Item from House M.D. by David Shore
The hydrocodone painkiller that manages House's leg pain, fuels his addiction, and has become as much a part of his identity as his cane and his diagnostic brilliance.
Vicodin is House's relationship with his own pain. After the infarction destroyed the muscle in his right leg, the chronic pain became constant and severe. Vicodin numbs it. Vicodin also numbs everything else — emotional pain, social discomfort, the low-grade existential dread of being a brilliant man trapped in a damaged body. House knows he's addicted. He doesn't care. Or he cares and can't stop. The show spent eight seasons exploring which of those is true and never definitively answered. His addiction has cost him relationships (Stacy left partly because of it), his freedom (Tritter had him arrested for possession), his sanity (Vicodin-induced psychosis sent him to Mayfield), and nearly his medical license. He has tried to quit multiple times. He has succeeded temporarily. He has always relapsed. The show's final image is House and Wilson riding motorcycles into the unknown — House clean, for now, because he finally has something worth being sober for.
Small white oval tablets — 5mg hydrocodone and 300mg acetaminophen per pill. House carries them in an amber prescription bottle that he pops open with practiced one-handed ease, usually in front of whoever is most likely to be bothered by it. The bottle appears in his hand the way a crucifix appears in a priest's — constantly, reflexively, and as both comfort and symbol.
Also known as: Vicodin, Hydrocodone, The Pills, Vitamin V