Hello runtoparadise,welcome to Blue Light.
I too suffer from chronic pain and I know what you are going through with hurting all the time and being undertreated.My pain comes from a blown out knee about 18 years ago.I have,if I remember correctly,2 screws and 3 pins holding it together and I'm missing the middle third of my patellar tendon.I have a constsnt level of moderate to severe pain and,as is probably the case with you too,some days are worse than others.This undertreated pain,along with a severe panic disorder,caused me to become a heroin addict for many years(clean for 3 years now thank God).Now my body is so opiate tolerant that nothing hardly works for me.I recently moved to a rural area in a new state where they are very strict on prescriptions and the strongest I can get,after much,much effort,is Percocet 10/325s,120 of them a month.I feel lucky to even get this inadequate medicine around here.
This causes me to run through my presccription too fast so I'm in pretty much the same boat as you: running short the last week or 2 out of the month and battling withdrawls.Granted,it's nothing like heroin withdrawls ,but it's still enough to suck.What I usually do is when my bottle looks really light and I know I've got another 2 weeks untill my next doctor visit,I'll do a pill count,do the math,and just take one in the morning and one in the evening.Ten milligrams of oxy twice a day does little for pain control but it at least keeps the withdrawl symptoms from being so bad.So,if it's not too personal of a question,what is the source of your chronic pain and what medications do they currently have you on besides the ketamine treatments?
That's the first I've ever heard of pain management using ketamine.Does it work pretty well?If nothing else,i would imagine it's disassociative properties would at least make you not care as much.I used to be a veterinary technician and we used lots of ketamine for minimally invasive procedures where you didn't want to knock the animal out completely and have to intubate it and put it on oxygen and monitor it's EKG etc....We normally put it in a cocktail with liquid Valium.I tried it and didn't care for it.The Valium,however,I loved.Even though it won't take away the opiate withdrawl,taking a few Valiums will help you deal with being miserable better.Some alcohol mixes nicely with this and will further help with not just the anxiety of withdrawls but the body aches as well.When I'm withdrawing I use my RXd Xanax and a few bourbon and cokes to help me deal with it.Another little trick I use that you may find helpful in avoiding this situation is that when I get a fresh prescription of Percocet I will immediately take out about 10 or so and put them away as an emergency stash so that when the other 110 run out I at least have enough for a little taper just to keep the edge off untill I can get my next script filled.I know lots of people will bitch about me advising the use of benzos mixed with alcohol,especially on top of opiates but if you've dealt with this condition for a while and have become used to these meds I think you can handle a few Valiums and a little booze.It certainly helps me when I'm withdrawing from a Perccocet 10 script that I can't get filled for another 2 weeks.In fact,I'm going through this right now,about a dozen perc 10s left(plus my emergency 10)and can't get my script filled untill I see my doctor again in 15 days.
So what are your tips and tactics for getting through untill your next script?I've heard some people use moderate doses of dextromethorphan HBR (Robitussin) to help withdrawl symptoms.The red vein strains of the tree Kratom have reportedly been used with some success to combat opiate withdrawls since they work on the same receptors.The green vein strains are stimulant so definitely not what you want.The white vein ones are supposedly a mixture of the two.What I've heard people do is make a horrible tasting tea from Bali or Borneo red vein kratom(I've heard around 5 grams of crushed or powdered leaf,easily obtainable online from several vendors since it's legal in all but 2 states,TN being one),I've never tried it myself as I am currently unemployed,having just moved to a new state in a very rural mountain area and completely dependant on family untill I can get my pain to a manageable level and obtain employment,but I've heard it makes the WDs more bearable.It's supposed to be quite expensive but if you can afford it I hear it's worth having around.Another possibility would be to find a pharmacy that carries the cough syrup Dyhistine(sp?).It contains codeine,you just have to present a valid state ID and sign for it.You can only buy it every 10 days or so but when I was a heroin addict my gf and I found the 4 drug stores in our area that carried it and would go in a few minutes apart and each get a bottle so we would have up to 8 bottles lying around for emergencies.It won't completely remove the WD symptoms but a half a bottle sure helps significantly and it doesn't cost that much.Best of all,it's perfectly legal so there is no worry of legal trouble if you get stopped and have it it your possession.I highly recommend keeping a couple of bottles around.You might also want to check out the chronic pain management mega thread on this site if you haven't already.There are lots of prople in the same boat on there who can offer good advice.Of course,just like with any web sites or group of people,you meet a lot of douchebags too,I just ignore them or enjoy pushing their buttons when they want to be know it alls or just plain holier than thou assholes.I hope that I have been able to be of some assistance.Chronic pain really makes life suck,especially when undertreated and I feel for you,literally.Feel free to PM me anytime.I'm usually on here a couple times a day and my phone will beep and let me know anyway.So if I can be of further assistance or just want to talk away from the public forums shoot me a message and I'll be glad to help anyway I can.All the best,downerhead.
Your best bet is to really make your medication last the entire month! I have been on really high levels of IR opiates and the pain is always better when meds are initially raised however eventually you will find yourself doing the same thing your doing now with the only difference being taking more oxy! have you tried epidurals mixed with physical therapy ? Get a deep tissue medical massage maybe some acupuncture? also if you ask your dr for more meds you should always leave it up to what the dr thinks is best for your particular situation! that being said you should really take a longer acting extended release medication and use the IR for breakthrough pain ! If you do take a longer acting med you will have a certain amount of medication in your body consistently!This will also help to stabilize your opiate use and you will not wake up in the morning in agony waiting for the first pill to work! taking loads of IR opiates can really bring your tolerance to a high level or really bad addiction. Another thing you can do is decrease all opiate meds to the lowest level that you can tolerate, therefore bringing your tolerance back down. Then when you raise the amount again you will have better pain relief ! Pain tolerance is a tricky thing when using opiate's! Abusing any opiate medication and or taking all your meds before your next visit will really bring you to a bad place with addiction! you might consider trying suboxone ! some people find suboxone to be a godsend for the roller coaster of pain management! however some people do not get sufficient pain relief with suboxone! you should really listen to the doctor within yourself and do whatever you can to stabilize your opiate use! I hope this helps you! Please be careful taking medications that were not prescribed to you, Extremely expensive is nothing compared to getting red flagged as a drug seeker. one toxicology report will show all medications and the exact plasma levels. You could find yourself in more trouble then you think additionally after your dr discharges you as a patient it will be really hard to find a dr that will prescribe any narcotic medication leaving you in a really bad place! again good luck. and i truly hope you get the medications that you need. Feel free to PM me Aloha
