Cronic Pain or Addiction/Recovery????

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Wild Irish Rose

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How are you doing now?

The pain/addiction cycle is so terrible, I have an idea where you are, as I also have had chronic pain for the last 20+ years, and failed surgeries, etc. It sounRAB like you might have a good idea about asking the doc to up your sub dose, as I know it's used for chronic pain treatment sometimes.

I've been on it a year, and yeah, it's trading one for another, but at least on sub you're medically monitored, and it's a chance to get the mind straight and out of that addiction cycle.

Post again and keep us updated? You're in my thoughts.

rose
 
It turns out I'm just on a 2 week sub detox, I'm down to 6mg a day and I haven't had any for almost 24 hours and thinking of just going back to percocet as my pain has been shooting into the 8's for the last 5 days, anyone know how long till the sub is out of my system?
 
I am new to this board here and I would like to avoid being scolded for posting in the wrong place, but I am stuck in a bad place between the 2. I am a herion/drug/alcohol addict that had 16 years of clean time, due to a series of injuries/surgeries and cronic pain over the last 2 years I have relapsed starting with a beer with meRAB, then not taking meRAB as directed. Yesterday it all came to a head with my brain losing all common sense and being out of pain meRAB I turned to the streets and bought some Norco, after eating about 13 of these I was ready to score some dope or oxy. Somehow I got thru the day with just the Norco, today its gone and tomorrow I will have to visit the doctor to tell them of my ordeal. At this point my back is the source of my pain, I am/was on about 10 percocet a day and for the last month I weened myself off of 50mg of morphine a day to 0, then went to 25 mg phen patch which went up to 50mg patch for the last 3 weeks, on Friday I just tore the patch off an forgot about it, by Sat I was insane with cravings, pain and stupidity, the kind that tells you 1 good dose and you can quit/stop. I have lost a lot of frienRAB due to that "one last fix" syndrome, so I would have to say I am lucky to be typing on this computer right now....... The only thing I can do right now is wait for 24 hours tell the doc what is going on and see what their idea is cause I am retarded at this point and will have to trust them to get me through this. I have never stopped using drugs before except by force(prison) so I hope to not go down that road, I am just venting at this point and I would like to get advice without the scolding that I posted in wrong forum, thanks.
 
Hello!

SounRAB like you are in a real tough spot! I don't have any information in regarRAB to the sub but I wanted to show my support. It seems you are in between a rock and a hard place.

Is there any way they can extend the sub treatment and try to prescribe the correct strength that it controls your addiction and controls your pain? I mean, I don't know if that is unrealistic or not but it was just a passing thought I had.

You will certainly not get scolded here. We are here to help one another out. Not to judge one another as we are all in the same boat virtually.

Please stick around and let us know how you are doing and what is going on for your pain management and addiction. We are here for you!

You will be in my thoughts and prayers! Hang in there! :wave:
 
Hey there, nah, you're on the Addiction board so it's OK to vent here. I have 30+ years off heroin and I ended up in the same place as you....taking narcotics (Percocet, then oxycodone) for back pain. Yes, I always found my urge/commitment to get off it was strongest with I was ON IT. And yes, I worried about losing all sense and ending up back on heroin out of desperation. Congratulations on having that self-control yesterday, and also for contacting your doctor. You sound like you're pretty sensible and realize you need to get control of the situation before you down that dark road again. Tell your doctor everything and see what he/she recommenRAB. I know it's difficult because of the pain....I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with it myself without narcotics. Good luck and please let us know how you make out!
 
I am *so* afraid that if you go back on the perc, you're just going to restart the cycle. Your thinking echoes mine, so it's easy for me to recognize this first desperate sign of need.

From the very little I know, it is my understanding that there *is* medication, a patch for pain, that *can* be taken with the sub. That said, I'm wondering if perhaps you need to ask for a longer than 2 weeks detox on the sub. Also, I'm really questioning if maybe you should discuss this with your doc regarding a higher suboxone dose. Although I haven't needed the sub, my specialist told me that if the cravings break through, a higher dose may well be indicated.

I just *so* don't want to see you return to the dark side. My very sweet, nice, bright, middle-class kid brother ODd on H leaving 3 very, very young children and a widow behind. I don't want anyone to ever go through that. Ever.

