Have Pain but addiction to Oxycontin also

[angeldotcom]

I have awful pain for 10 years to where I am in bed most of the time . I was put on 80mg oxycontin 2 a day plus percert 2 a day plus 20 mg oxycontin very quick when first started having bad pain .I was on lorcet 10mg before that but was for my other pain not the real bad pain anyway doctor should have increased me over time I see now . My question is what about suboxone me taking ? ,My friend has neck pain bad and said when she switch to suboxone she does not hurt much plus can do things like she drank 5 pots of coffee .I also heard a few years ago that if u take Suboxone and other pain meds u will get sick is this so ? They said u have to be in withdraws 2 or 3 days to start it . I need off the oxycontin its killing me .I still hurt very bad plus can't hardley do anything very weak . I only get feeling a little better  when I take one long enough for a shower then have to take a nap . I wake up sometimes snezzing and eyes water that sounds like withdraw but how could that be when I take my meds ? I am so weak that I only get out of the house like 3 times a month thats cause I have to . I have more questions tell me about Opana will that help me ? What do I do when I have awful pain and also addicted to pain meds ? Its a cycle to be honest I hate pain meds anyone who wants them to get high better think about what they are doing to there life .

[Supermompenny]

I am a 49 year old female with Osteogenisis Imperfecta. I have had over 250 cases of broken bones, I have no fluid left in my back and am in severe pain most of the time. I was ready to give up on life about 8-9 years ago and someone suggested Methadone. I had nothing to live for so I started taking it, got up to 90mg every 6 hours and stayed there for 2 years. I didn't like how heavy I was getting so a doctor suggested I try and lower it so I went down to 40mg  every 6 hours. My family doctor wasn't happy but started writting perscriptions for 480 a month instead of 960 in about Febuary. Well in the end of April I tried to switch to another family doctor that can't prescribe Opiodes because of his contract with the clinic he is with. I tried to go back to my Primary but she had refused to take me back. I have called, had refurrels, visited, over 50 other docters to no prevail. I have no choice but to quit taking it. I'm not Medi-Cal and barely can afford food once a day, what can I do to get off the Methadone and Norco(1-3 every 6 hours)? Please help me, I'm scared, in so much pain, I have decreased my meds to 20mg Methadone & 1 Norco twice a day. By the way I have been in a wheelchair since I was 3 and if I get tired or run down I fall and get hurt. I can't afford any more breaks. Please help me!!!

[Julia M Aharonov, DO]

It is entirely possible that you have developed a tolerance to medication you are taking which necessitates you to take higher doses for similar or less amount of pain.  You also may have developed what we call "hyperalgesia", the condition in which your body experiences more pain than there is actual physical cause for.  That condition is caused by prolonged use of narcotics.  In such case, discontinuation of all opiates and resetting your body back to "normal" will actually allow you and your doctor to reevaluate your pain and treat it more appropriately.
Unfortunately withdrawal is not easy as you well know by now.  Going cold turkey for you would be highly unpleasant and I would not recommend it.  Cutting down slowly takes a lot of discipline and only you can judge if you possess such hard to come by trait.
Long term detox programs are very costly, but sometimes are partially covered by insurance.  They use some medications to make withdrawal more tolerable, but not by much.  They also utilize a lot of group therapy which may be very helpful.  
Suboxone is another valid option. It is an opioid agonist/antagonist medication that is widely advertised and widely used by many physicians as a detox option. Substituting narcotics for Suboxone and then slowly tapering it off allows the body to adjust slowly and not to have to go through the agony of withdrawals.   The problem with Suboxone that we see in our clinic is that a subset of patients gets addicted to Suboxone as well and then we have to detox them off of it.  So you can often end up substituting one addiction for another.
Another option is the type of detox we do in our clinic called rapid detox, for more info you can just click on my name and look at the clinic website.  If it is something you think we can help you with, feel free to call and we will answer your questions. Especially look into the Naltrexone implant that blocks the opioid receptors for two months definitely assisting recovery greatly.
I wish you all the very best.