True Opiate Withdrawal Symptoms or urban legends?

[pema]

I made more than one withdrawal and I always had the same withdrawal symptoms but when I search the internet, I find some opiate withdrawal symptoms which I never had.
I don't know if those are real or not...

I read about Opiate Withdrawal Psychosis. Actually I don't think it's possible that opiate withdrawal can trigger a psychosis. If somebody has a latent/dorment psychosis then it can maybe come to the onset of this psychosis. But in that case, the psychosis was not caused by the opiate withdrawal itself.
This is what I believe. But it was impossible for me to find studies on that topic. It wasn't even possible to find good information on people where it came to an outbreak of psychosis during opiate withdrawal. Any more information on that?

Then I always read that opiate withdrawal is not life threatening. And this is what I believe. I never heard of a person who died during opiate withdrawal. I know a person who died during severe benzodiazepine withdrawal. And I read about that.
But I think, opiate withdrawal cannot lead to death. But sometimes I read that this is possible in some cases. I couldn't find information of people who actually died from opiate withdrawal. Any more information on that?

Then I read about withdrawal fever. I have flu-like syndroms during opiate withdrawal but I never got fever or even a higher temperature. Can this happen?

I have big problems with restless legs during opiate withdrawal and every addict I know suffers from this, too (during opiate withdrawal). But now I read something that only 12.5 percent would suffer from restless legs during opiate withdrawal. Can this be true? Is RLS not a usual withdrawal symptom? Is it really so rare?

I read that runny nose, excessive sweating and excessive tear shedding during opiate withdrawal should have all the same cause. But I wasn't able to find this cause. I'm not sure if those three symptoms are all caused by the same thing. But often they are listed as only one symptom: "overproduction of bodily fluids (sweat, tears, runny nose)".
Do they all have the same cause? What is it? What causes this "overproduction of bodily fluids"?

What is with incontinence? I read that opiate withdrawal could cause incontinence. Urinal incontinence and fecial incontinence aswell. I never bacame incontinent during opiate withdrawal although I had some really severe withdrawals from really fuckin' high heroin or methadone doses.
Sometimes I got diarrhea or had the frequent urge to pee all the time. But never incontinence. What are your experiences? Anybody here who sufferes from incontinence during withdrawal or is this just some kind of urban legend. I never got incontinent nor one of my friends. But incontinence is something that perhaps some people won't tell...
Is this a usual withdrawal symptom? Or a really rare symptom? Or maybe noone actually suffers from..?

 

[Mr Blonde]

^ They aren't urban legends. Not everyone gets the same symptoms as each other, you understand? It's like with drugs or medication; not everyone gets ALL the side effects. Some people experience very little of the range of symptoms, others experience a whole lot. Just because you don't get them doesn't mean others don't.

 

[Coolwhip]

WD psychosis can be triggered by the extreme stress of WD, especially after days sick without sleep. The rest is all the common symptoms of WD.

Generally you can't die from opiate WD, but there was a girl in jail who they cold turkeyed and gave no comfort meds, she died of dehydration because she couldn't stop puking and shitting. Happened this year I think.

 

[tokenname]

Absolutely, I think that Opiate W/d Psychosis...is most definitely real..but
caused by dehydration and lack of sleep.
Kind of along the same lines as meth psychosis..
although I don't ever use that..I'm crazy enough already..

I w/d from 400-500 mg./day of morphine..cold turkey. when I was 16 or 17.
I didn't sleep for weeks..I was throwing up every 25-30 minutes..
and running to the bathroom every 15..
I ended up in the E.R.
But did not say why I was so sick.
they gave me iv fluids..and wouldn't let me get up.
I can embarrassingly attest to the incontinence symptom.
If I were able to get up..I would have made it to the bathroom..
but there's no way I could've waited more than a minute..on day 2, 3, or 4 of that withdrawl.

Fever is also a symptom of dehydration..

damn, I wish I could forget all of that stuff.

token

 

[mareseatoats]

WD psychosis can be triggered by the extreme stress of WD, especially after days sick without sleep. The rest is all the common symptoms of WD.

