Spacegoat

The Last Suffer
A Personal Chronicle of Oxycodone Dependence and Withdrawal

As with a substantial majority of those whose stories I have read on this message board, I also suffer with chronic pain. In my particular case, there are multiple causes of this chronic pain, and the pain is very frequently very debilitating. I don't believe the various medical details are relevant, therefore I am not going to even attempt to describe them. Suffice it to say that, for almost 15 years now (I am currently in my early 50s) I have struggled to deal with the daily consequences of severe chronic pain.

Prior to the middle of 2002, I had, throughout my life, used pain medication for all the typical temporary reasons for which opiates are prescribed. I never used them longer than a month or so, and never developed a dependency resulting in withdrawal upon cessation of their use. However, after moving to a new area and therefore finding a new primary care physician, I was, rather naively, initiated into chronic opioid therapy by this new doctor. I am convinced his intentions were honorable. He had also fallen under the influence of the relatively new (at that time) medical philosophy that opioids constitute a medically valid therapeutic approach to those who suffer with chronic pain. In any event, the bottom line is that I first started taking oxycodone on a daily basis back in mid-2002. Between that time and the end of 2011, my daily dosage fluctuated to some degree, but never came to exceed more than about 120mg/day. Even so, I had long since become (and believe me, I knew it) utterly dependent on my daily consumption of oxycodone. And I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. In fact, I had come to very much hate it. And so, over the course of the late summer and autumn of 2011, on my own initiative, I started to gradually taper down my daily dosage until, the week before Christmas 2011, I made reservations at a nice hotel in a very scenic area, with a river running right next to it, and I spent four days in that idyllic setting going through my first experience with oxycodone withdrawal. I had, prior to going cold turkey the day I drove to the hotel, gotten myself down to about 30mg/day. My withdrawal experience was not pleasant, by any means. But it also wasn't what I would characterize as nightmarish, either. I got through the worst of it within 48 hours, and by the fourth day, I felt more or less "back to normal."

Well, unfortunately, by mid-2012 I had developed another extremely painful condition, for which the only solution is a very invasive surgery that I simply was not then, and doubt I ever will be, willing to undergo. Consequently, I permitted myself to once again enter into chronic opioid therapy. Except this time things ended up going far beyond where they had gone before. By early 2013 I was being prescribed a maximum of 18 30mg oxycodone immediate release pills every day! Yes, you read that right: my doctor was prescribing me over 500mg/day of immediate release oxycodone, those little blue pills that are the cruelest, most merciless slave master ever conceived.

Anyway, sometime around June of 2013, I came to realize that this simply could not go on. Even at 500mg/day, the oxycodone was no longer able to relieve my chronic pain. And I refused to "climb the ladder" any further by going to a Fetanyl patch or any other option that would do nothing but increase the amount of opiates in my system.

So, in the middle of last summer, once again entirely on my own initiative, I started to "ramp down" from the insanely high dosage I was on. That taper program continued until 9 days ago, at which time I had reduced my daily oxycodone dosage to about 50mg. At that point, because I had set for myself a very firm May 1, 2014 "cold turkey" objective, I started the grueling trial that continues to this day. I took my last 10mg pill about 10pm April 30th, and awoke the morning of May 1st with the all-too-familiar feeling of the onset of withdrawal symptoms.

I had intentionally chosen May 1st, because it was a Thursday, and therefore I figured I'd be through the worst of it all by the end of the ensuing weekend.

Well folks, it hasn't worked out that easily. I am now concluding the 9th day of what can only be described as the most horrific experience of my life.

Bear in mind, I didn't go into this ignorantly. Nope. I did tons of research, and I thought I had done pretty much all I could do to at least minimize the severity of the withdrawal. And, in fact, by the end of the first day, I was congratulating myself for the relative ease with which I had made it through the day. Sure, I was very uncomfortable in many ways. But it was a degree of discomfort I was confident I could deal with.

I had, unfortunately, only been able to sleep for about two hours the night previous – mainly because I was so anxious about what was "just around the corner." That ended up factoring into what has very likely been the worst aspect of my withdrawal experience: severe insomnia. At one point, during the first few days, I had gone over 100 hours straight without having slept a single minute! Why? Well, if I had to designate a primary culprit, it would definitely be what is commonly called "Restless Leg Syndrome," but which I believe should more accurately be called "Restless Body Syndrome," because I feel it all over my body, even though it is primarily manifest in my legs. And it was so bad – so terribly, terribly bad – that, notwithstanding my complete exhaustion, I could not tolerate remaining in bed. And bear in mind, this was even after taking both Ambien and Valium -- at more than the prescribed dosages.

Anyway, I'm not going to bore any of you further with my sorry tale, cautionary though it be. I will simply summarize by saying the past 9 days have been an experience I will never -- and I mean NEVER -- repeat, so long as I live. For that matter, I'm not even "out of the woods" yet. At 10pm tonight it will be 10 days since I took my last dose of oxycodone, and yet today was, on a scale of 1 – 10, still at least a 7 or so in terms of the severity of my withdrawal symptoms.

Here is a quick log of my particular symptoms, with a corresponding "score" (from 1 – 10) of how bad they were on each of the preceding 9 days:

Day 1:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 5
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 11
GI tract issues: 6
Sleep Deprivation: 6

Day 2:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 11
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 11
GI tract issues: 8
Sleep Deprivation: 10

Day 3:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 11
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 11
GI tract issues: 8
Sleep Deprivation: 11

Day 4:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 11
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 11
GI tract issues: 8
Sleep Deprivation: 11

Day 5:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 10
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 11
GI tract issues: 8
Sleep Deprivation: 10

Day 6:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 11
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 11
GI tract issues: 8
Sleep Deprivation: 10

Day 7:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 10
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 10
GI tract issues: 7
Sleep Deprivation: 10

Day 8:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 9
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 9
GI tract issues: 6
Sleep Deprivation: 9

Day 9:
Flu-like Symptoms; Fatigue; Weakness: 7
Restless Leg Syndrome (night only): 7
GI tract issues: 4
Sleep Deprivation: 8

So, folks, let this be a lesson to you all: don't roll the dice if you can't pay the price. And believe me, if you permit yourselves to be dependent/addicted long enough, and at a high enough dosage, you, too, will suffer just as badly as I have for the past 9+ days.

Do you have chronic pain? Yeah, well I know what that's like. I know really well. I know that it sucks. But I have also come to the absolutely firm conviction that chronic opioid therapy is NOT the solution. In fact, I am convinced that, 100 years from now, medical professionals will regard the chronic pain treatment practices of the 20th and 21st centuries with as much disbelief and abhorrence as we currently regard the days when "doctors" used to "bleed" people, or use leeches on them, as a "treatment option" for one malady or another.

And, in the immortal words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.