The only time I’ve had it was after surgery, and I don’t remember any specific effects. In fact, I don’t remember most of those days at all, so apparently morphine gives me amnesia.
The nausea wave is a common symptom of first time heroin users. Heroin being the souped of version of morphine, that still ends up being metabolized as morphine by the body, only quicker.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/brain/
I had quite a bit of morphine after a severe burn injury. What I recall from the first shot and all subsequent ones is the morphine taste in the back of my mouth when it was injected. Bitter but not intensely so, somewhat like the smell of Opium perfume.
That first shot in the ambulance was a godsend, since the pain was getting to be more than I could handle and I was seriously wondering whether I would need to kill myself to get relief.
Over the long haul - a month and a half in the burn unit, and six months of PT, the morphine and other opiates became a kind of burden. It seemed I needed percocet to sleep, and any pain relief provided by morphine shots was also accompanied by a separation from my senses that I found alienating. What dulled by ability to feel pain also dulled by ability to feel emotion. Opiates were a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. I was glad to finally be done with them.
When I went back for minor surgery for scar reduction, I refused the vicodin they’d prescribed as post op pain relief. It probably hurt a bit more just using NSAID’s, but it was worth it to stay away from opiates.
Short of an absolute emergency, I won’t use them for any reason. I hope I will never need to.
It makes me a little bit nauseated, but definitely takes care of the pain. What it does not do is give me some wonderful “high” that would cause me to seek it out and become addicted. I get sleepy, and then it just makes me feel kind of icky and groggy.
Most pain medication does the same thing, it either makes me really nauseated and doesn’t touch the pain (vicoden), or I’m allergic to it even though it does help with the pain (percocet), or it helps, but causes some other manner of unpleasantness.
I have never been able to understand addiction. I find “downers” really unpleasant at best.
I received an injection of dialudid following a surgical procedure years ago and can still recall how my stomach “clamped down” almost immediately. Nausea and vomiting followed.
I give a lot of pain meds including morphine and dilaudid in the course of my work. Most people tolerate it fine, a few suffer from nausea and vomiting. I tend to give nausea meds with these meds and just automatically begin to monitor for constipation.
But you can’t really predict how someone will react to a new medication. Pain is a very individual experience. Some tolerate it well, others not so well. Same with the different meds.
For most, morphine et al makes the pain go away. Some may become sleepy. Some become ‘dreamy’. Some may become a bit agitated (from the unusual feeling, I suspect). I had one lady that felt scared from the feeling and had me stay in the room for a while.
Yesterday I gave a patient 10 mg of Nubain and it did not relieve her pain or affect her at all. I suspect she was having so much pain that nothing would have worked at that moment. The most useful thing I did for her was to assess her completely, discover the root cause of her pain, and correct that. I wound up giving her 1000 mg Tylenol IV and her pain level dropped to a “1” within an hour. I don’t think the Nubain didn’t work and the Tylenol did, as much as I think the biggest factor was solving the problem.
My feeling is that when pain is out of control, it may take several doses over the course of several hours to settle things down. I encourage patients to ‘schedule’ their pain meds since most docs write the orders on an ‘as needed’ basis. Lots of nurses get pissy about pain meds and say “Well, it’s a PRN dose. I’m not gonna bring it unless the patient calls.”
I don’t do that. I make regular rounds and assess for pain. I highly recommend “managing” pain, rather than waiting for it to peak and trying to tamp it back down again.
Yeesh.
I once wrote a nastygram to a hospital: I was persuaded to stay overnight after nasal surgery (septoplasty etc.) which turned out to be a huge mistake on several levels, one of which was that at 10PM I told the nurse: “nothing urgent, but I’ll need my pain medication soon”. It took buzzing for it FIVE TIMES, telling FIVE DIFFERENT PEOPLE, walking down to the nurse’s station myself (where the person there said “oh, did you say something?” to which I truthfully said no, as I had no spoken yet… and she disappeared), and several hours before I got pain relief.
It’s a hella lot easier to control pain if you stomp on it before it gets too bad.
One time I fell off a horse and they thought maybe I broke my pelvis. So, before carting me to xray they gave me morphine.
First of all, it’s “rushy” you can feel it when it hits but for me it was very unpleasant vertigo-like falling feel. Very unpleasant (but no stomach cramps). Then after that I wasn’t able to maintain my emotions, and alteratingly wept uncontrollably, or laughed at everything. The pain I had was spiky, so when they did move me, it hurt plenty, I was just pretty out of it by then, woozy and delirious and laughing/crying. I don’t remember it clearly.
