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• The author strongly discourages readers to start using codeine or other opiates recreationally or as a replacement for other psychoactive drugs without medical advice. Codeine is far from being strong enough to incite mind-blowing highs, on the other hand, the substance has sufficient potency to kill opiate-naïve users through respiratory depression/heart failure when taken in larger quantities and/or in combination with other drugs, like benzodiazepines, alcohol etc. It would be an excruciating death – being fully conscient whilst experiencing how the chest freezes and breathing becomes impossible. Slow enough to agonise for some minutes whilst desperately grasping for air, too fast to call an emergency doctor for injecting an opiate antagonist. Apart from that, codeine – as other opiates - instils a burning desire to experience the initial feeling of extreme well-being (‘velvet dress’) time and again, but with each use the effects get weaker as the body builds up tolerance within days of regular use, quantities need to be increased for the same effect and the point where the substance is required to only feel ‘normal’ will be reached after two, three weeks only. Opiates have complex effects on body and mind that cannot be reversed by simply ceasing intake from one day to another; sudden withdrawal could even be lethal, depending on length of opiate-use and daily dose, owing to increased blood pressure, heart rate and hyperventilation. Weaning off and getting body and mind back into the pre-opiate state takes a year or two. Yet, the author believes that therapeutic doses of codeine could be used not only for the treatment of pain, cough and diarrhoea, but also as an anxiolytic. The poems describe basically her own ambiguous feelings about codeine-use and its effects: ‘strong helmet, armour from silk’ points at the substance’s anxiolytic properties, whilst ‘drank blood from my heart’ means that it flattens not only anxiety, but also positive emotions.  

• The author has always taken ‘clean’ pharmaceutical codeine orally, in small doses at a time, without other substances such as promethazine or paracetamol mixed under - otherwise she would be dead by now, as paracetamol in high doses causes incurable kidney damage whilst 'pure' codeine does not harm organs.

• The author has always procured the substance legally (mostly OTC cough syrup) and has no experience injecting/snorting stronger opiates or other drugs, barring psycho-pharmaceuticals prescribed by a physician which must also be counted as mind-altering, habit-forming drugs. The author is an infamous control freak: it would never occur to her to get hold of opiates or other drugs from dubious sources and inject/snort morphine, heroin, fentanyl etc.

• The author has weaned off all drugs/psycho-pharmaceuticals and developed a strong distrust against all kinds of pharmaceutical products. She advocates for extremely strict regulation of all opiates and psycho-pharmaceuticals: wide-ranging tests before medicaments can enter the market, control of lobbying and advertising.