Generally you can't die from opiate WD, but there was a girl in jail who they cold turkeyed and gave no comfort meds, she died of dehydration because she couldn't stop puking and shitting. Happened this year I think.

That's terrible to go through that in jail, and just because she was not provided enough hydration, she lost her life...and those who are ignorant to the knowledge of drug addiction; the ins and outs of it and withdrawal, would blame her death on the fact that she was just another drug addict I'm sure.

 

[soonerk9]

My mother and I have both used opiates, albeit it not recreationally or together for a high but as pain management and any high has always been welcomed but we both suffer or suffered in my mothers case from chronic pain from various causes. My mother started methadone treatment about 6 months ago trying to wean off all the other opiates she was on or abusing. On July 26th she died from Methadone withdraw. The day before she missed her dose and didn't tell me till the withdraw symptoms hit her...HARD. I moved in a few years ago to help her out and when she started going through such bad withdraw I became severely concerned. I begged her to let me take her to the hospital, that they would give her the dose or they could monitor her. She said she was too embarrassed to go to the e.r. and just wanted to tough it out till the next morning. Even though I told her I didn't think this was a good idea, I agreed to take her the next morning as she was in no shape to drive. I sat with her and watched her cry and puke all over herself all day. It was gut wrenching. About 2 in the morning I told her I was going to lay down for a minute. When I came back at 5 to see if she needed help getting dressed to go to the clinic she was dead. I believe that all the vomiting caused a heart attack and she died. Her lips were blue and riggor had already started to set in. They think she died shortly after I went to lay down. So yes, you CAN DIE. Especially if you have other health problems such as heart disease when you go into withdrawl. I've never seen such an extreme case of withdrawl as the symptoms that hit my mother.

The few times I've had to go without opiates my "withdrawl" was nothing like hers. Main thing with me is my insomnia gets much, much WORSE, the RLS and I'm a little irritable. However, due to what I witnessed with my mother I think methadone should be much more restricted and I'm much more careful with my drug use as well.

 

[CurseWord]

I signed up just to say I think the above story is made up. Methadone is a very long acting drug and even if you miss one dose, you usually feel at about 50-75% that day. Hell, she would still be in the half-life period and her opioid receptors still saturated with methadone.

If this story isn't wholly made up, then your mom's death was caused by something else besides missing one dose of methadone.

 

[Raki]

Im on 220mg of methadone and in 2007 I went cold turkey and for 8 days had nothing but OTC Benadryl. I survived just fine. Currently, I receive 13 takehomes and have gone 6 days with absolutely nothing at the end of each two week period for the past year.

Methadone, in long term regular users above a blocking dose (usually 70mg), ends up forming an internal resevoir within the body so that the substance in any form is tantamount to an extended formulation. This is why physical withdrawal symptoms will not manifest for at least 4 days, often longer.

Claiming that someone died from methadone withdrawal, assuming no underlying causes were aggravated by it, is nonsense. That they died just because they missed a single dosage is absolute nonsense.

 

[Stuckinthecycle]

Last september i was in my car with my gf on my way to detox in cleveland. I had been iving 2 grams of pure white fentanyl a day for 6 months. Prior to that i had been on suboxone for 4 year with 1-2 week binges on stronger opiates mixed in every couple months. So basically i had a huge fuckin problem ahead of me. Anyways on the way to detox i sneezed nonstop for 5 minutes straight. It was so bad my gf who was driving pulled over the car. She roughly counted and said i sneezed over 100 times straight. I was halfway choking and gasping for air and i couldnt swallow my own spit without choking and sneezing. Talk about wd symptoms smh.

