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Lurked years ago now I’m an old lady that needs help

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AsIWept72

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Joined
Sep 13, 2022
Messages
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Hi I am new posting here after years of thinking I was OK. I am a 50 year old woman with chronic pain and I have been taking Vicodins for about 20 years. It’s a long history of slowly increasing how many I take a day to the point where my scripts weren’t enough so my husband got one and I was taking his too and then buying from people. This whole time trying to be a normal person but deep down I knew what road I was on. I stopped paying bills and started taking money from my husbands safe. I would always replace it but I knew I was in the wrong. I have wanted to talk to my husband about my problem but he has great disdain for “drug addicts” his mom was on drugs the majority of his childhoods and well into our marriage. So I have always known how he would feel about me deep down inside if he knew the truth.

Now I have gotten myself in a situation. All of the things I have done have come to light and I am honestly relieved but like I figured I am alone in this. I won’t be getting any kind of support from him. I know how bad I fucked up but I am so afraid of doing this alone. A little back story on my husband he was very verbally abusive the first 15 years of our marriage. He was quick to get enraged and scream yell and throw things. I started hiding things from them because it was easier then dealing with rage. Over the years he has mellowed out and has become an amazing husband but that trauma from those past years still haunts me.

So I have decided I will start a taper that will hopefully work so I can function without a lot of pain on my script alone. I have made an appointment with a therapist but he knows nothing of this because he won’t talk to me. He had the gall to ask if I had sex for pills lol I’m too old and fat for that shit but that tells you what he thinks of addicts.

I just need some friendly advise or support before I go home. I can’t sit in my car all day worrying about what to say to him. I know financially I fucked things up but not so bad that they can’t be fixed I just need to know what to say to him. He’s focused on the bills and that can be fixed. At certain points of the day I have literally looked at my fresh new refill and thought how easy it would be to not have to worry about going home.
 
Lol hmmm Dailey dose can be anywhere from 12-18 10mg of norcos. It all depends on my stress level, if I ate, if I have to clean house, do I babysit my granddaughter that day. Never any rhyme or reason for how many I take. I try to slow down when I’m low but I always find a way to get more if I run out. Husband gets paid weekly and I get paid monthly. My life has just become a shit show and the persons support I need the most is shitting on me the hardest. I want to be able to show him I can get down so I’m not buying them. Money is his biggest hang up and I messed with his money one too many times.
 
hey so - first off, are these 10/325s? or 10/500s? either way that means between 3900 - 9000mg of tylenol a day. for the duration of time and your age, that is WAY too much acetaminophen and is going to cause liver problems, may already be doing that. I think that reducing your intake of these needs to happen for a lot of reasons - but not dying from cirrhosis is a pretty good one!
So, a couple of things need to happen here - step one - you need to regulate your dosing. You have to be realistic about things - you are not going to feel high for a LONg time, you have to be ok with that. -- so, you need to get yourself down to a minumum number of pills, and a regulated dosing schedule. Let's say you can reliably do 12 in a day - instead of taking those willy nilly, you need to split it into 3 doses of 6 pills - morning, noon and night. This begins to get your body used to short periods of time without opioids.
once you are stable with that, begin reducing. I start at 5% a day, - 5% of your daily dose (160mg) is 9mg, so basically one pill.
you need a milligram scale in order to be able to shave off a mg from the pill, or you need to dose it volumetrically -
if you have a 10mg pill, and you dissolve it in 10ml of water - each 1ml of water will contain 1mg of hydrocodone. This will allow you to pull off small amounts during the end of the taper.

