Does long term opiate abuse effect your tolerance to pain after quitting all opiates?

[Lord Armagoth]

I'm curious to how my body will react to pain in general when (if I ever quit using opiates). I have been using pain meds on an off for 13 years. I have been a heavy opiate user for 7 of those years. I would like to know if I where to stop will my tolerance to pain be weaker or higher in the months/years following sobriety. I have chronic pain from surgeries over the years and I need pain control but I am an addict as well. non narcotic pain meds do not do shit most of the time and when they do it helps very little. I plan to get back on suboxone but I'm curious to how I will have to deal with my pain.

 

[ComfortablyNumb95]

I'm pretty sure I read around the site that many have their tolerance to pain lowered after years odmf using opiates.

 

[moarphined spirit]

hyperalgesia - read up on it.

after a decade + of pain management stubbing my toe feels like ive ripped it off sometimes.

of course this isnt the concrete answer. you might like to discuss the situation with your gp, sounds like you should lay it out there to discuss options. theyre the one qualified with the prescription pad, at the end of the day.

 

[The Doc.]

Yes your pain tolerance gets lowered dramatically after years of opiate use. I've heard of long term opiate addicts who are so sensitive to pain even simple things like covering them with bed sheets is painful to the addict. Opiates change the way the brain works and makes pain seem worse than it really is when you don't have the opiates flowing through your veins which is a vicious cycle because of course this ends up meaning more painkillers for the patient which can trun into more pretty quickly. Hyperalgesia the poster above me had the name right read up on it.

 

[OpSessed]

Lord Armagoth, you and I have been using for about the same amount of time, and though I've never stopped using pain killers on purpose, even when I have gone a few months clean my tolerance for the slightest injury is zero. Even if I "almost" injure myself I react as if I actually had for a second because I'd come to expect everything to hurt. Pretty embarrassing lol

 

[The Doc.]

If your on Suboxone the pain shouldn't be bad its when you stop taking opiates you get sensitivity but Suboxone is a pretty strong opiate and is even used as a painkiller so unless you stop taking Suboxone you should be okay cause your brain has opiates in it.

 

[lithium00]

yes years of opiate use lowers your pain threshold

 

[TheLostBoys]

I feel bad for the people that have a sky high tolerance to opiates & when really needing opiates for pain like in a hospital setting, etc.......the nurse shoots you up with morphine & you font get much pain relief......then you complain of the pain & they quickly figure out that you may have been or still are an opiate user, & heavy one at that.

Unless you have a documented history of pain meds you were taking by your doctors, its gonna be hard to explain why 2 shots of morphine isn't doing much.

 

[TheLostBoys]

Yes your pain tolerance gets lowered dramatically after years of opiate use. I've heard of long term opiate addicts who are so sensitive to pain even simple things like covering them with bed sheets is painful to the addict. Opiates change the way the brain works and makes pain seem worse than it really is when you don't have the opiates flowing through your veins which is a vicious cycle because of course this ends up meaning more painkillers for the patient which can trun into more pretty quickly. Hyperalgesia the poster above me had the name right read up on it.

Howard Hughes suffered with a lot of pain like you described above ......even bed covers over his body would hurt him.

If you watch the movie Aviator, he's locked himself in a hotel room & sits there naked watching his movies. They never did say why he's like this in the movie but after reading up on why he was like this, they said its because he had been a heavy codeine user for years.......yes codeine & I'm really surprised with all his wealth & power that he didn't have a doctor to give him really good opiates like oxymorphone, etc.......

In the end, when they did an autopsy on his body, I believe they found 5 broken needles in his arm & I believe he had died from his liver failing......& from what I remember, it was apap that destroyed his liver.

They should never use apap in any opiates prescribed to pain patients, although I believe he was taking codeine w/o apap but he was popping Tylenol like it was skittles cause of his pain.

 

[Jabberwocky]

i've used opiates heavily for the past 5 years, and honestly, being off them (for 11 weeks so far) i can actually say my pain threshold has increased weirdly.

i used to actually have a lower threshold for pain before i started my journey through the opiate world. physically, that is. emotionally, i suck now.