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My Opioid Addiction
MY OPIOID ADDICTION
My body is my major negative asset. I am riddled with pain. At a 5, 6 or 7 out of 10 on my pain scale, I still function normally, just living through it. At a 10, I suffer in bed. As a youth I had occasional, classic aural/nausea migraines. They became more frequent and less severe, till they morphed into chronic daily headaches. Knee pain resulted in a knee replacement. But arthritis continues to attack my lower back and neck. My piriformis muscles too, add to the relentless pain.
I probably saw a hundred medical practitioners from both traditional medicine,-pain or neurology specialists, to alternative treatment, from acupuncture to cupping. Nothing worked except drugs... especially when oxycodone was introduced to the medical market.
My doctor was very enthusiastic. There was a medical mantra they all bought into that was clearly promoted by the drug company.
They believed that there was a difference between those who used oxycodone for recreational use who could be addicted, but if used for pain and no high was experienced, you could not become addicted, you were only ‘dependent’. I never experienced any high on opioids.
Somehow it was assumed that ‘dependent’ was a mild issue that could be easily rectified if necessary. You could just quit anytime. I started with Percocets a few times a day. It soon was not enough. My doc prescribed Oxycontin. It was soon not enough.
A friend had a fentanyl patch. My doc said he only prescribed a patch for terminal cancer patients. He upped the Oxycontin dose... again... and again. I continued to complain of pain. Finally he added a fentanyl patch. I began taking 160 mg of combined Oxycontin and Percocets, plus the patch.
I was a drug addict. I remember driving up the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto, in bumper to bumper, stop and go, rush hour traffic, in a drug stupor. I fell asleep at a pause and was only awakened by car horns urging me to move on. It was time to stop.
A pain specialist advised moving into a residential rehab facility. I opted for the do-it-yourself option. I researched the process and decided to do it on my own. It took me 6 months to get off the opioids.
I asked my wife what it was like when I was getting off the drug. “You lost your mind. You kept saying to everyone you saw the Buddha on the road. You wandered up and down the beach at the cottage buttonholing people and talking nonsense and breaking down crying.”
My cottage neighbour, a doctor, who observed me in this state, called it ‘ebullient emotion’, typical when patients have strokes or when in shock. I burst into bouts of convulsive weeping without any reason. I did that frequently during my detox.
I reduced my dose by 5mg a week. It was agony. After a couple of months the detox twisted my mind. I was nearly mad. Even when I was down to 5mg per day it was excruciating. I wanted to give up and get a strong dose, but I persisted.
I remember talking to Laurie, a pharmacist at Shoppers Drug Mart in Penetanguishene and asked her if there was anything I could take to get me over the agony on my last 5mg.
She asked how much I had reduced from. “160mg and a fentanyl patch,” I replied.
“On your own?’ she asked, incredulously.
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s unheard of,” she said. Her face signalled shock.
Every time I hear one of many current statistical opioid stories on TV, I am reminded of my addiction and detox. For example: * There were 2833 opioid related deaths in Ontario last year. * In the USA, there were more than 70,200 overdose deaths in just 2017. More than 130 people died every day from opioid- related drug overdoses.
On TV as I wrote this, someone declared, “One hundred people die from gun violence in the USA every day”. 130 from opioids! 100 from gun violence! Are these not preventable?
I have been free of opioids for a few years now. The pain persists but I am better off than where I was. My wife had nightmares about my drugged period. “I thought we were going to lose you.” I am still here.
By the way, I really did see the Buddha on the road.
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Hi Carol! My blood tests are always normal. You would think that with all the pain meds they wouldn’t be, but I’m 5’9 so maybe they don’t affect me as someone smaller would. I’m having rotator cuff surgery this week and I hope my current meds are enough. Btw, I knew a hairdresser that had to stop in her early 30’s because of pain. Sorry this happened to you too.
