Your post is now on page two so I am posting a new one here. If you were to stop taling the lorcet now, yes you would have withdrawal symptoms. Studies and research has found that the severity and length od withdrawal is directly related to the amount of the drug and how long it was taken. Since you are at a steady dose of two a day, your body is getting its endorphind from the pills and still producing some of its own natural endorphins. The more you increase the dose, the less of your natural endorphins your body produces. So when you stop cold turkey your body has to learn how to produce its natural endorphins again and for someoone on very high doases who keeps upping the dose to get high-their body will create more and more opiate receptors throughout the brain, spinal cord, lungs, large intestine and heart to receive all of the opiates it is getting and their withdrawal will be more severe and last longer. If you stopped now your w/d should not be as severe as the scenario I just gave you b/c your body is still producing some of its own endorphins and has not been forced to create more opiate receptors. So your body would be trying to make up for the opiates you have been getting from the pills and learning how to regulate them again and that is how long the withdrawal period would last.

You do build a tolerance over time to drugs and that is normal. So sometime down the road you may need 2 1/2 a day or 3 a day to relieve the pain and that is fine as long as you just take what you need to relieve pain. Often times when my patients build a tolerance to their meds I will switch the meds to a different type of opiate like ultram, this is usually very effective because it increases serotonin and norepinephrine as well as endorphins and the three together can be very effective against pain and I only know a handful of people who can get high from large doses of ultram so it really has almost no potential for abuse. For patients in severe pain I might switch them to codeine or morphine, sometimes darvocet( its a mild opiate but works very well for some) from hydrocodone when they build a tolerance, I do not like to give oxycodone much b/c it has such a high potential for abuse so I try oly to give it when absolutely no other meds can give pain relief. So if you are uncomfortable taking more when you eventually build a tolerance you might want to ask your doctor about some of these or other alternatives like flexeril which is a muscle relaxant that can be used with your lorcet and might allow you to not have to increase when you build a tolerance. There are always plenty of alternative combinations!

xoxo- D.