Please let me know if this is better posted elsewhere
i am at my wits end trying to overcome my dependence on painkillers and i need some fresh thinking!
i’ll try and be brief
I was prescribed dihydrocodeine (DHC) about 7 years ago for broken ribs and since then have been using for lower back pain, and dependency
For those who don’t know (i believe it’s quite rare in the US?) DHC is a low to medium strength opioid roughly 2-3 times stronger than Codeine, however my doses are quite high, ranging from 750mg - 1200mg a day, you divide by about 6 for equivalent with Oxy, so maybe 150-200mg a day? (Equivalences are debatable but this is where i ended up with after endless research!)
i am constantly on tapers or planning tapers, which never last + I don’t think CT is an option, i can’t get past the PAWS, last time was 4 years ago and i got through the acutes but relapsed after 3 weeks due to sheer and utter boredom, irritability and depression, everything was grey and joyless and it was so easy to fix it!
The general pattern now looks a bit like this.. i start a taper, stick to rigid dosing times and amounts, go for 2 weeks or so, relapse at a weekend by taking a big dose because, normally, I’m in a good mood and having a good time and i think, ‘hey lets make it better’, then I’m back to square one..planning my next taper. This has been going on for nearly 5 years (the relentless tapering)
The problem i have is i am not sufficiently motivated to quit..my life is pretty good, and has improved over the last 7 years. I’m in a good place with work and my private life, its not perfect, i have debts, a difficult relationship with my ex wife and suffer from occasional bouts of anxiety and depression, but hey, could be a-lot worse, and as i say, hasn’t worsened since i started the DHC, in fact the opposite.
The DHC has just become part of my life, every 7 hours or so my legs ache and i might become a little sweaty, and i take a handful and it goes, and that’s boring but hardly horrific, especially when compared to the millions of people on medication for illnesses etc, but I spend so much time thinking about it and planning on how to quit, and making sure i don’t run out! It has made me less social and marginally less productive, my focus had suffered too. I would love never to have touched the stuff, but there is not enough there to literally make me quit, and therein lies the problem - i really want to quit
i am at my wits end trying to overcome my dependence on painkillers and i need some fresh thinking!
i’ll try and be brief
I was prescribed dihydrocodeine (DHC) about 7 years ago for broken ribs and since then have been using for lower back pain, and dependency
For those who don’t know (i believe it’s quite rare in the US?) DHC is a low to medium strength opioid roughly 2-3 times stronger than Codeine, however my doses are quite high, ranging from 750mg - 1200mg a day, you divide by about 6 for equivalent with Oxy, so maybe 150-200mg a day? (Equivalences are debatable but this is where i ended up with after endless research!)
i am constantly on tapers or planning tapers, which never last + I don’t think CT is an option, i can’t get past the PAWS, last time was 4 years ago and i got through the acutes but relapsed after 3 weeks due to sheer and utter boredom, irritability and depression, everything was grey and joyless and it was so easy to fix it!
The general pattern now looks a bit like this.. i start a taper, stick to rigid dosing times and amounts, go for 2 weeks or so, relapse at a weekend by taking a big dose because, normally, I’m in a good mood and having a good time and i think, ‘hey lets make it better’, then I’m back to square one..planning my next taper. This has been going on for nearly 5 years (the relentless tapering)
The problem i have is i am not sufficiently motivated to quit..my life is pretty good, and has improved over the last 7 years. I’m in a good place with work and my private life, its not perfect, i have debts, a difficult relationship with my ex wife and suffer from occasional bouts of anxiety and depression, but hey, could be a-lot worse, and as i say, hasn’t worsened since i started the DHC, in fact the opposite.
The DHC has just become part of my life, every 7 hours or so my legs ache and i might become a little sweaty, and i take a handful and it goes, and that’s boring but hardly horrific, especially when compared to the millions of people on medication for illnesses etc, but I spend so much time thinking about it and planning on how to quit, and making sure i don’t run out! It has made me less social and marginally less productive, my focus had suffered too. I would love never to have touched the stuff, but there is not enough there to literally make me quit, and therein lies the problem - i really want to quit
but keep up trying to get off it. The fact that you want to quit, despite not having destroyed your life and are not falling apart is great, but the fact that it occupies a lot of your thoughts and is good sign to quit. It is great that you recognized this, without destroying your life is also great.