PLEASE HELP ME...

Dear lonely,

No wonder you are lonely! Your husband is an addict, abusing his medication. Get therapy immediately. If he wont' go - do it for yourself.

Best,
Cary

Thank you both so much for your responses.

So you're both telling me that you don't nod out the way he does because you take pain meds, EVEN WHEN YOU ARE TIRED?  And, you don't stay up all night long, and people don't have to repeatedly wake you up when they're trying to have a conversation with you. 

He has been taking his meds this way for two years, and as far as I know, he hasn't increased the amount of oxycodone he takes.  Shouldn't he have a tolerance by now, and need to increase the amount he takes to get the same effect?  Of course he may be trading his methadone for other things.  I just don't know.  I cannot trust him at all, because he has NEVER taken his pain meds as prescribed, but he keeps telling me it's because methadone is so bad for you, and that I should be happy, because he still has half of his methadone script left at the end of each month.  This is suppossed to mean that he takes fewer pills each month by taking them the way he takes them as oppossed to the way the doctor has prescribed them to be taken. 

When I complain that he's not "emotionally present", he tells me this is because the pain meds block the pain to the brain, and also block his emotions?

Is there ANY way that what he's telling me about using all the oxycodone during the first two weeks of each month, and then using some of the methadone to keep from getting drug sick the second two weeks of the month could possibly be "just what works best for him and his pain" as he tells me?

Thank you all again.  I so need to hear what all of you have to say.  PLEEEEASE continue to answer my posts.  Please tell me what it's like when you take pain meds.  

Crohnie 1985,

He detoxed from oxycontin and fentanyl 2 1/2 years ago, so no longer takes either of those meds.  Do you feel there's any way that the way he now takes his oxycodone and methadone is as he tells me "just what works for him and his pain", and that the way he acts is "just the way everyone on pain meds acts when they are tired"? 

Do you stay up all night long, eating sweets, nodding out, smoking cigarettes because you are tired and you take pain meds?

Thank you.

sjkly,

Yes, you do remember my original posts.  Thank you.

Do you act the way he acts when you take pain meds...up all night, nodding, eyes half closed, falling asleep in the middle of conversations when you take your pain meds and are tired?

 

PAlady,

Thank you.  Yes, you are right.  I have changed my screen name.

Could you tell me how to go about looking up my original posts please?

lonely-
I am a little unusual. I have very odd responses to even pretty mild pain meds-codiene works for fourteen hours or more for me. But the whole time I am groggy, asleep or dizzy.
Most people taking pain meds as needed/prescribed would be functional on their meds though some would be prone to nodding off if they were not engaged in something-like might fall asleep in front of the TV. Cronic pain might keep you up at night but your husbands behavior is beyond that he is an addict, his drugs are organizeing and controlling his life and he is abusive to you and you son.
Sj

Your husband may have legitimate chronic pain, but it's a real challenge when someone is an addict, or has addictive tendencies, to treat chronic pain. Most of us know we will become dependent on certain medications; that's just how the body works. But if you take them as prescribed, you are not abusing. Many people have genetic predispositions to addiction, something that no one can control, and if exposed to enough addictive drugs - be they medicaiton, alcohol, etc. - they will begin abusing because their body may develop tolerance much faster for a variety of reasons.

There are protocols in addiction centers for treating chronic pain; usually a doctor with a specialty (called an addictionologist) is involved in managing the pain. Your husband probably won't be thrilled about this, to say the least. As I said to you earlier, and in the posts under your other screen name, YOU need to get support and help for yourself first. And from people who understand addiction. Then you won't be in this alone, and you will know more clearly what your choices are. You can't force your husband to change, and if you could influence him on your own it would have already happened. I know you will have to do some difficult things, make some difficult choices, but the fact you're back posting with the same problems as a few weeks ago tells me nothing is getting better. And in the case of addiction if it's not getting better, it's getting worse. Bottom line is addiction, if untreated, is a fatal disease. But there is treatment. Start with yourself first.