 

[Stuckinthecycle]

Damn 220 mg is crazy high. I went a couple months of taking about 100 mg a day. In my ignorance of precipitated wd i took 4 mg of sub when the methadone was gone and within 20 mins was thrust into the deepest depths of hell i have ever experienced. Lol

 

[Railstin]

Rather recently there was an incident with my backup and my source could not be found, so I gathered some loperamide and a few benzos and lasted until day 2 without a decently pure 2-3 gram a day (non injected) habit of heroin. It was my first missed day in over 7 or so months. My withdrawals were not too severe that soon as I had the Imodium AD but I did wake up on the front room floor with my girlfriend holding my hand and my seizure alert dog licking my face. She recorded the grand mal on her cell phone and according to her the video started about 35 seconds or so into the event and the recording was about 3:55 minutes. I did stop breathing a couple of times for 5-6 second increments she said and I imagine that a person could easily bite dirt in that event from not only the seizure but swallowing vomit, falling and hitting head etc.

However...

I was perfectly aware of my condition, hence my service dog and why I was so careful never to miss a day. This was known to me only because of a similar incident about 8 years before where after a severe and true alcoholic lifestyle for over 16 or so years I decided in a fit of depression to quit cold turkey. It was rough and I was at work the next day and when five PM came along I stood from my computer and that was the last thing I remember. That seizure was witnessed by the entire IT department and was over 5 minutes long with over 30 seconds of no breathing and administered CPR. I was in the ICU for around 5 days with a shattered t-4 and t-5 from solely the back muscles straining the spine and then another 90 days of in patient treatment and a dedicated 4-5 years of AA.

NOW..this is how intelligent addicts are...

After the hospital and rehab stay, my PCP wanted to prescribe me a low dose of Percs for my back pain but I would not allow it given my pledge for sobriety. So he introduced me instead to a brand new synthetic pain medication called Tramadol that was non addictive and non narcotic. I tried and, my pain was relived and life moved on. About 3 years later, with no real problems on Tramadol and never really abused my doctor told me that he could not prescribe it any longer because it was just re-classified and now considered a narcotic. I though no problem. On about day 5 without Tramadol my back pain was intense and I had been suffering mild withdrawals. Just by coincidence I had just arrived to my seizure service animals vet office for her x-rays and her vet prescribed my 64 lb Border Collie Tramadol for her arthritis. 50 mg, four times a day. Holy hell, that was more than my dose. But OK as long as she wont be in pain. around day 6 I gave in and while apologizing profusely to her I "borrowed" a few of her 50 mg pills for the pain and flu symptoms.

From that day on I never missed a day of Tramadol for the next 1 1/2 years. Towards the last 7 months, my Tramadol 50mg (not slow release) habit had escalated to on average 35-45 pills a day. 2250 mg of synthetic of a synthetic painkiller...every day. Well that didn't last long. A few months from quitting for good the most massive grand mal I had ever experience completely rocked my world. I had no short or long term memory for a few days (I did not know my name until at least 3-4 hours after being admitted into the ER, broken back again it might seem silly but the worst injury was my tongue. I had chewed almost halfway through it with my teeth.

This scared the holy crappola out of me and I vowed to God and all of the Avengers of Marvel that I would never take it again. 2 days later I was back on it after suffering another smaller seizure. So now I was confused why I seized while on it AND while off it. So between my neurologist who first diagnosed epilepsy and a pretty dedicated research on my part online it was realized that it was obviously the Tramadol. Problem was, Tramadol after each incident permanently lowers your bodies seizure threshold. Each and every time. So now I was not only in danger of being on the drug, quitting the drug but also I was now in very dangerous waters where I had to be constantly aware and careful at all times that my body never got too tired or too hungry or too hot or too stressed. If it did...zap. And that did happen once, a small one.

So in my brilliance I decided to maintain a 500-600 mg a day safety net habit of [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Tegretol (seizure med) and a couple of months later (just in case) a more reliable habit of Kepra, so that I could continue my 45 20mg per day of Tramadol. During that time, I had not one seizure. Dumb, yes. Suicidal, yes, But as we all know, while on Tramadol, I was never really "high" or wacked out, it was more of a pill that gave me super powers. It gave me perfect focus, work ethic, dramatic improvements to literally almost every part of my life and relationships. Except sexually. Impossible on Tramadol.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Well, long story short, you are probably wondering how I was feeding my 315 count Tram habit PER week. Well, at this time it was regulated and controlled through pharmacies and doctors, but vets could just hand it over the counter with no signature. Apparently they had not yet been informed that it had changed into a controlled substance. So there was no "real" fraud on my part or "real" doctor shopping. I just had a few different vets for different opinions .... and with my hand to God in every diagnosis on my dog, every single veterinarian never asked my opinion. After x-rays the first diagnosis was Tramadol, asap. And yes, my beautiful girl got her complete dosage, on time, every day.

