I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong forum... I couldn't figure out whether it belonged in OD or this one, but the description on this one seemed to hit closer to home. But I suppose if it is, in fact, the wrong forum it will just be moved, so.. carrying on.
Anyway. My doctor told me something a few weeks ago that had me scratching my head in confusion. He was telling me about a patient of his; this guy apparently had a whole mess of things wrong with him, had been on opiates for over 5 years, and was about to have some surgeries to fix everything... after which, he would finally be taken off the opiates. My doctor, seeing what was coming, told this man that he was going to put him on Suboxone. Well, apparently this man walked into my doctor's office with no withdrawal symptoms. He was kept in the Suboxone program just in case... but he never had any withdrawals. Not that day, or the day after, or the day after that. I questioned whether this was because he was still using opiates, but my doctor assured me that wasn't the case (at my doctor's office, upon entering the Suboxone program, you have to do a mandatory drug screen before, two weeks after, and then every month following that.) This man... who according to my doctor was taking rather large doses and a rather wide array of opiates (I believe he said oxycontin, fentanyl, dilaudid, and percocet?) every day for the past five years... got off the opiates with NO withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. WTF?!
All I could really do was stare at my doctor blankly for the next minute or so trying to figure out how to respond without sounding like a bitch. Finally I just said, "I'm jealous." And then asked him why it wasn't that easy for everyone.
My doctor seems to think that the way people respond to opiate addiction (some people can take them without getting addicted, others can't) has to do with a person's central nervous system. He said he thought that could be the reason some people go through withdrawal and others don't, but that he wasn't completely sure.
I'm confused. I mean, even if this man was one of those people who can take opiates without getting addicted... he was on them for FIVE YEARS, and not on small doses. So to me it just seems like common sense that his body would become physically dependent on it's own, whether he's one of those people who are super resistant to them or not. I mean, that is a really long time to be on opiates... I became physically dependent after a few short months, how could he have been on them for five freaking years and not have any problems? And he was on a variety of them to boot, at least ONE of them should have caught him in it's grip. (I say this because I know different opiates have different affects from experience, for example hydrocodone does it for me, but oxycodone does absolutely nothing to me. If I were to take a percocet for any reason, whether it be for pain management or opiate withdrawals, it would do nothing for me.)
Well, clearly that's not the case with this man, because obviously the opiates were helping him with his pain. It's not like it's because he was immune to them. Can somebody shed some light on this? Is this man just a superhuman? Or is there an actual scientific explanation behind this? Or hell even some sort of magical remedy that no one knows about yet? Not sure if age has anything to do with anything in the slightest, but he's an older gentleman, 68 I believe is what my doctor said.
