Verte

Hey Snowflake! Nice job today going for your goal and doing it, especially with all the hoopla going on with your friend.

anykey-you give great advice but with this one above I must respectfully disagree.

The reasons I disagree:

1) Snow-your goal is to be sober and you have a chronic pain situation. You cannot have those refills available at your personal pharmacy. That is setting yourself up for failure.

What you CAN do is call any 24hr Walgreens and talk with the pharmacist anonymously. Explain to the pharmacist that you have these refills and want to cancel them so they are made unavailable/removed from the universe (setting up for success).

Tell the pharmacist that you are afraid you will become a 'flagged' patient and thereby be put on some 'suspicious persons list' or something. Ask the Pharma anything (relieves anxiety and sets up for success).

2) It is a very well known now that treating pain long-term with opioids works to hyper-activate the pain receptors. So if you try to cut down without help, you may think you need an opioid dose which you in reality do not (minimizes chances of you feeling the urge to pop a pill).

If you work with the rheumie chances are high that they can help you titrate down through this pain receptor hyper-activation and minimize it.

If you work with the rheumie (who prescribed the neurontin which is great for your neuropathy, pain hyper activation from opioids, long term pain treatment), they can adjust this med. If you have a flare, they can offer a suggestion to adjust neurontin (so you do not feel an urge to just pop a few opioids).

If you work with the rheumie they can offer much better alternative chronic pain meds which do not work against your goal to be sober.

SO sorry for the lengthy post. This is a subject I feel very strongly about after seeing many personal friends and their families totally obliterated from pain mismanagement.

Personal experience: I was prescribed MSContin with hydro for breakthrough for one year because it was the only option offered to me by my doc. It did not work for the pain and I hated it but was totally unwilling to increase the dose. After surgery I stopped the meds by myself and it took a long time for the receptors to calm down.

I never abused the opioids but physical dependency and possible addiction/abuse is something anyone is susceptible to experiencing when used long term.

And it is the middle of the night on my day4 no alcohol. Cannot sleep. Need to write.

There is a opioid addiction section where this has probably already all been re-written. Everyone here says post as often as you like, so Snow, post away!!

Keep your eye on the prize! Cut those chains!! Hope this helps.

***Moderator: I'm not quite sure what constitutes 'medical advice'...but this is all just opinion personal experience. Remove if needed.

snowflake74

LeTheVerte, your advice is sound. I'm VERY concerned about being flagged as an addict in someone's database. Even if I talked to a pharmacist confidentially, I would not trust that this conversation would protect me. I can't think about this too much now. I'll decide when it's closer, but right now I'm trying to just take it one day at a time like they say. But thank you.