So to sum up, sure. if someones seizure threshold was low enough to begin with and was detoxing off of Heroin and certain conditions were met like...hadn't eaten all day and was stressed, and a grand mal seizure struck....yes, I could have fallen and bopped my noggin on the corner of the dishwasher and bled out. I never did though, Koda my seizure alert super dog always made sure I was on the ground or on my ass before anything zapped me.

So now I'm getting ready to start MMT tomorrow morning at 6 am and after a real desire to remove this fear of pain and withdrawals and backup plans etc, I am going to give this my all and treat my pain and addiction with Methadone in a controlled environment. I'm frightened...I'm currently suffering mild sneezes and yawns so that at 6 am I will qualify for the program and I hope with everything that this is the answer to my prayers. The miracle that many addicts have claimed it to be..

I'll let you all know in a few days. Ciao.

-Rail [/FONT]

 

[Blind Melon]

Fuck, you figured us out, we wanted to trick you into thinking of hardcore Opiate WD as child's play. Go catch a habit and find out for yourself. Wish I was as tough as you. It sure makes a bitch of me.

 

[Keif' Richards]

It's true that opioid withdrawal varies from person to person, but most of what you've mentioned is relatively commonplace when enduring the acute phase, except for maybe the psychosis. The only time that I really developed psychological symptoms along the lines of derealization, disocciation etc. was during methadone withdrawal, but I'm pretty sure these symptoms were more attributable to the compounding lack of sleep I was getting.

And yes, despite what you hear, you can die from opioid withdrawal. However, it's exceedingly rare in individuals in relatively good health. If you're old, feeble or sick, the added stress to the body could be enough to send you over the edge.

For me, the RLS/Akathisia is the absolute, hands-down, worst symptom of my withdrawal. There is just no way to get relief when you're body is fighting you from the inside. After a few days of withdrawal, I could take a full-night's sleep apples to apples with some dope. This is a catch-22 of course, as the dope would in turn allow me to sleep, but I'm sure you catch my drift.

The rhinitis, sniffling, yawning, tearing up and pantriculation are hallmarks of withdrawal for myself and many others. I'm sure if I counted them, I could yawn easily 10 times per minute, each time producing the same amount of tears that people produce when they cry. These yawning attacks are usually followed by gooseflesh all over my body with a strong urge to shiver simultaneously. My pupils don't ever get bigger during withdrawal, however, they are always huge and they only shrink when I am extremely high.

As far as RLS/Akathisia only effecting 12.5% of withdrawal subjects, I just don't think so. The sad truth is that a lot of junkies (like all human beings) aren't super-educated and/or articulate, which can make describing some of the subtledies of their symptoms difficult. When you ask some people how they feel when they're sick, it could be limited to something like "not good", "feel like shit" and not "I feel like I have an intermittent electric current running through my legs and body causing intense feelings of inner restlessness and unease". The fact is, Akathisia is a difficult condition to describe to someone who's never experienced it.

I'm stealing this idea, but the best, most concise description of dope-sickness is that it is like influenza, or the spanish influenza if you have a fentanyl habit . Emesis, diarrhea, body temperature disregulation, etc. There are, as we've covered, some other symptoms that are unique to opioid withdrawal, but I feel the the time-tested flu comparison holds water.

 

[Diana60]

My detox symptoms

For me this time, the RLS, sleeplessness and histamine reaction ( ie sneezing my guts out), have been the worst parts. I did a 40 day taper this time, so a little Imodium, valium and Klonipin took care of the first 5 days. I'm at day 10 now and still have the sleeplessness, exhaustion and convulsive sneezing and if I lie down, the bone crunching pain in my calves is horrible.
All and all, this has been my easiest detox ( hopefully last!).