Thanks everyone.  Y'all will never know how much it helps to have the support of others when going through something like this.  I think I have things all settled in my mind, and believe that he is definately an addict, but then he starts in all over again trying to convince me that he is not an addict.  His main argument, and the one that gets me every time thinking I may be wrong about him, is his argument about......."my doctor will only write scripts for 3-15 mg. tabs of oxycodon and 3-15 mgs. of methadone a day (because he told the doctor he's had trouble with opiates in the past).  That's not enough to control my pain, so I double up and use all the oxycodone, and none of the methadone for the first two weeks of the month, and have good pain relief for the first two weeks of each month, and then use the methadone for the second two weeks of each month to keep from getting drug sick, and the methadone also gives a little pain relief, but not like the oxycodone.  In taking the meds this way, I am taking fewer pills each month, because I don't take any of the methadone during the first two weeks of each month with the oxycodone (as prescribed), and I still have half the script of methadone left at the end of each month". 

You are all telling me that what my husband is telling me above is a bunch of BS, and that he couldn't possibly be telling it as it truly is?  Coule you all please tell me why you believe he couldn't possibly be telling the truth above?  I need to be very sure of these things.

Thank you all so much for your support.

Something doesn't make sense???? He uses his meds the 1st two weeks and then uses methadone the rest of the month to avoid getting dope sick, but, the excuse he uses to "double, triple up" is that the MD doesn't prescribe enough meds to touch pain management---but he manages the last half of the month without the oxycodone. Did I get that right? Excuses, excuses, excuses.

How does he manage work, is what I want to know? What exactly is his medical condition?

I have never stayed up all night eating sweets, watching T.V., etc.--sounds like what addicts do. I need approx. a good nine hours sleep a night to manage all the fatigue my chronic illnesses cause me.

I feel for you, b/c this is your husband were talking about. A friend of mine went through this with her husband some time ago, he was addicted to heroin. But b/c he had a very good high paying job, owned a home, had a wife, etc. he convinced himself he was managing it. The only thing that worked for them was she moved out, told him that she wasn't going to be there to watch him slowely die. It took approx. three months for him to get that his "perfect" world was crashing, but he eventually got himself into treatment, NA, etc. But he did it all on his own. He's been sober nine years now. Good luck, my thought are with you.

 

Thank you everyone.  A little more in the way of explanation.....my husband works a full time job, on his feet for 8 hours at a time (against his doctor's advice) as  he has had 2 back surgeries, carries a diagnosis of spinal stenosis, herniated discs (neck and back), degenerative disc disease, and bone spurs in his neck and shoulder.  He also has osteoarthritis.

Our son also suffers with chronic pain, and is prescribed oxycontin.  He has abused this in the past.  I don't know what he is doing with his pain meds now, but I do know that my husband traded some of his methadone (during the second two weeks of a month) with our son for some of our son's oxycontin.  My husband told me he asked our son to do this, because he was having a very bad pain day. 

If my husband is an addict, how is it that the amount of the oxycodone he takes has never increased?  He is able to work a full time job, but when he is home he is up all night, and half asleep whenever I try to talk to him?  He dozes off and on through the night in front of the t.v., and goes to bed for an hour or two when I get up at 6 a.m.?  He tells me the only person he has any trouble with is me! 

 

"You are all telling me that what my husband is telling me above is a bunch of BS, and that he couldn't possibly be telling it as it truly is? Could you all please tell me why you believe he couldn't possibly be telling the truth above? I need to be very sure of these things."


Hi Lonely,

I think that you have been given very good advice about seeking professional, drug counseling advice. I also think that you are dealing with an addict however reluctant I am to pre-judge anyone.....

that being said, I will try to answer some of your specific questions based on my own experience with methadone and oxycodone ( I take 10mg methadone a day and 30 mg oxycodone a day).

