ethnobot781
Bluelighter
Hey folks,
Does anyone have any knowledge or experience of sleep deprivation acting as a potentiator for opioids in general, and pathetically weak ones in particular? I'm sure I read an old thread on here, now archived, about unexpectedly strong effects from one's average dose. There was one reply to the effect that the poster always seemed to get this effect on days when he slept badly the preceding night. I thought this was mildly interesting & then promptly forgot all about it but I just had an odd experience which brought it to mind:
For those who don't know me or don't know where I'm at right now, I have suffered for several years from a spinal problem that causes (amongst other charming symptoms) chronic pain & attendant depression. I'm prescribed medications for this but predictably never enough to really find relief. As a result I fell in to a pattern of ramping up the doses of those medications that helped both of these symptoms (opioids mostly but some other odd ones like gabapentin) and then covering the resulting gruesome shortfall days with alternatives like pod tea & kratom. Happily physiotherapy and TENS machine use have led to me doing rather better of late and I've managed to cut back to much closer to therapeutic doses of my prescribed meds and eliminate a majority of the "extras".
This week my scripts are renewed and I was doing pretty well with only a 2 day shortfall. I decided to tough it out without buying anything else in, especially being a little low on funds. I made it through the first day just about ok but I was pretty sore by the end of the day & had difficulty sleeping. I had to go out first thing in the morning & it reached the point when I decided that I'd feel worse getting a tiny bit of sleep and then fighting free of it again than if I just got up & used the time constructively. So I ended up pulling an all-nighter before going out to run my crucial errand. Unfortunately I couldn't get a lift in either direction (just my luck) so I ended up later on back at home in some pain and quite bored. Clearing out a drawer as an attempted distraction I came across 4 30mg tablets of codeine phosphate (120mg total).I had little to no hope of this making any difference to my situation but on the off-chance I necked them. An hour later to my great surprise not only did my pain recede some but I actually caught a bit of a buzz. From 120mg codeine? Me? WTF???
I'd love to turn a pleasant surprise in to a fairytale by saying it knocked off my little cotton socks but I'd be lying. I did get analgesia, warmth, euphoria and very slight itching though. The euphoria is the only one I can think of that could be sleep dep alone & that seemed qualitatively different to me. So could the sleep dep have potentiated the codeine, lowering my tolerance and increasing its effectiveness? Or is there something else that could be responsible that I've overlooked? I can't see myslef trying it often but it's an interesting one.
Peace, ethnobot.
Does anyone have any knowledge or experience of sleep deprivation acting as a potentiator for opioids in general, and pathetically weak ones in particular? I'm sure I read an old thread on here, now archived, about unexpectedly strong effects from one's average dose. There was one reply to the effect that the poster always seemed to get this effect on days when he slept badly the preceding night. I thought this was mildly interesting & then promptly forgot all about it but I just had an odd experience which brought it to mind:
For those who don't know me or don't know where I'm at right now, I have suffered for several years from a spinal problem that causes (amongst other charming symptoms) chronic pain & attendant depression. I'm prescribed medications for this but predictably never enough to really find relief. As a result I fell in to a pattern of ramping up the doses of those medications that helped both of these symptoms (opioids mostly but some other odd ones like gabapentin) and then covering the resulting gruesome shortfall days with alternatives like pod tea & kratom. Happily physiotherapy and TENS machine use have led to me doing rather better of late and I've managed to cut back to much closer to therapeutic doses of my prescribed meds and eliminate a majority of the "extras".
This week my scripts are renewed and I was doing pretty well with only a 2 day shortfall. I decided to tough it out without buying anything else in, especially being a little low on funds. I made it through the first day just about ok but I was pretty sore by the end of the day & had difficulty sleeping. I had to go out first thing in the morning & it reached the point when I decided that I'd feel worse getting a tiny bit of sleep and then fighting free of it again than if I just got up & used the time constructively. So I ended up pulling an all-nighter before going out to run my crucial errand. Unfortunately I couldn't get a lift in either direction (just my luck) so I ended up later on back at home in some pain and quite bored. Clearing out a drawer as an attempted distraction I came across 4 30mg tablets of codeine phosphate (120mg total).I had little to no hope of this making any difference to my situation but on the off-chance I necked them. An hour later to my great surprise not only did my pain recede some but I actually caught a bit of a buzz. From 120mg codeine? Me? WTF???
I'd love to turn a pleasant surprise in to a fairytale by saying it knocked off my little cotton socks but I'd be lying. I did get analgesia, warmth, euphoria and very slight itching though. The euphoria is the only one I can think of that could be sleep dep alone & that seemed qualitatively different to me. So could the sleep dep have potentiated the codeine, lowering my tolerance and increasing its effectiveness? Or is there something else that could be responsible that I've overlooked? I can't see myslef trying it often but it's an interesting one.
Peace, ethnobot.