Ok, so you will reduce a few days 5% a day:

day 1
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 50 mg dose 3: 60mg
day 2
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 40 mg dose 3: 60mg
day 3
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 30 mg dose 3: 60mg
day 4
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 20 mg dose 3: 60mg

around this point, maybe on day 3 you will probably notice you start to "feel" the effects of the lowered dose. when that happens, STOP and stabilize for a few days:

day 5
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 20 mg dose 3: 60mg
day 6
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 20 mg dose 3: 60mg
day 7
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 20 mg dose 3: 60mg

after you feel normal at the reduced dose, continue again. At this point I refigure the 5%, as it will be less once the dose is lower. 140 is now the total dose, 5% of 140 would be : 7mg, so now start pulling out 3/4 of a pill.
It is at this point you might need to start using the scale, or volumetric measuring to get the correct amount taken out.

day 8
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 13 mg dose 3: 60mg
day 9
dose 1: 60mg dose 2: 06 mg dose 3: 60mg

you simply continue this process until you are off. I generally go for the morning dose after the middle one, and quit the evening dose last so that I do not disrupt my sleep.
ultra low dose naltrexone and black seed oil are helpful in this process, your GP might be able to assist w the naltrexone if you all are on good terms.
(ultra low dose means micrograms, not miligrams, make sure they understand that)
lmk if you have more questions.
 
Thank you for that info. This is something I can do. I have been worried about my liver for years. So afraid to find out how bad it is I always find an excuse in why I don’t get in to a blood test. I know I am slowly killing myself but unfortunately I’m the kind of person I am REALLY good at ignoring confrontation so good in fact I am still sitting my car 5 hours after leaving my daughters house. This is something I can show him and hopefully he will help me make it happen.

Thank you again. Wish me luck I will be heading home shortly
 
AsIWept72 said:
Thank you for that info. This is something I can do. I have been worried about my liver for years. So afraid to find out how bad it is I always find an excuse in why I don’t get in to a blood test. I know I am slowly killing myself but unfortunately I’m the kind of person I am REALLY good at ignoring confrontation so good in fact I am still sitting my car 5 hours after leaving my daughters house. This is something I can show him and hopefully he will help me make it happen.

Thank you again. Wish me luck I will be heading home shortly
Click to expand...
feel free to PM me if you have any questions or difficulty understanding, or just for support.
 
you Got this girl.
Gabipentin helps greatly with taper and pain , your dr will give them to you
Imodium helps with belly and all that Shitty stuff
Large dose of Vit C has helped me 3-4 grams
I really like THC gummies at night to sleep

Not my call here, but you are on medicine for Chronic pain and prescribed from a Dr? You are Dependent, not addicted ?? Very different, but Both do suck to lower your dose rapidly, Slow and easy wins the race.

Sorry about your husbands position , My SO went to Al anon, and it helped her understand the situation a great deal. No offense here, but he does not sound like the type. He may have Trauma from childhood that he would Rather hold on to than do the work to address it ( It hard, Most people do not)
All is Well
 
I'm sorry your husband isn't being supportive. I would follow cdins schedule that you posted. I'm not sure if your plan is to stop completely, or to just cut down. But try and cut down a little bit at a time for sure. It could be good for you to switch meds to something without Tylenol, and if you plan on quitting completely, you may need to get on a maintenance medicine like Suboxone, or maybe you could use kratom to help you taper and avoid liver damage, or to deal with pain when you're off meds, but keep in mind these have their own issues with dependence.
 
reading your initial post, it seems that you do indeed have long term chronic pain issues. I did as well for quite a while, i found that getting my tolerance down as low as possible and keeping it there was integral to maintaining a stable/sane life. ultra low dose naltrexone has let me be able to titrate and get my tolerance down much lower than it has any right to be. i was a 3rd degree burn ward patient, and my docs basically told me my opioid receptors woud be ruined -- after several years of daily naltrexone microdose and titration, i can get pain relief effects from 5-10mg of oxycodone.
if my docs were cool about it, i would use the NALT to get myself down to a reasonable dose range, and ask to be switched to ER formulation oxy and use that. as is, they are not and I have really had to lean into finding other routes to deal with pain issues, plus the chronic intestinal problems i get from opioids and furthering of dissociative issues is not good. but if none of that were a factor and my doctors were pliant and i really needed round the clock pain control,
 
Sorry to hear that, wishing you success with your taper! Also I would suggest you try to communicate with your therapist. I have benefited greatly from therapy but I confide in my therapist and work with them as best I can.
 
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