Opioids I don't get withdrawals / dope sick (is there anyone else like that)

[bennyZA]

First, I just want to wave off the naysayers who are going to say I've never used enough... I broke 3 bones in one accident and started my addiction by abusing between 300-400mg of oxy within 3 months of being prescribed it. I would go through my prescription, wait, binge, wait binge... When they "tapered" me down (I was still taking 300mg, I just had to wait longer in between) I was not getting withdrawals in between. Eventually, I couldn't get that much, but it was no biggy, I was fine with it, no withdrawals, no cravings, no dope sick. Then I played my doctors to up my doses of pain meds until I was doing about 40mg a day, everyday. I then told my doc it wasn't working, so he put me on methadone, for pain. That stuff felt so good, I started taking so much of it that I od'd. I took so much, all the doctors thought I was trying to kill myself so I got 5150'ed. So all of a sudden I was cut off, like that. It took me about two months till they put me on Suboxone, for pain, during all that time, about 2 years of constant abuse, I never once got withdrawals. Still, I take way to much and run out weeks in advance, and no dope sick.

I have a friend who can't get drunk, I've seen him sober after three bottles of tequila

I have a friend who can't get high, I've seen him after a few bowls and blunt and he's sober as a bird

I have a friend who who can't get fucked up on pain killers, so much so that when he had surgery and I saw him in the hospital... I wanted to cry, I've never seen someone in that much pain.

Has anyone ever heard of this? I mean, I count myself lucky, I'm not complaining. I'm just curious. There are some really smart people on this forum (and some really stupid ones ) but I'm just looking for some theories. Also, I just want to mention it has always taken a lot to get me high. The very first time I took some pills, I needed 20mg of hydro to get off, and I was 15. I've also talked to my friends, and they are all super jealous, no one has ever heard of this before. Apparently I'm awesome. If anyone else doesn't get dope sick, can they tell me their story, my only guess is that maybe I have some sort of undiagnosed neurological disorder.

 

[pbuilder]

What is this thread about? You are a genetic miracle then, I recommend going to a research lab and making millions on your magical "no dope-sick" gene. What else do you want us to tell you on blue-light, this forum isn't for discussing things like this it is for harm reduction.

 

[Tommyboy]

How do you know you weren't given any kind of opiate when you were 5150'd? They don't tell you what they are giving you usually. Also in the beginning it always took about 4 days for my withdrawals to start, so maybe you didn't allow enough time between doses to allow for withdrawals to occur.

I agree with pbuilder. Go to a lab and see if they can isolate the "no opiate withdrawal gene," and make millions when they are able to make a pill or something out of it.

 

[tricomb]

Seriously, I've met only one person who doesn't get withdrawals from using a shitload of heroin and opana intravenously for as long as he wants and doesn't even think about WD, he just stops and nothing happens to him, not even a runny nose. The dude is a beast and I'm not convinced he's human.

 

[Donewthislife]

I have a friend who can't get drunk, I've seen him sober after three bottles of tequila

I have a friend who can't get high, I've seen him after a few bowls and blunt and he's sober as a bird

I have a friend who who can't get fucked up on pain killers, so much so that when he had surgery and I saw him in the hospital... I wanted to cry, I've never seen someone in that much pain.

Good for you! But it sounds like there is "something in the water" where you live? Or maybe you're contagious? You're a freak of nature thanks for sharing......

 

[Druidus]

How do you know you weren't given any kind of opiate when you were 5150'd? They don't tell you what they are giving you usually. Also in the beginning it always took about 4 days for my withdrawals to start, so maybe you didn't allow enough time between doses to allow for withdrawals to occur.

I agree with pbuilder. Go to a lab and see if they can isolate the "no opiate withdrawal gene," and make millions when they are able to make a pill or something out of it.

Bro, you are somewhat too quick to judge. I have read, from legitimate sources, that at least the psychopathic variety of the human brain seems to be surprisingly resistant to withdrawal on occasion. Perhaps there are neural switches that do affect the development of withdrawal that are present/absent in varying people. Psychopaths may be aided in this by their propensity to feel little to no anxiety about pain/punishment, or much of anything, really.

 

[Tommyboy]

^ So you tell me that I'm somewhat too quick to judge and then you go on to say that they are a psychopath? 8)
It's possible that they were still given an opiate when they were involuntarily committed to the psych ward, and I was also wondering how long they went between doses since the first time someone goes through withdrawal it typically takes a long time to begin.