I'm not 5'9" but I'm 5'6" and 250 lbs. Lol
I've been told I don't look it because I'm very solid. I have meat on my bones as they say. I guess that happens when you stop working AND stop smoking. August 19th was a year. That was soooo easy...I just never lit up again after a weekend in hospital being treated with IV antibiotics for cat bite. I don't miss it or crave it. Now, if only I could be that way about certain food. 🤣
Thank you, it was very hard to stop working. I wanted to work until I was 65 but had to go 1 month shy of 62nd birthday. I worked many, many years with the pain. It was so bad for 3 days once, I wasn't able to sit. I did manicures with my arms propped on the manicure table, leaning forward, because I couldn't relax my back. I could lay or stand but the only place I could sit was a recliner and I had to lay back in that. Getting out was a chore. I had to "walk myself out of it" meaning I had to hold on to the recliner arms and finally back as I was getting to upright position. I was in bed for a week once because everytime I sat on edge of bed and relaxed my back, it would spasm and I just fell back into bed. I finally went by ambulance to orthopedic Dr to get shot in lower back. I immediately sat up and the nurse said "don't you get down off that bed" and I said "I'm not, I just haven't been in a vertical position in over a week and need to sit up". I WALKED out of that doctors office.
It only took 4 months to get disability on the first try with all my medical imagining results they had. I think your meds should be enough after surgery but I'd think you may have to take 1 and a half tabs for a bit. Good luck.
Oh well, one day at a time they say right.
Sounds like the neighbor is chasing a high rather than taking meds for pain. You get medical Marijuana without the THC. You get the medical benefits of the product without getting high. People think you must get high in order to participate in the medical Marijuana treatment and that's just not true.
In what firm of ashwanda did you get? And it helped?
Goli Ashwagandha. Pharmacist are saying they can’t keep it on the shelf. No high, just relaxed. No garbage in it.
There are no cures for my condition, in fact, it gets progressively worse as I age. I have axonal sensory neuropathy - it is not like peripheral neuropathy - think "standing in a bonfire while being electrocuted and swarms of wasps are stinging the parts that aren't engulfed in flames, and swords pierce through feet straight to the brain lightning fast" - and all of it ramping up as the minutes tick by . I will never be able to stop taking Gabapentin. I am allergic to pot.
Gabapentin helps with epilepsy and neuropathy, that's all. For those of us who have those conditions, Gaba makes us normal. I understand that when people who don't have epilepsy or neuropathy take Gabapentin, it makes them weird. Some of them have terrible reactions and some of them enjoy feeling weird. I don't know why some people like feeling weird - I don't - I like "normal". The chronic pain I have is so debilitating that if I didn't take gabapentin, I would have to off myself promptly and so would anyone else who felt what I feel. Humans can only stand so much pain, even our toughest international spies can be broken with enough torture.
A nurse told me recently that before her mother died of cancer, she was taking an enormous amount of morphine. I asked if it made her mom sleep all the time or if she could be conscious some of the time. The nurse said that if a patient's body is using all of the morphine, they don't experience nasty side affects like sleepiness, thirst, nausea, blinding headache, etc. That makes sense to me, and it wouldn't surprise me if our bodies assimilate other medicines the same way.
I'm grateful that Mayo Clinic gives us these community groups where we can help each other filter out superstitions and "old wives tales". People who tell us their own experiences help me greatly. People who give us opinions based on something they saw on the telly or the internet don't help us very much as we still must filter it through real experience to validate or dismiss.
I wish politicians would stop practicing medicine without a license. When they restrict medicines that help real patients because someone's child bought it illegally and over-dosed, they are pandering for votes without any compassion for people who need the medicines in order to live normally.
A happy 2024 to all of you! Peggy
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3 ReactionsHa ha ha. You say it's not the government, then you say it's the FDA and the DEA. They are government agencies the last time I checked. You seem to trust them with your health. I don't.
I trust my doctors more than I trust any government agency and I wish politicians would stop practicing medicine without a license.
I agree with you about the "healthcare industry", especially manufacturers of medicines; they do not have our best interests at heart (they have their own of course).
pfbacon
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1 ReactionYour doctor has to work within the guidelines CMS, FDA, etc. issue and some activities they perform are tracked closely by those agencies. I used to perform gov reviews of hospital and physician documentation for errors in care and trends. You may not like it but you need to work within those guidelines too. If you’re on narcotics for pain your doc tracks your urine drug screens to check for abuse and to see if drug levels are consistent. I feel your frustration but I learned to live with it.
