Pain Medication, Dependence and addiction

Hi again everyone

This is a real concern of mine. I have been on 8 panadeine forte a day, 20mg norspan patch and strong anti inflammatories. This is after years of pain medication for my sinuses. So, I can still feel pain, but atleast I can walk, though very very slowly.

I am really concerned about the dependence my body obviously has developed. I was recently taken by ambulance to hospital with a migraine. They gave me oxycodone and something else, and I still had a migraine. My body is needing huge amounts of medication now to get any pain relief. What happens one day if I am in a very serious car accident or something?

Also, the patches can be addictive, I ended up stopping these after being in hospital as I was so scared. But the pain is awful....

I am not sure what to do!

At one point when I still needed a lot of pain meds, I had to do a complete withdrawal (medically supervised, with meds to help the withdrawal symptoms), and "restart" at a low dose (took a week for the withdrawal, another week to get comfortable on a new low dose). It's pretty miserable but worth it when you feel like you have hit a level of pain meds that you no longer feel comfortable with.

I develop tolerance to narcotics fairly quickly, yet they work very very well for me, with minimal side effects. At this point, I barely need any (I'm doing better recently), but when I "restarted" my meds I no longer took the long-acting ones, and stuck to short acting. That way I could vary my dose as needed, and periodically reduce slowly on my own then "restart" without a big withdrawal process.

I'm sorry you are dealing with this. Sometimes we just want the pain to stop and will do anything to stop it. Then we're stuck with unintended consequences.

It took me a lot longer than a week. What I did learn though is the pain meds themselves create pain. I was readin a while back about "secondary fibromyalgia" and could help but think they were describing where I was at a long while ago. This isn't what any of us want to believe when our lives are so "controlled by our pain" but when people have massive injury, surgeries broken bones etc etc and their pain can be controlled why when by comparison the pain from our relatively minor inflammation (by comparisson) can not be controlled at all.... Something is going on beyond "pain" When I was jumping I have had joints ripped apart, arms dangling loose because they were so "seperated" they couldn't be controlled. It took a week or more to bring the swelling down enough to put them back together and yet the pain was controlled. I just don't get it. FWIW since I quit the pain meds (I use none except NSAIDS) I have had far better control. but I'm a guy, its different.

This article is interesting (and timely):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinio...health&_r=0

I really liked the article. In my experience I have found this to be true. My husband has OA and his pain has often been treated more seriously. Early in my disease I was told my low back pain was related to my uterus and to take some motrin.HA! Anyway, it is my understanding that women have a different pain tolerance than men. With that in mind the slow and reduced response to women's pain is even more upsetting.

My husband worked in a detox/rehab center in a local hospital. He shared that one theory is that continued opiate use increases the sensation of pain. In a way creates the conditions for it's continued use...one possible solution would be to reduce/wean off to decrease tolerance and to utilize other pain management techniques. Tens, specific cortisone injections and heat/cold therapy. (Just ideas and in no way meant to minimize significant pain.)

Hope you find relief...

tntlamb said:

It took me a lot longer than a week. What I did learn though is the pain meds themselves create pain. I was readin a while back about "secondary fibromyalgia" and could help but think they were describing where I was at a long while ago. This isn't what any of us want to believe when our lives are so "controlled by our pain" but when people have massive injury, surgeries broken bones etc etc and their pain can be controlled why when by comparison the pain from our relatively minor inflammation (by comparisson) can not be controlled at all.... Something is going on beyond "pain" When I was jumping I have had joints ripped apart, arms dangling loose because they were so "seperated" they couldn't be controlled. It took a week or more to bring the swelling down enough to put them back together and yet the pain was controlled. I just don't get it. FWIW since I quit the pain meds (I use none except NSAIDS) I have had far better control. but I'm a guy, its different.

This article is interesting (and timely):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinio...health&_r=0