I’ve had hydromorphone prescribed twice for kidney stones. Both times extra-strength aspirin did more to relieve the pain - the hydromorphone didn’t seem to have any effect at all. The next time I had a stone I told the doctor not to bother with the prescription.
Opioids. Any opioid receptor agonist would do in a pinch, but dilaudid (aka hydromorphone) certainly was effective. In fact, many heroin addicts note a preference for dilaudid over heroin.
Otherwise, oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone, meperidine, dihydrocodeine, codeine, morphine, fentanyl, propoxyphene, would do in a pinch. As would a few less well known molecules which were active at the opioid receptor site. I’d even used old fashioned laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol), back in the day. I even abused the ones which were initially advertised as non-abusable, like nubain and stadol. But I stuck strictly to the pharmaceutical versions, not the street ones, as I had access.
I have needed opioids for significant pain since getting clean; during medical procures and during an MI, after surgery and trauma too. The buzz is still there, even when the pain is “legit”. So caution must be practiced and the Mrs. manages my meds during such times.
Interestingly, Tramadol doesn’t seem to give me much of an euphoric effect, if any. But I would NOT risk uncontrolled access to that med either. I’ve seen too many other opioid addicts get in trouble with tramadol.
Ironically, back in med school I took an opioid seminar with 5 other students, led by Dr. Sol Snyder, who won the Lasker Award (America’s version of the Nobel in Medicine) for discovering the opioid receptor. I learned a hell of a lot in that seminar, and even more on my own after. Warning: Discovering your passion doesn’t always work out well. :o
Could be; is serving as an example the same as teaching? 
And in the course of my life adventures I’ve been held up as both a bad and a good example. Once by the same news channel, decades apart though. 
I always feel like I’m missing something about the appeal of getting high from drugs or alcohol. I’ve taken Valium and Hydrocodone in small doses over the years and have drank to the point where I remember leaving the bar and getting home, but in between is a blank. I feel light-headed, but it’s not a feeling I really relish. I used to love overdosing on the old formula Nyquil with Pseudoephedrine mainly because it knocked me out completely. The worst / best experience I had with Nyquil was floating above the bed and spinning horizontally. It was interesting, but I’ve had the floating experience without the spinning when I’ve had a high fever and so don’t care to revisit that.
The closest I’ve come to a pleasant drug induced feeling was when I was on Prozac for anger management. It was like Bose speakers - “No highs, no lows”. Everything was just OKAY! I was on the minimum dosage for about six months and when I ended my therapy sessions the Doctor said I could remain on it for the rest of my life or stop if I felt I could mentally continue to handle the emotional swings myself. I chose to stop and have never taken it since. Though sometimes I yearn to go back to that land of smoothness.
How many times did you experience full, complete withdrawal before quitting for good? I may be misremembering but didn’t you say it only took one time? (I use the word “only” very liberally)
Also, isn’t a complication of tramadol the breadth of potential drug interactions with other meds? ETA: Didn’t drug rehab facilities at one point actually use tramadol as a medicine to aid opiod withdrawal?? Gee, I wonder why that might have helped.
Nope, took a lot more than one withdrawal experience.
Tramadol has lots of interactions, but so do a lot of other opioids, and non-opioids too. Maybe a bit worse than average, but not particularly dangerous, IMHO.
And tramadol is pretty good for managing opioid withdrawal, really. No matter what opioid a person has been on, nor how long, nor the dosage, a tramadol taper will be pretty safe and effective. Granted, I tend to use buprenorphine for that purpose, but if the prescriber doesn’t have the special DEA license to prescribe buprenorphine (and no, the standard DEA number won’t work for that, one needs their infamous X number), AND the patient needs withdrawing from opioids, tramadol works just fine. Better than methadone, as far as I’m concerned.
Don’t you run the risk of developing an addiction to the tramadol? Or is it like methadone, where it’s sort of like a last resort where most other options have been attempted? (or am I wrong about that too?)
No, it’s not a last resort. But when dosed properly, i.e. a taper off of it, the end result is a pretty safe, painless detox, resulting in a patient who is not physically addicted to opioids at the end of the process, and also no longer taking any opioids. Keep reducing the dose of the tramadol (or methadone, or oxycodone, or heroin for that matter) and you get the same result.
Just don’t give the patient control of the med, that’s all. Because invariably they won’t follow the dosing plan and end up taking more, not fewer.
If you had hydrocodone with your APAP, then your medication would be characterized as Norco (or Vicodin, depending on when you received the script. at some point in the last few years, the med was reformulated to contain less acetaminophen, due to updated findings about toxicity of APAP).
Bolding mine. That’s a very important and useful statement. The subconscious mind needs to be retrained because the conscious mind isn’t really in control for long.
Same here. Folks in my family have never had much success with opioids. Hydrocodone and its ilk didn’t help my mom with her pain. Dilaudid (synthetic heroin) did nothing for my post-surgical/recovery pain; it just made me hurl up foam (sorry, TMI,but there was nothing in my stomach) and sweat gallons. This went on for 7 or 8 hours. My brother was in the ICU recovering from open heart surgery and whatever narcotic they were giving him sure as hell was not working.
Ibuprofen, Tylenol, or a bit of THC syrup or a nibble of THC gummy works far better for me.
