8/31/22: The End of Suffering

The problem with opiates had always been that its pain-negating (and euphoric) effects were tied to respiratory depression. There was no former without the latter. There was also no chasing the former without the latter.

After decades of dead ends, scientists finally disentangled the two.

Euphre was a first-in-class medication which negated pain and which was impossible to overdose on. It was used first in the heme/onc world, mostly for terminally ill cancer patients, before spreading to the rest of the outpatient world. 

There was no downside to prescribing it. Pain from osteosarcoma? Euphre. Angina from non-intervenable coronary artery disease? Euphre. Headache? Euphre. 

It wasn’t strictly speaking addictive, but patients tended not to stop, even when their underlying condition was cured. Why not live a life free from pain?

When the generics came on market, the front page of the New York Times ran the headline “The End of Suffering.” The only thing that had been holding back physicians from prescribing it had been cost. And now the indication for Euphre became… life itself.