Not the person you were responding to but I can speak as a former heroin addict (got clean in 2008) and as someone who has worked in addiction programs for the past 12 years.
For one, you mention in your original post that you take a couple of tramadol a few nights a week to chill, and you take DHC some nights if you can't sleep. Those are relatively manageable use patterns, though you would know better than I do how manageable they are in your life. Is it a relapse? Depends on how you define relapsing. It's not a relapse to heroin use for sure, though it isn't abstinence either. It falls somewhere in the murky gray inbetween.
The biggest risks you face are thus:
1) Your oxy would be counterfeit and could contain fentanyl or another illicit opioid like the nitazene compounds. This is obviously more of an issue in the US, though I do understand that fentanyl has begun to show up in the EU/UK as of late. Maybe you got this from a legitimate medical prescription or through a trusted avenue, either way, you'd know better than we would. All that said, if it's illicitly sourced - there's a chance of it being counterfeit which have caused fatal overdoses in people with no/low tolerance.
2) It's legitimate oxycodone AND it is really nice. You're able to take a quarter tab that night. When would you 'save the other 3/4' for? Most likely, you'd feel the urge to try it out again in a week, maybe two. Certainly not soon enough to start getting dope sick, but soon enough to feed the hunger*
3) It's legitimate and 1/4 isn't quite enough, so you take more/all of it. This would be a risk in the sense that it would be breaking your rule/intention for how you'd use it. It may also deepen the desire for another experience since you wouldn't have any/much to save for next time.
There's a concept in addiction called 'kindling'. This is the psychopharmacological process whereby people who have experienced addiction in the past (or overdoses in the past) can become more disposed to reactivating those patterns in the future. People who haven't overdosed are less likely to have a 1st overdose, as people who HAVE overdosed are to having subsequent ones. Once you've overdosed a first time, you're more likely to experience subsequent overdoses than if you hadn't overdosed at all. The same is true for addiction - once you've taught your brain how to develop addiction/dependence, you can easily relearn these patterns and override the safeguards in place that exist for people who have never been addicted previously.
With your current opioid use of 3-4x/week of taking some type of agonist (whether tramadol or dihydrocodiene) you may have unintentionally kindled the psychological patterns related to your past addiction to heroin, which may be why you're posting about having 'happened upon an oxy 80'. Did it fall out of the sky and into your pocket? Most likely, you sourced it, and how intentional that sourcing was is something only you truly know. That said, there's a non-zero chance that your question here is the result of your tramadol and DHC use, which 10 years from now could be how you describe the beginning of a relapse.
But, the future isn't written yet.
If it were me, I wouldn't fuck with an oxy 80 unless I was dying. It's just too tempting to start making exceptions for things that derailed my life once already. The most I'll fuck with from the opioid world is Kratom.
Last year (fall 2023) i got CoVID for the first time. My respiratory symptoms were really bad, painful coughing etc. Years before, while becoming a heroin addict, I'd been prescribed hydrocodone cough syrup (tussionex) and knew it was very effective as a cough suppressant and pain reliever. Given how uncomfortable I was, and how I wasn't doing shit that week anyway, I talked with my PCP about a prescription. She's well aware of my history and I was up front that I would not normally ask for this kind of thing, but that in this case I really felt like it would help. We discussed it, and I also talked with my wife about it, making sure we had a plan in advance of how I'd use it.
I used it responsibly, maybe a slightly larger dose at night to be able to fall asleep, but essentially stayed within the dosage recommendations.
At the end of the week I still had some left and I put it away. I eventually got rid of the last of it because I would often find myself thinking 'a sip would be nice, I can't sleep anyway, go for it!' Even after it was gone, I did notice that I had occasional thoughts about growing poppies to make tea, things that I hadn't normally thought much about over the prior 15 years. These were thoughts that were pretty easy to manage, but they were abnormal for me, and I have no doubt that they were kindled a bit by that sweet sweet pineapple flavored sizzurp.
So, those are my thoughts on your questions, hope you find some of it helpful.