If you don’t see what the big deal is, you haven’t taken it enough. If you want to, save a couple and one day when you don’t have much to do, take them and notice how life is just a little bit easier for a few hours.
Qadgop the Mercaton is a person who always makes a lot of sense. I’ve had Tramadol and Oxycontin (not at the same time) and thought- what is the big deal? My wife had the same thought after shoulder surgery and she taked very few pills (well back then- we are a few years older now).
The only thing that really made me mellow was pethedine and that is not good. Fortunately, I haven’t had it for around 30 years.
Or you’re the kind of person who has an atypical reaction. Alcohol produces the same symptoms as my non-MS so it makes me freak out; when I was given a Xanax all it did was make the world blurry, but they’ve done my mother so much good I wish she’d been given that scrip decades ago (it might have saved me a few hundred bruises); the one time Dad took amphetamines he fell asleep so fast he almost hit his BFF’s feet; the same type of drugs help people with ADHD focus, quieting them, while driving others into hyperactivity.
Biochemistry isn’t as easy as “NaCl plus water makes salty water”.
Conversely, people who have taken it but don’t feel any drive to swallow handfuls to see what happens probably weren’t all that impressed by it. When the supposed answer is “Oh, well you need to take ten at a time” then it’s still valid for people to wonder how folks become addicted starting with legitimate prescription use.
The answer is that some people just don’t react the same way at a chemical level. I assume this thread is very over representative of that population since you’re more likely to post with a “me too” when you relate to the OP.
Another problem with these kinds of drugs is that they can cause severe constipation. So then you’ve got another problem on top of the one you already had.
In the ER with an appendicitis I’d been ignoring for about 10 days (I have a decent pain tolerance). Morphine was offered which I initially waived off. Wife knew what was up though and that I was just being a tough guy. She ‘advocated’ for me and they brought the gravy. Having some experience with illicit drug use (in her very distant past) she was watching me with some amusement as they pushed a dose, expecting to see me relax. Nothing. After the second push, still nothing. No pain relief, no high, just a growing sense of ‘can we just do this operation please?’
A different time I dropped 10mg of valium to counter a panic attack. Now that was something else. Imagine being cold and wet and tired and hungry (like after a particularly miserable & rainy day off the Washington coast in a small open boat trying to convince a salmon to nosh your herring), and then magically being transported to a warm dry place with a yummy sandwich and a comfy chair and the knowledge of a hundred pounds of fresh salmon steaks in the freezer. Valium was like that, mentally. For the first time in what seemed forever, I felt comfortable in my own skin and while I was still aware of the standard adult worries of work, bills, etc. I simply couldn’t get worked up about them. I was able to firmly grasp the perspective in which only the good things in my life mattered, and the other stuff was just trifling crap that could be dealt with. My skin even felt good. That was the only time I can remember pleasantness from valium and quickly built a resistance to it (like, I got half of that feeling the next time and then the universe cut me off)–I can do 20 mg right now and I might get dizzy if I had a light breakfast, so I don’t bother.
I’ve never gotten a pleasant buzz from narcotics.
My first experience was when I had my wisdom teeth out some decades ago. I don’t know that the Percocet helped the pain that much, but it made me not care as much. I took my last one on a Sunday, tried to go to work Monday, stared vacantly at the computer for a bit, and decided I needed to go home. That’s a pattern that has continued whenever I’ve had any mind-numbing medications: I need to be 24+ hours out from the last dose before my brain works.
In general they’ll make me woozy but not in a happy way; I just want to lie down and drool into my pillow until I doze off. After recent surgery, I was on narcotics a lot longer than I’d ever needed them before (nearly 2 weeks); The woozy effect definitely decreased over those 2 weeks, more than a decreased dose would have suggested it would. No “feel good” though at any point, nor did I have trouble coming off them - I’d been decreasing the dosage for uch of that time anyway.
Valium and the like don’t do it for me either. I’ve had Halcion (another benzo) for dental work and it makes me very relaxed (which lets the nitrous help relax me, and both of those let the local anesthesia actually work) but not in a pleasurable way. Ditto Valium: I had some before an MRI a couple years ago. My instructions were “take 1, then take another later if needed”. Well, just before the MRI, I figured it wasn’t working, so I took the second one. Then the floor stopped being perpendicular to my feet - I think the first one kicked in suddenly and I’d already added the second. I was very glad to be able to get horizontal in the machine.
The closest I’ve ever felt to a pleasurable sensation is when I get Propofol or similar for procedural sedation. That very, very brief feeling of the world tilting is kind of entertaining… but only lasts about 2 seconds before the lights go out, so I don’t get to enjoy it. I expect I’d find it fairly unpleasant if that phase lasted any length of time.
That’s a scary prospective to face, thinking that your kids have that potential :(.
There’s a history of alcoholism on my side of the family. My husband and I rarely drink, but we have frequently reminded the kids of the risks. Fortunately, my son has chosen not to drink at all (and can be a bit sanctimonious about it). My daughter bought legal alcohol when she turned 21 - a couple of cans of hard cider. She drank them, but tended to drink a partial can then forget the rest. That was reassuring - as last summer, when we were in Canada, she wanted to order a drink with practically every meal just because she could.