To those who truly suffer chronic pain, you are not addicts until you use for fun.
I used Kratom twice a month for a long time to stop wds. My Hydrocodone script was gone in two days and the Roxicodones I boughteach month. were shot up in 2-3 days. Kratom helped those but didn't touch Dilaudid and Opana wds. I just decided to quit shooting them one day. I went into my room and suffered the hell by myself. It was 4 days of brutal
torture and then the physical part was over. I think cold turkey no taper is best. I will never forget that sickness.
No. It doesn't work like that. There is a difference between physical dependence and psychological addiction. Pain comes in several forms. There is physical pain and there is emotional (psychological) pain and opiates numb BOTH. Opiate addiction is not always about getting "high" as such, or for the fun, because for many opiate addicts, it can be about just getting "normal" because they use opiates to self-medicate away painful events in their lives, or to try and lift their mood from psychological/mental health conditions such as severe depression, anxiety, etc. This is sometimes referred to as "dual diagnosis". The cycle of addiction means that often just trying to stop opiates can result in huge anxiety, depression and insomnia and that alone, let alone the physical dependence, drives users back to using again. This cycle gets more and more severe and difficult to break as time and addiction progresses and with every use/quit/restart sequence. The compulsive behaviour underpinning addiction is a feature for most chronic pain opiate users.
Chronic pain is medically defined as unremitting pain that lasts longer than several months and which intereferes with the ability to live and perform functions of daily living. Speaking as someone who has no shortage of experience with physical pain and knowing others in similar situations, it is my experience that most, if not, all, people with chronic pain, do also experience profound depression at some point or another when they have been living with pain and reduced quality of life for some time. For many pain patients, having huge doses of opiates and feeling periods of being either pain free, or far less pain, CAN feel like being high or fun.
When you have a constant stream of pharma grade medical opiates going into you, sooner or later, colossal tolerance occurs and bigger and bigger doses are needed to obtain pain relief AND stop ever more frequent and bigger withdrawals commencing. Most chronic pain patients and those who have been using opiates to also medicate emotional pain away, at this point or often far sooner, tend to start to run out of their meds earlier and earlier. A months's worth of meds gone in under a week for example. Then the ability to stop gets harder and harder.
Addiction is powerful, cunning and baffling. We can stop one substance and think we are "cured" but abstinence alone does not make recovery, as a relapse often shows, or addiction switching from one drug of choice to another, or keeping a reserve stash i.e. "holding onto a reservation" in recovery language such as NA or other addiction fellowships.
Well done for quitting. That sickness gets more and more brutal the longer we use opiates and the more we stop/start/stop/start.
How long have you been off all opiates now? How are you feeling in mind and body?