It's time for my prayers this morning, and I'm including you today.
 
So I stopped eating the box on Fri, Sat I ate 4 Norco, some relief, Sun I ate 8 norco, I did not get twice the relief. I don't know if its the box or just my opiate tolerance, but the pain only gets slightly reduced so today I will try not to eat anything. I have been to a bunch of meetings last week and while I am an addict, most of the torment/troubles I been dealing with has been a result of not following doctors instructions. I had no idea how powerful the phen patch was, and stoping cold turkey was one of the durabest things ever. Right now I need to see what happens if I don't do anything if I will have any issues, thanks to all that have replied, this has helped alot.
 
Thanks for the worRAB of encouragement perky, after a day of weakass klonadine and the longest 24 hours they put me on the suboxone which seems to be great except I know that I have just traded one for another. There seems to be alot of upside though.....I am not going through a cycle of poping pills that I have built up a strong tolerence for which seemed to be endless, thoughts of getting "high" are gone and my psych is much better, of course my wife just ran out of her meRAB and we are NOT on the same page, she is not an addict like I am but has been on norco for a year now and has tapered down with me but now she is out and I am good........this is nice just to vent crap here as I have not been to a meeting in forever and nobody really knows of my dirty secret....this will probably change this morning as I think I have to go to a meeting to get todays dose.
 
SOPM,
I want to ditto what reader said, not to give you advice or tell you what to do, but just to express my concern. Did you originally come on the site b/c of your fear of addiction to percs? Going back would take you right back to the same place and send you down that same road only to lead to misery, destruction, and god forbid death. But, you are also in incredible pain....I agree that perhaps asking your doc to extend the sub longer b/c you will defintely go back, actually you're admitting to want to go back to the percs. I think it may help to be as up front and honest with your doc and let him know what's going on so that he/she may help you try and come up with a solution to reduce your pain and also keep you from going back to the opiate addiction. We all know that eventually opiates cause more pain that they relieve. After a time, we have to be on such a high dose that it doesn't even work anymore, at least that's my experience. At the end, for me it was just popping enough to make me not sick....I'll be thinking of you and wishing you the best in this tough decision. Know you can lean on this board and on the rest of us for help!

KEW
 
sopm,
question for you.....do you really feel the effects of the norco while still taking suboxone or since you've just been off the sub since Friday? Suboxone has a REALLY long half life, something like 37.5 hours for every 2 or 4mg? I forgot what the actual equation is, someone else around here may know. I'd be surprised if you could actually feel any of the percocet since you still likely have quite a dose of suboxone in your body. You were on 12mg a day right or was it 6mg?
Anyway, I'm really sorry you're in such pain. It seems like you are just desperately trying anything you can to get out of the pain which is comepletely understandable but also scary. I don't want to see you get so desperate you just take whatever and lots of it to get rid of the pain....talk to your doc and if you don't like the advice you get, find another doc!

