They were invented to stop pain, the kind that trav-els up the spinal cord, and they're remarkably effective at it: the synthetic opioids developed since the 1970s can mute the agony of slipped disks, deteriorating joints, tooth decay and even terminal cancer. If that was all they did, then it wouldn't be much of a problem; most people acquire the drugs in-nocently enough by prescription and take them only as long as they need to, and even the risk of dependence may be worth running, if the alternative is lifelong pain. The problem with painkillers is they also work on existential pain, the kind that originates in the mind―such as might be experienced by a right-wing radio host who doesn't have Bill Clinton to torture anymore. Cindy McCain, the wife of the Arizona senator, took Vicodin, a common opioid, for back pain, but she found it also helped her get through the "Keating Five" investigation involving her husband. "The newspaper articles didn't hurt as much, and I didn't hurt as much," she wrote in NEWSWEEK in 2001. "I've had clients describe Vicodin as 'a four-hour vacation'" from daily stress, says Robert Weathers, clinical director at Passages, a Malibu, Calif., super-deluxe rehab facility catering to clients who can afford monthly charges north of $30,000.
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