Also, I was being sarcastic with my remark about going to a lab to make a pill out of whatever.... I'm not sure if that's even possible.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

When you binge how long do you use continually? I've known people who binged heavily and stopped for long enough between uses that they had rather large tolerances but did not have physical dependence. If you are not using consistently enough over long enough periods, you won't get physically dependent enough to withdraw. If you use high doses for say 3 months+ straight daily, I'd be pretty surprised if you didn't have some withdrawals. Some people are more resistant to initial physical dependence.

A lot of the nastiness of withdrawals is immensely psychological and a lot of addicted individuals build up anxiety and fear surrounding withdrawals which in itself exacerbate their withdrawals which get worse over time despite their use remaining constant or disproportionate to their increased use.

It seems to me that you are probably not using for long enough periods each time to become physically dependent enough to withraw ergo you are not suffering withdrawals ergo you are not building that conditioned anxious response which exacerbate them and make your sensitivity to withdrawals and likelihood to suffer worse increase. If you were to use everyday for long enough periods, I can't imagine you'd still be "immune".

 

[Tommyboy]

^ Yea, I know someone that would take 300+mg of oxycodone/day, and 100+ mg of morphine/day, about 2 weeks at a time, then running out of the script for the month, and it took a very long time before he started to get withdrawals from that. I'm sure that a large part of that was that he didn't even know about withdrawals, so that mental aspect was removed from the equation. Once they finally started though, they started happening sooner, and sooner, and now he wakes up at 5am in sweats needing to dose. It took over a year to get to that point though, and that's with using smaller amounts since about 2008.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

It's true that withdrawal symptoms are different for everyone, some people get them very bad very quickly, and for some people they are much milder. But I really hope this doesn't encourage people to rationalize using opioids thinking "I might be like the OP and get no withdrawal symptoms". Your case is one in a million.

One thing though is you didn't say how often you were taking opioids. It's how often you take them that causes the physical dependence, not how much you take. Taking 400mg once a week is very different from taking 20mg 3 times a day, for example.

There are also some people whose bodies metabolize opioids much slower than others so it takes a lot longer for withdrawal symptoms to set in - how long was the longest you went without taking opioids after long-term daily use?

And some people don't get withdrawal symptoms until after they've been using opioids for a long time, so don't assume that just because you haven't experienced them so far means that you never will.

As pbuilder said, what is the value in this thread? Is the question just out of curiosity wondering if there is anyone else there who is impervious to physical dependence from opioids? I've certainly never heard of it before.

 

[bennyZA]

When you binge how long do you use continually? I've known people who binged heavily and stopped for long enough between uses that they had rather large tolerances but did not have physical dependence. If you are not using consistently enough over long enough periods, you won't get physically dependent enough to withdraw. If you use high doses for say 3 months+ straight daily, I'd be pretty surprised if you didn't have some withdrawals. Some people are more resistant to initial physical dependence.

A lot of the nastiness of withdrawals is immensely psychological and a lot of addicted individuals build up anxiety and fear surrounding withdrawals which in itself exacerbate their withdrawals which get worse over time despite their use remaining constant or disproportionate to their increased use.

It seems to me that you are probably not using for long enough periods each time to become physically dependent enough to withraw ergo you are not suffering withdrawals ergo you are not building that conditioned anxious response which exacerbate them and make your sensitivity to withdrawals and likelihood to suffer worse increase. If you were to use everyday for long enough periods, I can't imagine you'd still be "immune".

First off, I'd like to thank the people who had absolutely nothing to add, other than being dicks (why did you even respond?)... For those who said I got an opiate when I was 5150'd, they didn't give me anything...

Anyways. I did use every day for more than a year. That was when I was steadily using oxy at about 50-80mg a day, then methadone for awhile (during that period I was also did some heroin). Though, I am surprised that when I was using 400mg a day for a week straight then nothing for 3 weeks, nothing happened. Your theory is the most plausible yet. Maybe cause I don't think I get withdrawals, I wont get them.

So no one has ever heard of anything like this before?

And to those saying I should have my 'gene' isolated, I would. If that's what it is, I bet pharmaceutical companies would be slobering to have the patent for the anti-withdrawal pill. Not to mention tt pained me to see my roomie sick when I was not, and we were taking the same thing. Funnily enough I do get really bad benzo withdrawals, really quickly.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

Did you stop cold turkey after you were using daily for over a year? Did you taper with the methadone? Were you dosing multiple times a day everyday or usually just one large dose at night?

You will produce less physical dependence using one large dose a day than dosing 3-4x a day of short acting opioids. I strongly suspect your lack of withdrawals to have more to do with your dosing patterns than some specific gene or something. You probably are somewhat insensitive to withdrawing but not beyond the realm of what would be considered relatively normal. I would love to see you dose oxy proportionate to your tolerance 3x+ per day for over 3 months and see you not have enlarged pupils, runny nose, some craving, etc.