I do remember standing in front of the discharge nurse, who wanted to discharge me with vicodin (no broken pelvis, FYI). In my “in my head” voice I was explaining calmly and rationally that Vicodin makes me vomit uncontrollably, and I need to be discharged with something different, maybe codeine, or whatever they think that isn’t vicodin. In reality-land, I was crying so hard in between choked words, the nurse kept handing me tissues, then finally, the box. Yet in terms of feeling emotions of being upset, I wasn’t feeling them. It was like some other person was so upset and I was watching from a distance.
Then I couldn’t keep food down for the next three days.
Me and opiates don’t get along.
I had morphine during a gall bladder attack. Like you it didn’t do much at all. Demerol, however, does a lot for me. I don’t know if they’re related at all, but give me Demerol anytime.
I have a morphine allergy, discovered three years ago when an aerosol can exploded in a fire and I was the unlucky recepient of the flames and projectiles from the explosion. I had burns on my face, in my nose and mouth- throwing up violently from the morphine did not feel pleasant. It wasn’t anybodies fault for giving it to me as no one knew I would react so badly. This past January I had a hysterectomy and mentioned the morphine incident, I was given something else for pain in my IV, I took nothing more than ibuprofen after the IV was removed. Yesterday I had knee surgery and it seems that vicoden makes me throw up as well, I discovered that this morning.
Morphine made my chest feel tight and made me feel like I was short of breath, but the nurse explained she may have given me too much, too fast (at least I seem to remember it that way).
That was just before the first attempt at a closed reduction of my tib-fib fractures, it didn’t help!
It made me hallucinate and it was very difficult to think or read. I hated it. (OK, I blessed the fact that it took the pain away.)
I likes me some morphine. It’s one of the few pain-killers I can have that doesn’t make me throw up like a frat boy. I’ve usually gotten it along with phenegren, which is what caused the burning I was told. I don’t remember feeling drugged from it, but the equisite relief from pain is almost heady. Other than having that sometimes in the hospital, I don’t even get pain prescriptions filled anymore. Projectile vomiting is not my idea of "helpful.
Come to think of it, the phenegren may be what makes it possible for me to take. Don’t know, but the combo works.
No nausea and no euphoria. Pain medication usually puts me to sleep for about an hour. After that, I feel better because I’m not in pain until the drugs start wearing off.
The first couple of times I was given anesthesia, it caused me some amnesia. But once I noticed this, I found myself paying more attention when I was being given anesthesia and that stopped the amnesia.
After they repaired the spinal injuries I received during my last bout with Galactus[SUP]1[/SUP], I was on a self-medicating morphine drip. It altered my perceptions of time and space in an unforgettable manner. I now understand why some people use the drug recreationally.
[SUP]1[/SUP]Ultimate Nightmare #5 February 2005
OK, ok, ok. I didn’t break my back fighting Galactus.
But, it makes for a much more interesting story, right?
I wish I could explain it better. Maybe I’d say that it gave me a signifcant degree of mental detachment. I felt the pain, but it’s like it wasn’t really happening to me.
It was like, “My arm hurts. My legs too. That means something, I’m sure, but I don’t care.”
Like the part of my brain that would normally be telling me, “Hey, Dummy! PAIN! PAINPAINPAIN! OH MY FUCKING GOD IT HURTS!” is out to lunch when the morphine is in.
This. Something similar happens to me with nitrous oxide. I’ll start singing songs about my pain. “Ooooowwwww, owie owie, woooo woooo. La la la, that hurts!” It hurts but I don’t care.
Missed the edit: But I also meant to say that the part of my brain that actually felt the pain was still working, but the part that attached significance to the pain was not.
Morphine knocks me out and gives me bad dreams. Sleeping though pain is nice but I’d prefer the Percocet that just seems to just knock me out without any unwanted side effects.
I had morphine for my ectopic while I waited for surgery to remove the tube. I was coherent and knew there was pain there, but, as has been said, I just didn’t care. The pain felt different, somehow. The tube burst just before I went in, and it felt like a hot rush in my abdomen and like I almost couldn’t get a deep breath.
My favourite meds in all the procedures they’ve done on me was whatever they gave me in the IV for both my wisdom teeth removal and my IVF egg retrieval. I know in both cases they gave me something for the pain, but they also gave me something to relax. I think it was Valium. Holy man did that feel nice! Couldn’t focus my eyes very well though.
I had morphine when I had my weight loss surgery, it was awesome. It mostly made me sleepy but it definitely dulled the pain.
The one and only time I had morphine was during my bout of norovirus. It didn’t make me nauseous, but I didn’t get the warm floaty fuzzy feeling some people describe. Basically, it took the edge off the pain/made me not care, then I fell asleep.
I’ve had coedine a couple times - that can make me feel a little floaty and detached, but mostly it just makes me sleepy.
Of course, the fact I’m taking doses for pain relief rather than seeking a high might have something to do with experiencing only minimal or no euphoric effects. Actually, I’m not a big fan of the floaty or detached feelings. I hate not being clear-headed.