People who develop addictions to high-strength prescription pain medications must be very bored, very stupid or very depressed. At least, that's the conclusion I've come to.

This morning I had the third of five or six gingival grafts. The procedure itself, thanks to local anesthesia, causes little discomfort. The post-op portion, though, drives me crazy. Not only does the procedure restrict my diet to soup, mush and porridge, I also spend two or three days taking an extremely potent pain killer.

I would have no trouble tolerating the mild post-graft pain without the dose ketoprofen prescribed to me. It's really not that bad. But, from what I understand, ketoprofen also helps to reduce swelling, which apparently aids the body in recovering from a surgeon's well-intentioned brutality. Given that faster recovery means real food sooner, I take the medication.

Yet, as I sit here — hunched over my keyboard in a stupor, correcting more spelling and grammatical problems than I care to admit as I type this — I have difficulty understanding why anyone would take these super potent pain killers for fun.

I struggle to stay awake; to think critically; to quip. I feel as if I have become some kind of inert vegetable, incapable of doing no more than napping or staring blankly into the glossy pages of interior design magazines. It's debilitating.

It almost surprises me that the Rush Limbaugh radio program did not improve after the commentator finished his rehabilitation program. Almost.