I was on morphine for six months, and vicodin for a month before that, for severe back and leg pain. i had surgery last August, but had to continue te morphine until the back healed.
I can tell you that I really hated this stuff, as it caused all sorts of side effects: loss of appetite, constipation, nausea, weakness and other fun things, but it did mitigate the pain to some extent.
Anyway, when the pain was supposedly subsiding, the doc had me try to taper off, using a five-week schedule of gradualy reducing the amount, and then going longer and longer without it. When I got to skipping a whole day, the full effects of withdrawal hit. It was not fun at all. I took some the next day, and skipped another, and it was awful again.
I decided that if it was going to be that bad for a few more weeks, I might as well not prolong the agony and just stop cold turkey. Hah, i experienced all the horror of what you see in the moves when somebody is locked in a room.
It was like having the flu, but ten times worse. Every part of my body ached (even my hair :D), I was sick, had diarrhea, and a hatful of other nasty symptoms. i just had to stay in bed, and try to force some food down, although it all tasted like cardboard.
This went a full 12 days of horrible agony. After that I began to feel a little better, but it was 18 days before I was back to normal. Fortunately, I found a good support group online and got some suggestions of ways to mitgate the pain, but it did not help much.
From what I read on that support site, many people who were addicted for much longer times had to sweat it out even longer, but generally the real hard core addicts still got over the worst in about two weeks. Many went on methadone, which they all agreed was just as bad when trying to quit.
So, folks, don’t take that that damned stuff if you an possibly avoid it. I did wonder how anybody could possibly take morphine for recreational use when I found it so horrible, so asked my doc. Interesting: he said people taking it for pain generally don’t find any pleasure of a high, but if one does not have bad pain, then they do. Therefore, people on it for a long time have to really try to quit once the pain is gone,or they will begiin to experience a high.
