscle pains but you don't have enough money to retire. At first NSAIDs are enough, but then you start slowing down again, and finally someone offers something that works better - but you still can't stop working, so you injure your body more and more while numbing the pain. You're a sex worker. Violent sex (at times indistinguishable from sexual violence) has become a de facto cultural norm. Your clients are increasingly brutal, not even necessarily in seriously injuring you, just in their indifference to your comfort. In order to keep up with their appetites, and to keep a roof over your head, you resort to some chemical escapism - it feels good, and it makes it feel less bad when you're working. It also relaxes your body, so that the unbelievably incompetent sex can actually happen. You're in a car accident, or get injured playing school sports, or are born in a body that just hurts all the time, for any or no reason. You're on a controlled, calculated, sustainable regimen of prescription opioids. Then you lose your health insurance, or your provider retires, or pharmacies stop being willing to fill your prescriptions because their role in the opioid crisis has shown them they have liability and they refuse to actually make judgment calls. You are in constant, excruciating pain, you're suffering from sudden, involuntary, unpredictable withdrawal, and there's no legal recourse. Pain is the most fundamentally unpleasant experience there is. You might think you have a high pain tolerance, and you might even be right, but...have you ever had a headache that lasted a whole day, or just been sore from something for a solid 8 hours? If you have, you know how quickly you get worn thin, irritable, incapable of rationality. Imagine if you were in pain at all times. Does this help you understand?