I turn 21 in about 15 minutes and I can’t fully enjoy my birthday like my peers. I have to worry about respiratory depression and other effects if I drink too much.

At the end of the day I feel like there are so many things that I used to be able to do that I can’t now. I can’t be a 21 year old. I can’t be a student. I can’t work jobs I want and when I was on proper medications and dosages, I could. This is what frustrates me and hopefully one of the dozens of doctors I am bounced between will get this someday.

myth no 1. codeine … oxy … it all becomes the same chemical once the body begins to metabolize it. the symptoms ’sick and dizzy’ do not mean intolerance, or allergy, as the world at large likes to think, they mean that the patient has received a dose which is too high … and the dizziness/sick feeling is the way the body interprets the vaso-diliatory action that narcotics have on our circulatory system. vasodilation means the cerebrum has less perfusion than it would like, and so the nausea centre of the brain interprets this as a sick feeling.

as a matter of record, my 7 years as a cancer/bowel surgery/respiratory nurse have taught me that oxy sucks as an analgesic and no post operative patient of mine has ever received it … interestingly enough. morphine, fentanyl, dilaudid … these are the popular post operative pain relievers. also demerol is popular with the surgeons, because its not as ‘paralytic’ to the bowel as morphine derivatives. but … it sucks as a pain reliever ~ half life too short.

back to the comment/post ~ the answer in many cases is not another drug … its receiving treatment from someone who understands pharmacology and narcotics ~ most practising clincians have no clue and most patients have even fewer clues.

regarding the problem of breaking up the long acting capsules ~ this happens with LA morphine also. not much we can do, except someone, somewhere is obviously selling it, ain’t they?

myth no 2. tolerance and addiction …

this is so widely misunderstood ~ these are entirely different concepts. and i am so glad you mentioned this here.

tolerance means your body has adapted, as its designed to do. addiction denotes a behaviour in which a person will pursue something (usually harmful) at any and all cost. pain is subjective. that means nurses/docs must believe self reports of pain and stop judging what they think the patients pain response should be. still addicts feel pain … genuinely feel pain. and they are a sickly bunch ~ oft-over-represented among the hospital admissions. and so … how do we treat their pain? tough one. some think we should not … i think pain is pain … regardless of who’s reporting it.so … a narcotic-tolerant person is not an addict.

in my nursing practice i have seen people suffer unnecessarily b/c they believed all this bulls!t out there about narcotics, blah blah. pain will kill if unattended. also … any patients who happen to be undermedicated at the hands of a doc, or nurse who doesn’t have a clue … these patients have a right to be pain free. families have sued nurses and docs and won … in cases where they felt their dying relative did not receive adequate pain control.

sorry to ramble … this topic is near and dear to my heart …. (i’m a former RN).

The nurses and doctors warned her that when she went off her high dosage, that she may go through withdrawl and that she needed to slowly ween herself off the medication. One nurse even explained that her daughter had dropped her medication completely one day and ended up in the hospital the next week because her withdrawl was so bad.

My grandmother was lucky. She used it for months and she managed to ween herself in less than a week. No withdrawls, nothing. If only people that abused this wonderful medication could have the willpower and strength that she does.