Withdrawal/Withdrawal/Withdrawal

sorry for the pains and withdrawal---like all crohnies we are all different and react different to meds.
pains and yes even withdrawal---cymbalta seems to help with the pains and anxiety or depression
from all the crohns meds.the disease alone is bad enough but add all the meds. we take makes things a
triple dose---there are some non-narotic sleep aids such as ambein cr--comes in different mgs.ultram-
i hope this works--just remember you arenot alone ''crohns stinks''as a chronic disease--just take 1 day
at a time--wishing you pain-free days...

i have ankylosing spondylitis, its a auto immune disease like rheumatoid arthritis and it caused me more pain then i can tell you. stiffening of back, paion in my legs and neck all the time. when i first fealt all this pain noone believed me and called me a drug seaker whenever i asked for painmeds. it took 5 years to get diagnosed with AS and only then did my doctor give me pain meds. I started with vicodin and ended up taking 20 mg oxycontin at least 5-6 times a day. now, when i started i didnt want to become addicted, i need the relief and it gave it to me. it fealt good, to good and a year later i was hopelessly addicted--or so i thought:)

All it took to stop taking Oxy was one good weekend with nothing so important i coudnt just camp out in bed for a couple of days. It took me 2 days to get over the real Heebie-Jeebies of withdrawal and the third and the fourth got much better. i am not going to lie to you and say it was easy, but, if you have ever had a real bad flue like mono and you got through that, well, you can do this. DO NOT leave a stash of pills in your house. take your last pills in the morning and while you are high (brave) rip up prescriptions, call your doctor tell them you are not taking them anymore, and ceremoniously flush any remaining pills down the TOILET! I promise you if you do this you will get off of them. if you have a husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend, or someone who loves you that can be their with you then all the better. you will feel better just talking about it and maybe having a laugh every now and then.
Also, before you start go to your local store and buy KAVA, Velarian, Melatonin and any kind of good tasting relaxation tea. these are all good herbs that are NOT drugs and really really do help you with anxiety and all that. and if you cant sleep take Unisom, all it is is a antihistamine like benydryl. NOT addicting. dont take to much KAVA though because your body has to process it through your liver but you can take it alot.
i hope this helps someone.... you can do it no matter who you are! BE BRAVE!!!!!

Fortunately Valerian is NOT a drug and is safe in moderate quantities. On the other hand the FDA is raising warnings about Kava Kava because of its affect on the liver. Everything in moderation:)

Thank you for the posts.

Today started like most days, with the pain,nausia,anxiety,deppressed everything. I felt so bad, I was almost in tears. I know my wife loves me so much, I fear that my illness is putting so much stress on our marriage. she tries so hard to get me up and out of the bed everyday. I fear she is getting sick of hearing me whine about my woes. and I don't want her to feel it's something she is doing wrong.  I just don't know what to do, we openly talk about my situation and I know she is doing everything she knows to support me. How I wish this thing would give me a break, I think I am going downhill, I am only 46, I feel so mixed up and hopeless. I just want to be happy and enjoy my life.

P.S. I will explore some of the suggestions from the replies.

 

Valerian root is considered an herbal drug because of the effects it has on the central nervous system. Anything acting on the central nervous system is a type of drug. Thats why there are herbalists becuase anything taken internally can be dangerous if consumed in large quantity. Drug does not always mean chemical compound. Opium is all natural and a drug. Cocain is all natural but a drug, illicit and natural(as cocain has been used for many medicinal reasons especially in the early world wars) And as topical pain killers. Kava also works on the central nervous ststem but has more adverse side effects in individuals. Just because mother nature made it, doesnt mean it cant be used as a drug. Valarian root id genrally safe,but genrally safe doesnt mean safe for all. It can and does produce euphoria if taken in excess. You become gitty. You should use causion when internally taking any compound chemical or natural.

I do not get this idea that anything from the Earth or anything 'Natural' is better than a synthesized chemical. That is a completely ridiculous statement. Strychnine, a potent poison is found in many plants. In fact, a huge number plants are not safe to eat (as the primary part of ones diet). By that I mean if one were to go out into a park and live off of whatever plants are there, it is likely that very few are safe to eat as your primary source of food because they contain poisons that build up and will harm you (or possibly are toxic enough to make you ill with one time eating them), or they may have other defense measures.

