Task:
If you are suffering from chronic, severe pain (CSP), from your broken back, then you are not 'addicted' to pain meds. If you are not experiencing CSP, then you're scamming for pain meds, & need to self-evaluate your situation as it relates to addiciton.
The newest philosophy of CSP treatment, (some docs use the term "intractable" pain - personally I think chronic, severe pain is more self-explanatory), that is being used in training doctors encourages no, demands, that doctors do not think of their patients as addicts, or even use the term "addiction" when talking with patients.
Addiction is not a factor in managing CSP. A study done sometime in the last 3-5 years showed that less than 3% of patients suffering from CSP had problems with, or showed symptoms of addiction when adequately treated for their pain. More recent research is pointing toward the body's ability to 'selectively' utilize opioids to treat CSP first, before getting the patient 'high'.
But it's really not about addiction symptoms or utilization of opiates in the body. It's about choice.
A basic tenet of addiction therapy is the addict needs to accept that addiction is a choice. For any type of addiction treatment to work, the addict has make the choice to stop doing the drug. Without the individual's will & personal decision accompanying the Choice to stop doing a drug, no treatment plan, program or voodoo will ever work.
On the other hand, a person with CSP cannot choose to not use pain meds - only in rare cases is a patient able to manage CSP without meds. Usually, upon closer examination, a person able to manage their pain without meds doesn't fall into the classification of CSP. Hence the use of "chronic" & "severe" to describe the pain.
If you are taking pain meds for CSP, you most likely will take them the rest of your life. The factors that concern you are tolerance, (& the accompanying need to increase your level of meds) & side-effects, (knowledge about the drugs is your best weapon).
If you happen to have increased energy from the meds, or an elevated mood, (euphoria), from the meds consider yourself lucky. There are many, many people who suffer from CSP that must take pain meds, and they puke, can't screw, can't sleep/sleep too much, have sores in their mouth, itch like crazy, etc, etc..... So, if you like the effect of the meds, & they don't interfere with your life, be glad - don't beat yourself up regarding addiction, particularly when doctors of the world are finally getting their heads out of their asses & realizing the people with CSP are not addicts.
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More than a few years ago, I had the chance to 'teach the teacher'. My mentor in grad school was diagnosed with terminal cancer - an aggressive, '3-4 months to live' cancer. This man was influential in my development as a scholar & scientist, as well as a helping me to grow as a 'man'.
He was in the final 6-7 weeks of his life & had just received a morphine-pump. We were taking a walk during a Spring day.
You should realize that this was a man, in his mid 50's, who rarely drank alcohol, & as he told me one time: he had smoked pot once in '68, while at Berkeley, didn't like it & never tried it again.
On this Spring day, he was telling me about the effects of the morphine pump he had received the day before, and that he didn't want to spend the last weeks of his life 'drugged out' or 'fuzzy-headed'.
It was then that I told him for the first time that I was a sufferer of chronic, severe pain, & took large amounts of opiates & muscle-relaxers everyday, and had been for over 10 years - including the three years I was a grad student, his research assistant/teaching assistant. That I had learned years before to take energy & vitality from the meds & put them to use in my life rather than allow them to interfere with living.
I went on to tell him the duration & levels of pain that I dealt with on an ongoing basis every day, day-in & day-out. To say he was taken aback by my revalations to him is a huge understatement.
We didn't speak of this again until just a few days before his death, as I sat on his bed, serving him a meal I had just prepared for him. It was then he told me that I had profoundly effected his last weeks of life, and that he would be eternally greatful that I had chosen that Spring day to share with him how I had learned to draw vitality & energy from opiates.
He told me he was certain that the previous month & a half had been completely different after he realized, that he, too, could use the meds to his advantage, to give him energy, to allow him to do whatever he chose, to say goodbye to everyone that he wished to bid farewell rather than allow the meds 'drug' him out.
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Since that time, many years ago, my perspective on pain meds has grown, surpassing what it was then.
There is a reason the opium poppy grows naturally & un-aided on every continent on our planet, & even more, a reason that our brain has specific neuro-receptor sites which are specifically responsive to opiates. And a reason that our body naturally produces a chemical that is nearly a twin for the essence of an opium poppy.
Only when we, as a people, move beyond this irrational fear of "drugs" and "addiction" that is the basis for the ridiculous "War on Drugs" will we discover what that reason truly is.....
Possibly in the future.....
Time Trav'lur
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
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