I am currently still using morphine after what was effectively a severely debilitating concussion. I was given it in hospital, in addition to the max dose of ex str Tylenol, to control the wicked headache.
Whenever it was given, through IV, it was instant pain relief, but didn’t last as long. If they just shot it in my arm, it burned going in, took longer to take effect, but lasted longer, and left a bruise. That, combined with the staggering amount of blood they drew, and a 20lb weight loss, and I looked like a haggard junkie, by the time I was discharged 5 days later.
But the truth is, I rarely need to take it anymore, at all, and won’t be getting another prescription, I’m certain. I don’t do codeine, (makes me yak), so morphine is my good friend.
(It was kind of a drag that I could not get it refilled. Because it’s a special class of drug, you have to produce another paper script, each time.)
I’m not allowed to have morphine. My doctor has instructed me to respond on any hospital paperwork that I’m allergic to it even though it’s not, strictly speaking, an allergy.
It was administered for the first time a few years ago and I was naseated immediately, threw up within minutes and after I’d managed to stop crying over the extra pain that caused they noticed my entire torso was covered in hives. My time in the post surgical recovery was extended while they gave me enough benadryl and some other pain killer (at that point I wasn’t really listening) to send me back to sleep for a couple hours.
A year or so after that after another surgery I was admitted with a pain pump and I discovered that they have different pumps for people who are allergic to morphine, I presume to reduce the error rate. Good thing too because in the middle of the night I woke up to the nurse trying to make the morphine cartridge fit into the anything but morphine pump with the large red allergic to morphine sticker on it.
I take codeine with no issues at all which requires long discussions now since they’re in the same family.
Actually, the hives are an indication that you might have been suffering from a real, actual allergy.
ETA: Why you’d react to morphine and not codeine I have no idea, but yes, the docs are going to be suspicious of that. Though I hear its usually the other way around - people claiming to be allergic to codeine and not to morphine.
Actually being unable to tolerate opiates in general, but able to tolerate codeine is rather common and has something to do with the different way codeine is absorbed by the body (a Doper once explained it to me, but I forget the details).
Rather than finding it suspicious, I have found that actively refusing vicodin, percoset, or morphine, in favor of the weaker codeine preparations is almost definitional in establishing that you are NOT drug seeking. I have the exact same situation and have never had it questioned in even the slightest regard.