I read somewhere that someone involved in threatening doctors for prescribing for chronic pain folks using the Centres for Disease Control's name in vain said something about there being evidence of a negative correlation of opioid use over 90 mg per 24 hours and longevity. First of all, 90 mg per 24 hours is completely arbitrary and probably a power trip thing for these people. The traditional benchmarks are 1-200 mg for low dose, 201-999 mg for medium, and 1000 mg+ for high dose Chronic Opioid Agonist Therapy in morphine hydrochloride equalised equivalent per 24 hours. Secondly, while I can see trouble arising from the neurotoxicity of 4-phenylpiperidines and the QT interval and other cardiac effects of those and of mainly racaemic members of the methadone subfamilies of open chain opioids, I also know that opioid-use careers in excess of 50 years and even up to a century were noted even centuries ago when life expectancy was shorter and that there were a handful of people on morphine, codeine and the like from before the Harrison Narcotics Act 1914 and similar European laws of the same era as well as injured World War I veterans who lived into the XXI. Century to die of old age. My own grandfather was on morphine for 69 years and died at the age of 104 of old age. I suspect that the effect of morphine and the like on metabolism and some possible neuroprotective and cardioprotective (after all, they use morphine, as well as hydromorphone, oxymorphone, nicomorphine, and diamorphine, for heart attacks in Emergency Departments and it is especially suited for that purpose; I have even heard people speculate about intrinsic anti-arrhythmic effects) effects of natural and semi-synthetic opiates and maybe morphinans like levorphanol and phenylheptylamine open chain opioids like levomethadone and phenadoxone. William S Burroughs pointed out in Junky that if someone could be kept in a constant state of kicking that they would live to a phenomenal age, but I am not sure it is the kicking that does it. It certainly seems like my moderate and high-dose Coat over the years for chronic inoperable pain switched off the ageing process at several points. It has been mainly with semi-synthetics with some dipipanone, ketobemidone, dextromoramide, and piritramide in the past.
