Author: e.r.regular
Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:26 pm
Auspicious,
I have read through your posts and the replies, and it seems to me that you have to be truthful with yourself first as to WHY you are getting any of this medication. Obviously you have some real and painful conditions that call for pain relief at times. You have found prescribers for various medications, so I know that you are capable of making a convincing argument to others that you need these pills. What is less clear, is the vacillation between wanting them, getting them, and not wanting them. Getting a doc, and then burning a bridge. Taking a drug, and then fearing that you OD’d. You must admit that you sound 100% like every one of us addicts. Many of us had/have real pain issues we deal with as well and that is what got us started on this road. The problem is, until we were honest with ourselves; willing to admit that our addiction drive our decision making more than our pain ever did, we also vacillated between procuring our drug of choice, taking it, then feeling scared and or guilty, and flushing it, just to do do the cycle all over again.
You’re walking around the block again and again, you know that there is a hole in the pavement that you need to avoid, yet you trip in it every time. Then you beat yourself up a while, tell your self you won’t do it again (maybe write on your arm with perm marker to remember), and yet when you come to the hole, you go in it again. This is not a process unique to you, this is addiction. The problem with admitting it you ourselves when we also have genuine pain issues is the fear that if we "burn a bridge" as you put it, we will no linger have any access to medication and suffer with nothing to help us in our pain.
Been there, done that, and I am not judging you at all. This is where I am at.
I have been on Suboxone for 4 years now. Recently I experienced one of the Suboxone user’s greatest fears; finding ourselves in a medical emergency requiring narcotic pain control and we either cannot get it, get too little or worse yet; no matter how much we get, it does’t work because of the level of Suboxone still in our system.
This was not an emergency, but extremely painful nonetheless. I had 2 thrombosed hemmorhoids which need to be lanced. I procrastinated going to the doc, because I had had these lanced and removed before and the initial pain after the local is (for me) excruciating even WITH narcotics. So when I did go, I didn’t tell the ER doc about being on Suboxone for obvious reasons. Little did I know that the state of MN now has a controlled substance monitoring system that can pull up any narcotic prescription you have received within the state and the ER docs have access to it. I could feel my face flushing and the heat in my ears when the doctor said, "what about the Suboxone, I see here that you got 45 tablets about 2 weeks ago?" There I was, 4 years AFTER doctor shipping and lying to doctors, thinking that was all behind me, I did the vary thing that got me into trouble with the pills in the first place! I don’t remember what I babbled then but later in the appointment, after resigning myself to no narcotic pain control, I apologized and explained that I had been on Suboxone for 4 years, that I used to Dr. Shop and lie for narcotics, and I was afraid that if he knew I was on Suboxone, he would not help me with my (thankfully obvious in this case) need for pain control. I asked him for his advice.
To my surprise, he said that I HAD TO OWN IT. I had to be honest, tell the docs what I was on and why and that I have a need for maybe even greater pain control than "normal" people because of my tolerance to narcotics. Explain my fears and let them be the ones to decide what to do. Sure, there will be some that will react as we feared and give us nothing, or nothing potent enough. But there are others who will appreciate the honesty (like this doc did) and prescribe us what we need. We were willing to see several prescribers to get what we wanted BEFORE the public and personal admission that we had a problem with narcotics, so why would’t we be equally willing to be just a diligent to find a doc that will help us afterwards? They do exist.
So, auspicious… maybe I have totally missed the boat on what you do not want to stop using short acting agonist Opiates (regular pain killers). BUT if it is because of few of lack of pain control, then there are solutions for you, solutions that will allow you to sleep without a guilt, or fear of OD. Maybe most importantly, solutions that will allow you to be clear headed and of singleminded about this subject, no longer vacillating between clarity and self deception.
I wish you well and hope that you decide what you need to do and stick with it. If you have a true medical NEED to be on Oxyanything then fine, but do it honestly with a doc that cares about you as a total person with an addiction (or might I say addictive tendencies at lest). That doc you have buy your own admission is a pusher. I had those type to, and though I loved the access to narcs, I never respected them as physicians.
Also, get someone in your life to be accountable to (preferably not family), writing on your arm is a start, but you can always cover it up or ignore it, and skin does shed over time. 
