New Medication update

Well I am now past 2 weeks on my new medication methadone.  To catch you up if you have missed my situation I was on oxycontin and oxycodone and thought I was either becoming addicted or dependent only later to find out that I was truley DEPENDENT on the oxyontin.  My tolerance had shot of because I had been on it so long.  I was honest with my PM doc and we decided to go with the methadone.  I have been on a slow ascend of the medication.  I am now on 50mg a day.  I am still having trouble with pain (I am never 100% pain free).  I was told that the methadone had to build up in your system so I am letting it do just that before I make any decisions.  Also there are some side effects such as constipation which I am sure will go away soon and I cannot sleep.  The no sleep thing is really getting to me.  My PM doc said nothing can be taken for sleep as it interacts with the methadone.  Also I have heard alot of folks online say that you have to be real carefull with methadone as it stays with you for a long time and can build up in your system.  Like I said , I have been on it for over 2 weeks now and my results so far are as follows:  the oxycodone products work better on the pain and the methadone does not help as much with the pain but does keep it down some and lasts longer.  ALso my doc says breakthrough meds are not supposed to be taken with methadone which I cannot understand because I think I need them.  I actually think that if I took the methadone with a short acting med I might actually be able to live with it.  But since my PM doc says they are not suppossed to be taken together that eliminates that solution.  Does anyone know why you are not supposed to take short acting breakthrough meds with methadone?  I have also seen on this forum that some of you are taking methadone with short acting meds for breakthrough (in fact I think most of you who are on methadone have a short acting medicine). I am sort of stuck in a catch 22 here for the time being.  One medication works on the pain better with fewer side effects (oxycontin) while the other medication lasts a bit longer (methadone).  Which one do I go with.  I quess I will stick with the methadone for the time being just to see if it maybe gets better.  If it does not improve I will have a talk with my PM doc.  I wish we had it easier than we do. 

Thank you to all of you and I hope you all feel as good as God will allow.

Hi Shaw,

I am so glad Rhonda saw your post, she is our very own expert here on Methadone. She is right about switching pain meds if you are already on Methadone. Rhonda a while back was not sure if the Methadone was working much and she tried to switch to a different medication and she was not successful in getting off the Methadone. Something you need to understand Methadone is intended for long term useage only, it is not a short term use drug. It has the half life to it and thats why your dr is being as cautious as he is. It's  like Rhonda said, the drs own decision on whether he will allow BT meds for people on Methadone. Methadone is definetly not a drug to monkey around with. It can be an excellent source of pain relief for many. You must realize that people with CP are never 100 % pain free, that will not happen. The only way any of us could be pain free is if we were drugged out to the point of being a zombie. Never take more than what is being prescribed by your physician. It is an easy drug to overdose on particularly taking more than what is prescribed. People go to sleep and never wake up again when they have done this. The very best thing you can do for yourself is educate yourself about Methadone. We had some older threads here on Methadone and there was some very valuable info on those threads. Maybe you can do a search and find the threads.

Take care and let us know how you are coming along.