I can't say it's impossible but I'd be rather surprised.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

A lot of the nastiness of withdrawals is immensely psychological and a lot of addicted individuals build up anxiety and fear surrounding withdrawals which in itself exacerbate their withdrawals which get worse over time despite their use remaining constant or disproportionate to their increased use.

It's true that a lot of the pain of withdrawals is psychological, in that the depression and anxiety can be crushing, but it's not accurate to say that it's just caused by the fear of withdrawals or imply that people have any control over it. The reason it gets worse over time is not because they are just getting more scared or stressed, it is because the longer you use the greater the physical dependence and the more your brain and body have been altered by the drug.

Not to mention tt pained me to see my roomie sick when I was not, and we were taking the same thing. Funnily enough I do get really bad benzo withdrawals, really quickly.

I think that - if you were in fact using multiple times per day over the period of multiple months - then the most likely explanation is just that there is something different about the way your brain works than most people's. It might be genetic or relate to your metabolism or something.

I am really glad that you still understand that other people have miserable withdrawal symptoms. Often people who haven't experienced opioid withdrawals themselves can't comprehend how bad it is. Or people who have gotten really minor withdrawal symptoms assume that everyone feels it the same way and that other people are just over-reacting or being weak. It can be so frustrating when other people have no compassion and assume that everyone is the same as them or else it's all in their imagination. Thank you for not being that way.

Maybe cause I don't think I get withdrawals, I wont get them.

I wouldn't count on that. I have heard of people who didn't get physically dependent for quite some time, but they still did eventually. But it is true that the mind is powerful and what we sincerely believe can affect how we feel to a degree.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

I wasn't saying this conditioned response is the ONLY reason withdrawals get worse or that you can will your withdrawals away. This is classical conditioning... if you ring a bell every time someone eats, they can't will themselves not to salivate any more than someone who has been sensitized to withdrawal can will away the anxiety that comes with those first sniffles and the way this naturally leads to their physical symptoms becoming worse. It's the nastiness of the real, PHYSICAL symptoms that lead people to become increasingly afraid of and anxious about withdrawing over time which leads to these real, physical signs and symptoms becoming more pronounced and people having to focus more on them (or more accurately become less and less able to be distracted from them and focus on other things as a means to alleviate their distress as many can do while withdrawing from smaller/shorter habits).

Around here a lot of people have described decreasing their use, using less frequently or using smaller amounts and their withdrawals becoming disproportionately worse over time and it seems to add credibility to the theory that conditioning plays a role.

I would not dispute that the majority of withdrawal is owed to quantities used and duration using or claim that people can merely will away the psychological aspects of withdrawal but I do firmly believe based on my experience, what I've witnessed, what I've been taught studying this subject in school and what I've seen replicated for years here that conditioning plays a role in the severity of withdrawals increasing over time and people withdrawing easier, from less use over time as well.

I apologize if I wasn't very clear before.

 

[SteeleyJ]

i used to think i couldn't get dopesick, right before getting hopelessly hooked and spending 5 years down the rabbit hole.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

I wasn't saying this conditioned response is the ONLY reason withdrawals get worse or that you can will your withdrawals away. This is classical conditioning... if you ring a bell every time someone eats, they can't will themselves not to salivate any more than someone who has been sensitized to withdrawal can will away the anxiety that comes with those first sniffles and the way this naturally leads to their physical symptoms becoming worse. It's the nastiness of the real, PHYSICAL symptoms that lead people to become increasingly afraid of and anxious about withdrawing over time which leads to these real, physical signs and symptoms becoming more pronounced and people having to focus more on them (or more accurately become less and less able to be distracted from them and focus on other things as a means to alleviate their distress as many can do while withdrawing from smaller/shorter habits).

Around here a lot of people have described decreasing their use, using less frequently or using smaller amounts and their withdrawals becoming disproportionately worse over time and it seems to add credibility to the theory that conditioning plays a role.

I would not dispute that the majority of withdrawal is owed to quantities used and duration using or claim that people can merely will away the psychological aspects of withdrawal but I do firmly believe based on my experience, what I've witnessed, what I've been taught studying this subject in school and what I've seen replicated for years here that conditioning plays a role in the severity of withdrawals increasing over time and people withdrawing easier, from less use over time as well.

I apologize if I wasn't very clear before.

Thanks for explaining. I do agree that conditioning definitely plays a role (unfortunately we have no control over it). I just don't think that the fact that withdrawals get worse over time when someone is staying at the same dose or lowering their dose is primarily caused by conditioning. I think that this is primarily caused by the length of time of use, not the number of times they've experienced withdrawals before.

