After being diagnosed with a tumor at the base of my spine, I went through 2 years of the doctors trying everything for my pain. Eventually I was up to large doses of whatever they were trying at the time. I ended ip with opana er 80 mg 3 times a day along with 130 mg oxycodone every 2 hours. The opana didn't seem to make a difference so I stopped taking it and now the only thing that allows me to function daily is 130 mg of oxycodone every 2 hours. Like me, I don't think anything will make you pain free, but to function, you may have to really talk to your doctor and explain what you're going through.
I realize it's an extremely high dose and not everyone can talk their Dr. into it because most would simply think you're a drug seeker. I'm very lucky to have the PM doctor I have.
Dr. Jerome Groopman wrote several books, including the famous one "How doctors think". He wrote an article on spinal pain for the New Yorker available on Google search. You need to read his stuff and contact a p[ain spdcialist who knows what they are doing. Such pain is often due to glial cell stimulation which does not respond to opiates. Ablating the nerves if only one answer. Groopman determined that pain is conditionable, and subject to alteration, and may be significantly diminished or eliminated. I had nerve pain resulting in arm and hand paralysis, which was not treatable by drugs, and after following treatments and protocols such as those recommended by Groopman, ended up with no pain.
Preacher, unfortunately, with chronic spine pain, opiate-based analgesics only reduce pain by a few points at most.
I too have advanced arthrosis of the cervical and lumbar facet joints. I've found some relief through integrative pain management techniques, specifically neurotomy (nerve destruction) of the medial branch nerves that innervate the diseased facet joints.
This is an outpatient procedure where the doc uses a probe to ablate the nerves supplying the joints at specific levels using radio frequency energy. The procedure is done under conscious sedation and is over in 30 minutes. After a week of so of recovery, it can reduce my facet syndrome related pain by half. Alas, the nerves grow back, and the procedure has to be repeated every year or so.
RF ablation works better than any other modality I've tried in over 30 years of neck and back pain.