I vividly remember walking into the interview. I was a junior in college and had scored a meeting with Joshua Lyon, an editor at Jane Magazine, the publication I’d been dreaming of working for since the first issue had appeared on newsstands and I skipped school to read it cover-to-cover. The interview went well, and an hour later, I got the phone call that he had picked me to be his intern. I was elated.

Josh and I worked together for the next four years. Turns out that, for two of them, he was almost always high on prescription pain killers.

Josh has written a fascinating book, Pill Head, about the whole ordeal. It’s part memoir, and part sociological exploration of why so many people in the United States—48 million of them to be exact—have used prescription pills for non-medical purposes. After the jump, Josh tells us everything from how he got his hands on his first Vicodin to why prescription pain killers are especially popular with the ladies. Oh, and why you owe it to grandma not to try them.