Secondly a compound that is found in nature can be synthesized in the lab and it will be EXACTLY the same. There is no difference between the chemicals. The compound can also be isolated from the plants it is contained in and purified, thus allowing exact dosing, which is far safer than eating plant matter and trying to guestimate a dose (something that is impossible due to the fact that concentrations of chemicals vary from one plant to the next in the same species, even when grown in the same conditions). Take, for example, vanillin, the compound that is responsible for the smell that you and I know as vanilla and most of the taste. It occurs naturally in the beans of certain orchids, and it can be purified from those to produce vanillin. It also can be synthesized from various sources to make the same compound. These two compounds are EXACTLY the same, in every way, except for in the way they were produced. Either of these can be used for the same purpose in chemistry, assuming it is practical to isolate the vanillin completely from orchids (another reason why synthetics are in fact superior to natural products: they are totally pure->99%-, or they can easily be made that way). I could go on and on with various examples: Morphine can be made in the lab or taken from the Poppy plant. Codeine can then be synthesized from either of those kinds of pure morphine , or it too can be extracted from the poppy, though it is in smaller amounts than morphine in the plant. All of these types of Codeine will be identical, despite their source: synthesized from synthetic morphine=synthesized from natural morphine=extracted from the poppy.

The idea that natural products are somehow 'superior' or 'healthier' than synthetic ones is, I quite strongly believe, a product of uninformed health-food types who are taught this by companies that sell 'herbal remedies' or 'organic ___' and make an enormous profit off of this misinformation. I will sum it up just to be clear, THERE IS NOTHING INTRINSICALLY BAD about SYNTHETIC CHEMICALS OR DRUGS, NOR IS THERE ANYTHING INTRINSICALLY GOOD about NATURAL CHEMICALS AND DRUGS, both can be extremely harmful, extremely helpful, a mixture (as is the case most often), or neutral.

As for Valerian root, I will admit I do not know a whole wealth of information about it, though I do know a decent amount. It is not the same kind of drug as Valium exactly (though they work in similar ways), only in so far as there is some GABAA activity shown by valerian in some studies and Benzos also act on the GABAA receptors. However most believe that valerian's action is due to the fact that it has high concentrations of the actual amino acid GABA, which binds to the GABAA receptors and causes its effects. The body also releases GABA at times, Valerian simply increases the concentration to cause its effect. Benzos on the other hand actually bind to the receptor themselves, 'change the shape of the receptor' to allow GABA to have a higher affinity for the receptor and thus bind more strongly and cause stronger effects than normal. Alcohol also works on these receptors, as do barbituates.

Yes, valerian can be dangerous, as it acts centrally on the GABA recptors which can cause profound intoxication and even death if they are too satuarated. They also potentiate the effect of other CNS depressants (which Valerian is one also), so if one is on opioids, or benzos, or drinking, or whatever, I dont think it would be advisable to take Valerian root and it is possible that if you ingested too much it could cause some problems w/ the other meds. It also really impossible to tell if it is a safe dose or not (if you are on other meds esp.) BECAUSE it is an 'nutritional supplement', and as such in the US it is not regulated by the FDA. And like I said earlier, because it is a 'natural product' it is really impossible to predict the dosage in each pill because every plant varies in strength, not to mention the fact that because it is not FDA regulated each pill could vary even in the weight of the plant matter inside. This is why I feel 'herbal' drugs are inferior to synthetics, because they cannot be adequately standardized.

I hope that this post helps clear up some off this stuff about Valerian (plus Gramps' post had a lot of great info on it), and also that my stuff on natural vs. synthetic does not cause too much of a ruckus. Though I would be happy to try and answer any questions or doubts someone might have on my idea to the best of my ability, and if I cannot I will simply tell you that (though I doubt that will happen;) ).

Hope everyone has a pain-free weekend,
Circa

PS Quahog- Cocaine actually is in Coca leaves and is natural, it simply has to be isolated to have the strong effect that you see from the street drug cocaine. Coca leaves also contain a bunch of other alkaloids apparently that are not as powerful (or at least not as euphoric) and probably have some bad effects too if taking in high doses, so getting a large portion of pure cocaine powder eliminates having to take the high doses of the other, less attractive alkaloids, for someone to get high; it also allows for other methods of administration (smoking, snorting, shooting up, etc.), that is something that is useful for its medical applications also , especially when they first isolated it. Also it allows one to know the exact amount of the drug being used in a medical setting. That is why I think that they isolate cocaine (but I am 100% positive that it is found in the Coca leaf).

