Nooby
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2013
- Messages
- 18
Hey, I’m a chronic pain patient who’s been on opiates purely for pain relief (not judging) for about 15 years.
My tolerance has got crazy high and at its peak I was on 250mcg fentanyl patch, with 180mg oxy three times a day, 300mg codeine and as much oramorph as I needed for breakthrough pain. I took myself off fentanyl completely by tapering slowly over a year. Weirdly the fent never helped my pain but increased my opiate tolerance hugely and knocked me out with side effects but no relief. I lost three years of my life to that nasty stuff. Oxy has always worked really well for me but I wanted to reduce my dose as much as possible so that it’s as effective as it can be when I have a flare up. I got off fent completely, dropped to 120mg oxy three times a day, came off codeine completely and reduced my gabapentin dose by 2/3. So far so good, then I have a bad flare up of my condition, and pain was totally out of control. I lost my mind and had a bit of a breakdown and I overdosed. I started popping my oxy 20’s like they were sweeties and one night I took at least 56 of them, drank about 100ml of oramorph - I didn’t expect to wake up. I was kind of counting on not waking up, but I did. So over the following week I consistently took 2 or 3 times my usual doses, every night assuming I’d get to a point where I just wouldn’t wake up.
That hasn’t happened (and I’m not asking for help committing suicide, I want to be clear about that, but I am now really curious) so what would it actually take to kill me? I know if I drank or mixed benzos in then it’s much more likely but I always thought a straight massive dose of opioid would do it too. Am I at the mythical top end of opioids where there is no top dose?
I should say I’ve had most of my intestines removed so OIC isn’t a problem, I know that’s what stops most people taking more. I didn’t nod, didn’t have a lovely warm sleep, I literally felt no different to normal. Maybe a tiny bit woozy when I stood up. My BP was 90/48 and my HR was 110 bpm (I was in hospital at the time - i hadn’t handed over my medicines kit so I had all my own meds as well as what they gave me in hospital, I figured it would be less distressing for my family if I just died in the night at hospital, nobody who loved me would need to find me etc etc. So I didn’t have enough on board for any medical staff to notice anything unusual. That just feels really weird after such a high dose - I took 1300mg oxy, 200mg morphine and nothing happened.
Is there no cumulative damage? I can’t find anything online, type in oxy overdose and you get a million articles about America’s epidemic what a total disaster it is but no actual info. I asked a friend who works in pharma to look it up for me and she came back saying that no, by itself it’s not especially dangerous, it’s only mixing it with alcohol or benzos or taking your normal dose when you’ve had a day or two off. Nothing about a high dose of just oxycodone
TLDR - is there really no top end to opiate intake if your tolerance has grown slowly over years?
My tolerance has got crazy high and at its peak I was on 250mcg fentanyl patch, with 180mg oxy three times a day, 300mg codeine and as much oramorph as I needed for breakthrough pain. I took myself off fentanyl completely by tapering slowly over a year. Weirdly the fent never helped my pain but increased my opiate tolerance hugely and knocked me out with side effects but no relief. I lost three years of my life to that nasty stuff. Oxy has always worked really well for me but I wanted to reduce my dose as much as possible so that it’s as effective as it can be when I have a flare up. I got off fent completely, dropped to 120mg oxy three times a day, came off codeine completely and reduced my gabapentin dose by 2/3. So far so good, then I have a bad flare up of my condition, and pain was totally out of control. I lost my mind and had a bit of a breakdown and I overdosed. I started popping my oxy 20’s like they were sweeties and one night I took at least 56 of them, drank about 100ml of oramorph - I didn’t expect to wake up. I was kind of counting on not waking up, but I did. So over the following week I consistently took 2 or 3 times my usual doses, every night assuming I’d get to a point where I just wouldn’t wake up.
That hasn’t happened (and I’m not asking for help committing suicide, I want to be clear about that, but I am now really curious) so what would it actually take to kill me? I know if I drank or mixed benzos in then it’s much more likely but I always thought a straight massive dose of opioid would do it too. Am I at the mythical top end of opioids where there is no top dose?
I should say I’ve had most of my intestines removed so OIC isn’t a problem, I know that’s what stops most people taking more. I didn’t nod, didn’t have a lovely warm sleep, I literally felt no different to normal. Maybe a tiny bit woozy when I stood up. My BP was 90/48 and my HR was 110 bpm (I was in hospital at the time - i hadn’t handed over my medicines kit so I had all my own meds as well as what they gave me in hospital, I figured it would be less distressing for my family if I just died in the night at hospital, nobody who loved me would need to find me etc etc. So I didn’t have enough on board for any medical staff to notice anything unusual. That just feels really weird after such a high dose - I took 1300mg oxy, 200mg morphine and nothing happened.
Is there no cumulative damage? I can’t find anything online, type in oxy overdose and you get a million articles about America’s epidemic what a total disaster it is but no actual info. I asked a friend who works in pharma to look it up for me and she came back saying that no, by itself it’s not especially dangerous, it’s only mixing it with alcohol or benzos or taking your normal dose when you’ve had a day or two off. Nothing about a high dose of just oxycodone
TLDR - is there really no top end to opiate intake if your tolerance has grown slowly over years?
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