In my case, I rarely if ever, feel sleepy with my meds - even on those occasions when I have to double up for pain. But like a poster wrote previously, we all react differently. However, usually once a person becomes tolerant to the side-effects of meds like opioids, sleepiness, dizziness, itchiness, and even euhporia (not everyone gets this) is gone (about the only side effect that we don't get tolerant to is constipation). If I have a bad pain flare that lasts a few days and my meds don't help much, once it calms down I may be much more tired in that case and will spend more time in bed once I finely get relief....but I do not get that reaction from my normal dosage. Like my pain doc says, we prescribe at the level that keeps you participating in life - not lets you escape from life. If his dosage is so high that it knocks him out, than it needs adjusting / changing. My understanding is that if a dose is causing you to fall asleep then you are taking too much and you need to reduce it....this was a "rule of thumb" that my pain doc told me as a way to monitor day-to-day use......

As far as his claim that his using all his oxycodone the first part of the month and the methadone the last part of the month......I find that logic questionable. First of all I question this because he is going against his doctor's recommendation and this is a big red flag; anyone with long term pain control with narcotics realize that it is his or her responsibility to never go against the doctors advice. If the drug regimen is not working, you tell the doc and you work until you find one that does....you do not experiment to that degree (like your husband is doing) on your own. "Sneaking" like it seems he is doing is not he usual behavior of the usual pain patient. Secondly, based on my experience only, methadone and oxycodne taken together on the recommended schedule works much better than either of them taken alone. Methadone is a type of drug that needs to be taken regularly so it builds-up in the system - it is much, much more effective for pain control if taken on schedule EVERY DAY - it is not a very good immediate relief pain medicine like the oxycodone. Plus methadone can be very dangerous if taken in an attempt to control acute pain flares - taken like you would immediate release medicines. This is because it builds up in your tissues and is released back into your blood stream - so that it is much more easier to OD on methadone than other drugs in this scenario: you feel pain, you take more, pain is not addressed within an hour or so, so you take even more and finally you hit the OD level before you have any pain control. Not a responsible way to deal with pain. The other thing with Mehtadone is that people seldom get a "high" with it like they can with other narcotics......so the fact that he is using up his oxycodone during the first weeks of the month makes me think he is taking it for the "high" and then using the methadone for maintenance (or to prevent withdrawal symptoms) like you mentioned. And oxycodone (the immediate release kind) has lots of peaks and valleys during the day (it peaks in your blood about 2 hours after taking it and bottoms out at about 4 hours). So when taking oxycodone alone you have lots of pain variation during the day. But taking methadone and oxycodone together you get very good pain control for the most part: you get the long acting effect of the methadone - the evening out of the pain - and the ability to dampen down the ups and downs of the pain cycles that hit during a normal day. Together they can be very effective; taken separately like he is doing, probably makes the pain worse.....

Now there is no doubt that methadone may not work for all people who need pain control but if that is the case with your husband, then he should be telling his pain doc that and together they should be finding a drug combination that will work. The fact that he is not discussing this with his doc suggests to me that either he does not trust his doc or that he knows he is violating a responsible use of the meds. Everyone deserves adequate pain control for chronic pain - even prior or current addicts. But when prescribing for an addict, there needs to be a very special relationship and dosing schedule / oversight with / by a MD who specializes in addiction medicine. I fear that your husband is probably one of those unfortunate percent of pain patients who are addicted to their meds. He definitely needs help of an expert.

Lonely,
I think you have been given a lot of excellent information here, but even you can see it all points in one direction. However, as someone suggested this is just a forum; it's not a substitute for in-person medical care. No one here can do that, and as I said earlier I don't think you're going to believe things until you hear it from a doctor who's knowledgeable in addictions, and who is standing in front of you (or maybe on the phone). Even then it's going to be difficult to accept, but you know nothing is improving; quite the opposite.

So please, get an evaluation of your situation by a qualified addictions counselor, and let him/her help you sort all this out. We can be here for support, but we can't replace treatment.

Please take care of yourself and your son!