Post Edited (Circa1988) : 2/16/2008 4:23:41 AM (GMT-7)

When chemicals are used to extract a something from a plant, it does not change the structure (that is unless the chemist wants to, but than he is synthesizing something, not extracting). Chemistry is predictable, just like math, it is very possible to predict what will happen when something is added to something else. Alcohols are usually used as solvents only (i.e. a place for the compound to dissolve into), ammonia is a weak base and can be used to raise the PH of the solution which, in turn, can cause certain substances that are in solution to precipitate out in solid form (or go into solution if you want). Most opioids actually, are not from the poppy plant, and are actually synthetic, based on the structure of morphine, with a 2 Carbon chain connected to a aromatic ring. From that base structure, changes can be made that change the potency, duration, intensity, and other effects of the opioid which is why there are so many types of pain meds, and why they all work differently for different people. But just because something has had chemicals in its presence does not mean it has reacted with them to form a new compound, in fact most reactions have to be kind of pushed along and will only happen under controlled circumstances. Despite that, even IF, some sort of side reaction caused impurities to form, they can be extracted out, and the purity of the final product can be checked using various methods ( TLC, GCMS) to ensure that the product is pure and is the compound that it is supposed to be. So when morphine is taken out of the poppy plant, yes it is the exact same as the morphine in the poppy plant. They can change small things like adding salts to it (as in Morphine Sulfate, or Morphine HCL) to change some of the physical properties to make it better for certain methods of administration, but those salts simply break off when it enters the body and the morphine is processed just the same and has the same effects. The idea that body recognizes herbal meds as 'food' but synthetic medications as something else is just too far off to get into, the body processes everything by the same methods, but depending on their makeup they end up being processed differently. Chemicals are separated from nutrients in your body and distributed and broken down separately. So, that morphine from the poppy tea is processed the same in the body as the morphine from the pill. The only problem is its impossible for you to know how much morphine you take if you make it from poppy tea and it is possible to overdose, that is why synthetics are better, and safer. They allow for more precise dosing of known compounds with desirable effects. Rather than having to have to consume all of the alkaloids of the plant (some of which are quite dangerous in larger amount, thebaine for example is a convulsant), and not know how much of them one is taking.

The compounds would not have the same name (IUPAC name that is), formula and all other distinguishing properties in common if they were not the same between the natural and synthetic forms. It can also be checked using methods like GCMS or TLC again, to see if the morphine from a plant is the same as morphine made synthetically, same with other compounds. I cannot see why people have trouble believing this, but it is very much true. Compounds found in nature can be made in a lab and will be the same in every way, there is no doubt about it. That is a scientific fact, well and long accepted among all people who work in science fields.

Also-
Ma Huang comes from the Ephedra plant, which contains Ephedrine on its own. People merely can extract the ephedrine from this to get it in its pure form and have known dosages of it, instead of an unknown dose in Ma Huang tea they made. The plant does have to be destroyed to extract the chemical, the walls have to be pulverised and crushed to make sure it releases the alkaloids, but it does not effect the chemical at all, the chemical remains intact and is the same when it is pure as when it was in the plant.

Post Edited (Circa1988) : 2/16/2008 5:00:00 PM (GMT-7)

Good luck to you

It is not that I do not think that all herbs are bad, or that all man-made medications are good. Of course there some in both categories that be extremely bad for you, my point was only that there is nothing good about herbs simply because they are natural. Just as there is nothing good about man-made chems just because they are man made. Each individual compound has to be judged on its own merit, that is my point, and that believing that 'everything that is natural is automatically good' can be a very dangerous idea if someone does not research each individual herb or the active alkaloids in each herb before taking them. The same goes for man-made drugs. My overall point is really that a person should research everything they take natural and synthetic, including asking their doctor if their is any danger with the substance, because not every natural compound is automatically 'good for you.' Obviously the same goes for synthetic compounds.