Thank you SO much for this, @summertime4! I worked on psychiatric units for years, beginning at 19....and saw a lot of suffering....much of it from drugs. I later 'related' to them....Drs. who prescribed narcotics for debilitating migraines, telling me to take 'whatever I needed'....eventually went cold-turkey off of those (after 10 yrs.), it was disastrous. Blood pressure sky high, in the worst panic attack a person can imagine, laying in the ER (I feel so bad for the ones who suffer terribly from these)....and that's when Xanax was prescribed, by another Dr. who prescribed more and more to me. I thought my God, am I stupid? I told myself no matter how many he gave me, to be 'careful'....ended up addicted and he, who was no more than a 'legal drug dealer', opened up his own practice....many others became addicted because of him.... word got around that you could get the drug of your choice from him & it made the man rich....they suffered, also. I should have been 'smarter'....I wasn't, because a 'Dr.' was prescribing all those pills. I ended up going 'cold turkey' again....horrendous, but I did it. I had to quit my job....it was the only way. Don't EVER go cold-turkey, please!! It's so dangerous....and a total hell. On the outside, people thought I was 'so together', working, raising my sons, doing 'everything I was supposed to'. Anyway...moving ahead (sorry....this site brings back so many memories to me, even though they are sad)....I am now on 1 mg. Xanax a day....I break the 2 tablets in half, so I am taking 0.25 at each dose. I want to wean off, but am so afraid. I am also on Zoloft, 50 mg. I started breaking them in half, taking 25 mg., but as you say, DO NOT TRY to get off any medication without a Dr. aboard. Taking pills was never ME.....all I did was 'vitamins'....I want 'me' back....I may be a lot older now but I can still be healthy and happy again! To make things worse, when my grandson was found dead in a basement almost 2 yrs. ago, I came completely undone....he was the light of my eye, loved him more than life itself. The family fell apart. I began drinking whiskey....suggested by a friend to 'help me sleep'....big mistake. OMG, I have such a tolerance for that stuff....whether it be Scotch, Bourbon, whatever. I thought I would be 'o.k.'....not become dependent on it. It gave me a feeling of calm, even 'well-being'. Never drunk, always a clean house, doing what 'I was supposed to', AGAIN. No one knows...not even my children/grandchildren. It finally started making me feel MORE anxious, MORE depressed when I drank. That's when I KNEW it had to stop. I am now weaning myself off....have not had any in 5 days....but I DID buy some 'seltzer' drinks....3 - 5% alcohol in the cans, to hopefully take the edge off, a couple a day. Is this the wrong way? I'm trying to do so much on my own...I did make a call to an addiction center, very close to my home. Like so many around here, they only take Medicaid!! That or 'self-pay'. It took so much courage for me to call....I thought wow, that can help me....I can go in as an out-patient' and have someone tell me that I can do this....and show me the way. I have good insurance, so I was turned down. I see a new (family) Dr. this coming Wed. (the 10th)....I am going to tell him everything. It's scary to do something like this all on my own...I took everything you said, to heart. So MUCH good information! THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!
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3 ReactionsI’m very glad that you were able to successfully detox. There’s no one size fits all solution, but the govt and physicians want there to be. I think one major contributing factor to why so many chronic pain patients that are prescribed opioids fail, is because they are sold the lie that the medication is going to take away all of their pain. Opioid pain medication was never designed to take away all pain, it was designed to take away enough of the pain to make a patient functional. Physicians that do not ensure that their patients are prepared to live with a significant amount of chronic pain for the rest of their lives before prescribing opioids, are setting their patients up for failure. There used to be a system in place in certain areas that required opioid patients to be educated and taught literally every other coping skill available before medication, but they stopped doing that years ago, because drug companies were not making any money off of patients using other methods to control pain.
Now, we are seeing an incredible overreaction to the Purdue scandal and chronic pain patients are suffering. With the incentive structure set up the way it is with pharmaceutical companies, there’s no incentive to cure patients of their pain or to make their lives better.