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Chronic Pain, Decade of OC Use, Almost Clean

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chronic_pain_life

Greenlighter
Joined
Oct 27, 2016
Messages
7
I have a real chronic pain condition. I've been on opiates (all of them, sometimes overlapping, often cycling) since I was 20. I'm turning 30 soon. I also like the way opiates make me feel. It's not really about the high or euphoria. It's about the sense of relief. The 40-50 minutes of like "ok. fuck. everything is ok." Of the past 9 years, 7 have been spent somewhere between 45 - 100 mg OC. 1 year I took a break completely from opiates to see if the pain would lessen (AKA figure out if the pain was all in my head or being caused by the opiates). It didn't go away.

A year ago I started having problems getting pharmacies to fill my script. In Cali, they wont fill a prescription early even when you have a script and approval from your doctor. I was working 100 hrs/wk and didn't have time to drive around to 5-6 different pharmacies on whatever day my script ran out to find one that had it in stock. Factor in that pharmacies are closed on Sunday's, won't tell you if they have any in stock over the phone, and the occasional bad month where I actually ran out early, I was getting kicked off completely for 3-4 days every other month.

Chronic pain, high-stress working environments, and forced cold turkey withdrawals don't go well together. Eventually I decided fuck it, built an untraceable laptop, downloaded TAILS, and started buying enough to cover those gaps. Then I started buying a little extra. After a few months I decided to try one of those Fentanyl nasal spays since they were insanely cheap per dose compared to OXY (which gets real expensive fast). That was hands down the worst decision of my life. In two months, I merked what little tolerance I had left, and was on a 1000mg OC equivalent daily habit. I spent 6 months there finishing out my 2 years at work and getting accepted into grad school. At this point, I was well aware that I needed to get off or I was going to die. I'd also gotten married in that 6 month window. Yolo.

I did Ibogaine Therapy in Mexico (which was it's own nightmare, but also probably saved my life). Ten days after Ibogaine, I had a seizure, stopped breathing for 6 minutes, and my wife gave me CPR to bring me back. Welcome to sobriety. They think it was due the Valium taper being too steep. I ended up going back on 300mg of Tramadol a day where I've stayed stable for the last 4 months. The PAWS has been like nothing I could have imagined. I kicked the OC no problem. 2 shitty weeks and it was over. This time, I still get weeks even now where I get so anxious I border on panic attacks.

I saw a specialist last week who suggested I transition to buprenophine. I've heard plenty of Suboxone Methadone horror stories to make me terrified of sub. Impossible to get off I hear. I eventually want off everything. But it's a marathon not a sprint right? I also researched the neuro-chemistry and buprenorphine actually increases the number of receptor sites on the Mu Opiate receptor which would help counter the hyper-algesia cause by the decade of pain killers and one fent mishap, which would be great. The MME bup equivalent to my tram dose is .2mg. Most people on bup are on way higher doses because doctors are dumb. I'm trying to find out if people have experience tapering off a lower dosage of bup. Is it a different animal than tapering off a high dosage? Or, is it still way worse than OC withdrawl?
 
I totally understand that I am in chronic pain and was told it was buprenorphine that was giving me pain and bad for me also there is no evidence to prove it blocks hyperaldesia to pain Meds pain management will tell you what you think you need to know
 
Also I'm on pain Meds for 23 years like you had most except oxytocin fentanyl hydromorphone as these are new except fentanyl also methadone is a good pain Meds as it's not sedating to much has a ceiling affect like buprenorphine the only problem with buprenorphine is it blocks your receptors with buprenorphine and nothing else gets through so you'll have to take more bup I prefer methadone good luck but tolerance is just that
 
Oh tramadol are highly dangerous and kill more in UK then other opiates been in news a lot in UK I wish you look and we'll done by getting off and slowly doing it
 
RonnieDog said:
Oh tramadol are highly dangerous and kill more in UK then other opiates been in news a lot in UK I wish you look and we'll done by getting off and slowly doing it
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I don't know if it's top of the list, but the damage they can cause is absolutely significant as UK GP's have prescribed them like sweets in recent years in the belief that they are somehow less 'abusable', 'habit forming' and - completely nonsensically - 'safer' than traditional first line opiates / 'oids such as codeine.

Thankfully the cat seems to be out of the bag now as since 2014 they have been controlled under both class c of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act ( 1971) and schedule 3 of the Medicines Act (68 - without need for safe custody requirements). This should place them in prescribers minds as moderate to strong opioids at least.