For example, a person can take a drug consistently for a month and then stop for a day or 2 and experience withdrawal symptoms, then go back to using the drug for a few years and never feel withdrawal symptoms because they always take more drug before withdrawals set in, then stop taking the drug, expecting to feel no worse of withdrawal symptoms than before, and their withdrawal symptoms are 10-20 times worse. Having felt withdrawals only once before should not be enough to have such an extreme difference in the conditioned response.

I think the body gets used to the drug over time and the brain goes longer and longer without having to produce it's own chemicals and the receptors decrease in number etc, and so the body/brain becomes more and more dependent on the drug. It's not just a subconscious remembrance of being sick before when one didn't take the drug.

Also when one reduces one's dose over time and experiences worse and worse withdrawal symptoms of faster onset, I think that may be caused in part by the fact that they are often not actually getting enough of the drug to satisfy their physical dependence and with long-acting opioids like methadone it can take months or years for the brain to rebuild itself, so the person may be basically not taking enough of the drug to keep themselves from going into withdrawals. The less you take of the drug the less time it lasts, so someone who is taking 5mg of methadone, for example - especially after taking a much higher dose in the past - is going to get WDs much faster than when they were taking 50mg. Perhaps when they were taking 50mg they just weren't feeling full WDs as soon. Does that make sense?


ETA: Plus the conditioning idea doesn't explain why some people can go for weeks of daily use and then stop without getting any noticeable withdrawal symptoms, or extremely minor ones, and then start again and a couple months later stop and get serious WDs with symptoms they never experienced before. If I understand you correctly you are saying that once a person is physically dependent the only reason WDs get any worse over time is because of conditioning?

 

[albastrux]

I had casually been using opiates for 2 years, and heavily been using them for a few months before I even got slight WD symptoms. The only WD symptoms I really get are a lot of gas, runny nose, and my legs kinda hurt, but that's it, really.... and it takes a few days for them to set in, for me.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

ETA: Plus the conditioning idea doesn't explain why some people can go for weeks of daily use and then stop without getting any noticeable withdrawal symptoms, or extremely minor ones, and then start again and a couple months later stop and get serious WDs with symptoms they never experienced before. If I understand you correctly you are saying that once a person is physically dependent the only reason WDs get any worse over time is because of conditioning?

I am not saying this at all and I agree with you that duration of use and quantities used are a FAR larger factor in determining severity. Reading BL (mostly OD) for years, I've noticed this trend that the more people experience withdrawal (especially influenced by the severity) the more sensitive they become to withdrawals... they could demonstrate this by quitting and having withdrawals after using for shorter and shorter times (assuming their abstinence was long enough to fully break the physical dependence).

From a psychological perspective, classic conditioning would be expected given the pairing of repeated stimulus (soul-crushing withdrawal symptoms such as tortuous RLS, pain, insomnia, etc.) with more neutral stimuli such as yawning or a runny nose. The more someone experiences a runny nose or yawning that is followed by the horrible withdrawal symptoms, the more the former neutral stimuli will produce conditioned responses such as anxiety about what is to come, anxiety which itself can exacerbate the physical misery of withdrawal.

I would hardly consider my experience alone sufficient to prove this as a common phenomenon but when I came off opioids completedly for about 6 months, it took a few months before I could yawn without getting nervous and initially, i might get a little RLS or something. Naturally people's sensitivity to such will vary and some people will have more pronounced conditioned responses and some may have little to none.

My guess about this individual is this is due to a combination of natural resistance to withdrawal and insensitivity to this type of conditioning paired with a use pattern less conducive to producing physical dependence.

 

[bennyZA]

I would think the most logical reason would be my dosing pattern, but there was a good chunk of time where I did use a significant amount everyday for more than year, almost two. Then was on methadone for awhile before they straight cut me off from that, and I heard that methadone withdrawal is the worth. So year+ of abuse then cold turkey. I hope no one thinks I think I'm better than anyone else, or that I have no compassion for those who do get sick. I used to take 10-15mg of kpins a day, then I would go awhile without, I had dt's and even seizures from withdrawing from benzo's so I know how it is. The benzo and opiate use overlapped a little, but they were not concurrent. If there was someone who could tell me where to go so they could study my genes to see if I could help others and make an anti-withdrawal pill, I absolutely would.

 

[bennyZA]

I've noticed this trend that the more people experience withdrawal (especially influenced by the severity) the more sensitive they become to withdrawals... they could demonstrate this by quitting and having withdrawals after using for shorter and shorter times (assuming their abstinence was long enough to fully break the physical dependence).

After years and years of using, my roommate used to take a medium/large sized dose of whatever he could find, then as soon as he came down, he would experience wd's.