I've been taking my mother's leftover pain medication for about fourteen months.

She had a hip replacement in 2024 and they sent her home with more than she needed, which is apparently still happening. When she was done I was supposed to take them to the drop box at the police station. I put them in my glove compartment instead and I told myself I'd do it that weekend.

I'm not in pain. That's the part I can't explain to myself. I had a knee thing in 2021 and I know what the relief feels like and that's not what I'm chasing. What I'm chasing is about forty minutes of not caring, and I take half of one maybe three nights a week, and I have been very careful and very moderate and very organized about it, which is exactly the sentence an addict writes.

I have a job. I have never taken one before work. I ran a 10k in April.

Nobody is worried about me, which is the thing that lets this keep going. There's no bottom here. There's a guy who is slightly checked out three evenings a week and everyone assumes it's because he's tired.

I ran out in September for eleven days and I was fine, which I used as proof. Then I got more, and I didn't like how relieved I was.

I know how to get more without a prescription now. I learned that this year. That's the sentence that made me write this.

I don't want to tell my wife and I don't want to tell a doctor because of the chart. Has anyone here dealt with the quiet version of this? Not the version with a crisis. The version where you're the only one who knows.