Personally, I think they're fucking horrible.
 
steewith2ees said:
I don't know if it's top of the list, but the damage they can cause is absolutely significant as UK GP's have prescribed them like sweets in recent years in the belief that they are somehow less 'abusable', 'habit forming' and - completely nonsensically - 'safer' than traditional first line opiates / 'oids such as codeine.

Thankfully the cat seems to be out of the bag now as since 2014 they have been controlled under both class c of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act ( 1971) and schedule 3 of the Medicines Act (68 - without need for safe custody requirements). This should place them in prescribers minds as moderate to strong opioids at least.

Personally, I think they're fucking horrible.
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Tramadol is very dangerous when abused. I have never and will never abuse it. The big difference for me is that I don't have to increase the dose to combat withdrawl. The Tram's don't really help with my pain. I'm treating them as a mild replacement therapy. I'm considering moving to a very low dose of Bup. .2mg is the equivalent to my dose of Tram. The biggest problem with bup is that doctors switch people onto 10x their current dose MME because it doesn't have a "ceiling". Like all opiates, high doses are harder to get off than low doses. Tramadol sucks to get off. But I can do it. I want to know if bup in low doses is better or worse.
 
There is actually evidence that Bup facilitates regrowth of receptor sites on the mu receptor. I've read the neuro-science studies on brain chemistry. I don't know for sure that that means that it should theoretically block hyperalgesia. I don't think it is worth it though if the withdrawl when I do get off completely is unbearable.
 
I know the meds aren't going to do shit at the dose I'm on. I'm more concerned about being forced onto higher doses by creeping tolerance withdrawl. Tramadol doesn't have this effect.
 
I can understand your tolerance to the analgesic and psychoactive effects of previous opioids creeping up over time, but is this escalation actually causing you w/d symptoms or are they just no longer 'covering' the symptoms for which they were prescribed.

All that aside I have pissed around with a fair amount of tramadol in my time (including using them as a last resort for heroin w/d when I was broke - doesn't work....) and not only do we know that they are, at the very least, extremely atypical when it comes to opioids due to their complicated mechanism of action and are extremely addictive, but the 'dual action' processes that these things use can make things really messy if trying to swap it out for other opioids.

I can understand your reasons for not wanting to swap onto a more standard opiate, as you seem to have alot of experience with them, so if they're doing the trick who am I to suggest anything else.

People do come off methadone and buprenorphine all the time, unfortunately you don't as many people reporting this first hand as you do with those who are struggling. But for those who may have to use moderate - strong opiates for chronic pain - getting completely free of them may not be an option in the medium term at the very least, so with time and gentle tapering, one can usually reduce both methadone and bupe to minute doses (the hardest part appears to be jumping off completely) - I personally have very little motivation to truly address my dependency issues at the moment, but have still managed to reduce my methadone by over half in about 5 months (70mg - 30mg reducing by 5mg every 2-4 weeks).

Also, just for your information - methadone is an excellent analgesic for chronic pain even when compared to other morphine type / 'gold standard' OPI drugs as it appears that one can use it to manage pain for much longer than the the other drugs discussed in this thread without the need to increase the dose, and despite the long road one would have to take to disengage with it the abundance of this drug in suspensions and 'physeptone' type elixirs you can reduce it by the smallest increments imaginable.

Stick to what you have if it is working, but if your are using these medicines for genuine pain control rather than for the management of dependency by way of abuse - don't write off either bupe or methadone as they both have excellent uses above and beyond that of simple substitution therapy.
 
Unfortunately, I cannabis makes my pain way worse. Similar to fibromyalgia, some people like me who've had chronic pain for a long time get a condition where the nerves that send pain signals to the brain begin to recruit the touch sensors (which are normally completely separate). This leads to heightened and amplified pain signals in the brain. I used to be able to use weed in college for basic sports injuries, but now (because it enhances the senses) weed makes me hurt worse. I so wish it wasn't the case. Being able to use cannabis for pain management would be a godsend.
 
Where are all these people that have gotten off Bup? I really, really, REALLY want to hear from someone that was on a micro gram dose of bup and got off. I've rolled off tramadol to oxy and tapered before. So, I know what that's like.

Other Opiates do trigger withdrawal symptoms for me. I don't think that's abnormal. Withdrawal is the bodies reaction to getting less opiates than it has become accustomed to. As one develops a tolerance, the effects or impact of the opiates on the mu opiate receptor decrease and last for shorter periods of time. As such, the same dosage over time is basically the same thing as slowly tapering the dose and spreading out the time between doses. I think it's much less of an issue if say you shoot up heroin once or twice a day in large quantities and more an issue when you take pain meds every 4 hours. Tramadol doesn't have that effect because it makes your body produce it.
 
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