Each time before, I cold turkeyed.
The worst was when $$ fell from the heavens and I went on a few day run with my buddy.
I got kicked out of my Methadone program.

I awoke puking my brains out on a freezing wooden floor. Somebody passed me a coffee can, took my food stamps ($120 worth), and returned 10 hours later with one good hit of H. It was enough to get me out the door and back to earning enough to survive from day-to-day.

I had been on 120mg of Methadone when this happened, and for me, it was the worst day of my life.

 

[DieselEstate]

Please Don't Throw Stones...

Haven't been into BlueLight (BL) for a while yet, somehow nearly always find myself here when I'm dopesick.
I digress. I weighed in here to specifically criticise CurseWord's (CW) criticism of soonerk9's (S9) post, regarding the very sad, poignant, untimely death of her mother from W/D's :'(
Now, there's a few issues with CW's post but, the undisputed judgmental tone CW uses is appalling. CW, was at least truthful about signing up as a one off: As if that makes it better; signing up to be disrespectful to another human being who was simply reaching out after having been thrown into a soul destroying experience.
I realise that this is all old news. I realise that CW maybe doesn't use BL regularly, or at all for that matter. However, as other people have pointed out: We all (ALL OF US) have a kaleidoscopic range of WD's. Heck, I'll even state the obvious to point out that S9 herself said: "I believe that all the vomiting caused a heart attack..." So you see, CW, we can all make mistakes. Even you, by not reading through the post correctly in order to read that, in fact, S9 is identifying a secondary symptom as cause of death, related to Methadone WD's.
Being infallible is the signature of arrogance because, to err is human. Human beings come here to mourn, gripe, cheer, laugh & support alongside a multicoloured rainbow of emotions that we all feel at some time or another and, need to express.
Personally, I don't like the tone of your posting CW but, I'd still defend your right of expression.
Best Wishes and Regards to All.

 

[###]

Problem was, Tramadol after each incident permanently lowers your bodies seizure threshold.

What you typed is pure bullshit. Tramadol cannot permanently lower the seizure threshold! How crazy would that be.

I have been taking it much longer than you (although I never approached that insane quantity of 2 g), and I know a person who is still taking them for 4 years, and none of us had a seizure, ever. And again, to mention it was a very popular drug in my country and quorter where I lived, and I never met a person in my life who had a seizure (Except one friend who never eat a single pill of it.).
You, and many others who get seizures from T, while on officially safe dose (and I am sure even on much larger dosage) are definitely predisposed to it.
Especially if you get seizures few month after quitting!!!

Also people, seizure are possible even when WD from regular opiates and opioids! With T you can provoke seizure while on it (since it lowers the seizure threshold.), but when in WD seizures are possible in WDs of all opiates/opiods.

 

[###]

Fever is a symptom of a dehidration? Fever is simptom of many causes, like immune system reaction (infections), thrombosis etc. I presume dehydration is also among possible causes.

 

[###]

I read that runny nose, excessive sweating and excessive tear shedding during opiate withdrawal should have all the same cause. But I wasn't able to find this cause. I'm not sure if those three symptoms are all caused by the same thing. But often they are listed as only one symptom: "overproduction of bodily fluids (sweat, tears, runny nose)".
Do they all have the same cause? What is it? What causes this "overproduction of bodily fluids"?

Tears don't just come out, one actually becomes overemotional and cries. Has nothing to do with "overproduction of bodily fluids". Opiates work as endomorphines, which again participate in management of many physiological processes, from digestion, breathing, pain, and it definitely affects how we feel, and our emotions, so when one is in deficit with endomorphines, or opiates/opiods, or their efficiency has diminished, you get symptoms exactly in direction which is to be expected (Endomorphines slow down our bowel movements, and digestion, so guess what happens when you suddenly have a lack of them?).