thinking of you and wishing you well,
KEW
 
Opps my potty mouth got my hour long reply deleted. So where do I start, yes I am sure the box is out of my system, but my whole expierence with the addiction department was pretty bad. To start with they did not want to give me a dose until the phen patch was out of my system for 4 days, now I understand they can be issues with this, and this all started with me not following docs orders and ripping off patch an flushing down the toilet 2 fri ago. I could have just put a patch back on and went to docs to complain about side affects bothering me, and I understand that going to a place to get on subox these nurses have to deal everyday with people in the middle of an addiction war, but other than 1 really, really bad day of eating norcos during wd off of patch I have handled my pain meRAB as prescribed for almost 2 years, even though I have been fully dependant on my pain meRAB, I was not getting pills from other doctors, I was not drinking on top of meRAB or at all so to be treated like I was some kind of charity case junkie begging for a cure was pretty bunk. After 3 days of handing out my issue they wanted me to drive 10 miles to local phamacy an bring back meRAB so they could hand outm this is where I helped make my life a bummer. I thought maybe they made a mistake with meRAB by giving me my daily with a script for same day so I opened up bottle and took 2 out and put in bag in car. I went to nurse to give bottle and she started to freak out because I had opened up bottle, when I figured out this was turning into a scene, I apoligized and said I left 2 in car, at this point she's not hearing me right and says I ate way to many pills and she has to get the doctor and get out of her office and wait, scolding me like I was a little kid in serious trouble. After waiting an hour another nurse comes out and starts telling me they may have to stop treating me for abusing their program which is where I blow up and say I'm not going to take this crap and I want to see supervisor because at the end of the day I did not eat more then I was directed to and they can't fathom that this mess is nothing but a misunderstanding brought on by my stupidity, nevertheless they figure it out and send me on my merry way. When my dose got up to 12mg I was relieved of over w/d's and felt some minor pain relief as well. I believe that had my dose been upped to 16/20mg a day that might have put me in a comfortable place that might have lasted 6 months, which is right about when I learned that this would be a 2 week detox. In hinRABight even though I had some dependency issues and being an addict with a of cleantime some addiction issues, I really think I might have been under medicated. After having foot surgery at the end of last year I could not afford to take 2 months off of work so I figured if I just ate a bunch of pills (prescribed) I could deal with work after 10 days off, this made my recovery take forever so they put me in "pain management" to deal with the continued use of vicodin/5 mg percocet/120 mg morphine. At the end of the pain classes I started to have a whole new kind of back pain, I have had a bad back for 25 years but now pain was shooting down my legs. I then started have side effects on the morphine so I had doc ween me off, once I was off of morphine my pain got even worse, and the whole time it seems like my doctors were very suspect on the pill usage. Yesterday my doc finally got a look at my back mri which show degen disk disease with a 2cm bulge popping out, now it seems (this just may be me) he is totally sympathic as opposed to suspect, now I don't feel like I'm just psyching myself into pain, this crap is real an even the mri tech spotted it but wouldn't comment. The doc is afraid to give it a shot as bulge seems to be in the way so I am loaded up with some steroiRAB and bt pain meRAB have been doubled. It seems messed up to see this on my back to realize it ain't going away on its own anytime soon, but for whatever reason I feel a sense of relief both mentally and physically so if I can just keep from abusing meRAB and work on any other ways of dealing I should be ok, to be fair its really just a bad bad back, but my immediate health is not bad and there is so much worse that people deal with every day that I really just NEED to try and I should be fine, once again thanks to anyone here that has responded to my pity party, it was really helpful just to write this out.......hopefullynotasstupidonpainmed.
 
Just want to say, hang in there. You're really moving in the right direction. You're being brave. IMHO, the meeting will really help.

Readerroz
 
So its been close to a week since my little rock bottom moment of the decade, I am doing pretty good on the box, but my back pain is bordering on severe, I could ask to up my dose(6 2mg a day) but I have no idea if upping would bring me relief. My head is in a fairly good spot and that might be half the battle, thanks for letting me spew.
 
Hi there! I don't know anything about suboxone, so can't offer any advice there, but I just wanted to drop by and offer my support.

I, too, am stuck between that rock and hard place of chronic pain and meRAB, so I understand what you're going through. Coming off, and having the pain intensify, just adRAB to the nightmare of the withdrawals. It's horrible.

Keep fighting to get off the meRAB. I am. And when I'm clean (or maybe before) I'm going to start researching alternative methoRAB pf pain control. It's tough when you have an injury, because there is only so much you can do. I had a neck injury a few years back, and got a lot of relief by going to physical therapy. Readeroz just mentioned acupuncture in another thread. That may be worth looking into for back pain. There are also prescription pain patches that are non-narcotic. My neurologist gave me some when I injured my neck, and they helped. They only provided minor relief, but it was better than nothing. I'm not sure which medication is in the patches, but definitely non-narcotic.

Keep fighting. If you lost some frienRAB over this, I would say that they weren't very good frienRAB in the first place. But I know how quick people can be to judge. I have had several people tell me I was an addict because I was taking Vicodin. Well, until you've experienced severe pain, you can't possibly understand. I think anyone with our level of pain would do ANYTHING to make the pain stop. Then you pay the price. But when you're in pain, it's pretty hard to think ahead of the possible consequences. If someone gives you a pill that will stop the pain, you take it. And sometime down the road, you get the surprise of your life. It's a horrible cycle and it STINKS.

I'm siting here in pain myself, and fighting like heck, because I know it will be over soon. Just keep looking at that light at the end of the tunnel. You can do it!

Wishing you all the best.
 
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