Medical Uses of Narcotics?
There are two ways to define “narcotics”: the medical way and the US government way. The medical definition is drugs derived from the opium poppy. “Narco” is from the Greek for sleep. These drugs put you to sleep. There are several drugs made from the poppy that are used and abused, but in your body all are metabolized to the same active compound, and so effectively they are all the same drug. These drugs include opium, morphine, and heroin. Medically, they can be used as analgesics, to deaden pain, and anesthetics, to make patients unconscious for surgery. There are also at least a few synthetic versions which used to be used medically. Two I remember are fentanyl and sufentanyl (probably googlable). I don’t know if they are still used, but they were also used as analgesics and anesthetics. The US government, in it’s quest to control drug abuse, has adopted a non-medical definition of narcotics. The government includes drugs which are not derived from the opium poppy under the same le
