Demerol - Toxicity question

[bennyboy8580]

I know demerol when passed through the liver, creates a toxic metabolite, and over time it builds up because of demerol's long half-life, at the rate i am useing, am i putting myself at a considerable risk? Heres the information i can provide for insight;

I am currently prescribed demrol, 50mg pills. I use at most three tablets a day, when i am in a lot of pain, normally i use 1-2. I receive them at about the 5th day of each month, and i am almost always finished them before the month is over, giving me about 5-10 days of detox. I started useing around three months ago, and i will continue to use them for at least another three months.

 

[sekio]

If you're a healthy person with no liver/kidney problems, you should be fine. It's only in e.g. the elderly and high IV doses that demerol's toxicity is an issue.

 

[bennyboy8580]

thanks for your reply, thats very good to know

 

[paranoid android]

At 150mg's a day if your a person with a healthy liver and kidneys you should be fine. The max dose of Demerol (Meperidine/Pethidine) you can safely take in the run of a day is 400mg's which for someone in serious pain is not much. Especially considering Demerol's short analgesic effects and it's rather poor oral bioavailability of about 50%. You can only take the max dose or near the max dose for 3 days in a row without the toxic metabolite Normeperidine building up in your system to dangerous levels. This can cause strong anti-cholinergic side effects as Demerol has mild anti-cholinergic effects of it's own but Normeperidine has much stronger anti-cholinergic effects, delirium, hallucinations, seizures, cardiac problems, mood swings and sometimes death.

I was once left with nothing but Demerol when i was addicted to morphine (for some reason that i can't figure out Demerol does little to nothing for addiction to typical opiates like morphine or hydromorphone and in fact codeine works much better for that) and was suffering from awful neuropathic pain. I ended up using 60 50mg Demerol tablets in about 5 days. I knew how toxic it was and how stupid i was being but when your withdrawing and in brutal pain you are often not thinking straight. Thankfully at the time i was taking Divalproex ( trade names Epival, Depakote, Epilem, etc) which is a strong anti-convulsant along with gabapentin which is also a anti-convulsant and also 6mg's of clonazepam a day which is also a good anti-convulsant. Only for that no doubt i would have had a seizure. I did develop a manic reaction despite the anti-manic drugs i was taking as well as muscle twitches and minor hallucinations. My mouth, eyes and nose where as dry as a nuns cunt due to the anti-cholinergic effects. I got really scared i was going to have a seizure so i ended up taking 6mg's of clonazepam sublingually at once and that calmed things down for me. But fuck that was dumb.

But as long as you keep the dose low you should be fine.