Combinations - Pain meds

[Jacem5]

Swim has been on 300mgs of ms contin daily and 50mgs of Percocet daily for 3 years now for severe lower back problems.Swim has noticed the dose is not working that well anymore,tolerance going up.Swims question is what is the best combonation in every ones opinion for a.) a long acting pain med and b.) a breakthrough pain med to go with it.Swims DR. is pretty open to swims suggestions and swim feels it's time to either increase the dose of the current meds or try something new.All opinions welcome and appreciated,swim is in a lot of pain and sees the DR.on the 19th and would like some suggestions before then.Swim Thanks you very much.

[Adultswimmer]

First, stop and ask yourself if it really is from pain or are you chasing the dragon? When we first start on pain meds we feel good but after time, we will lose the euphoria and think that means the meds stopped working. There is still a time period where the meds are working but you aren't feeling them. We also have to realize that pain free is never going to happen. I have found that the stronger the pain meds, the faster I build tolerance . Unfortunately, you can go up and up and still have some pain. Your tolerance will increase and increase. I'm not saying this is your situation but just something to think about. It is better to wait sometimes so that your tolerance doesn't go up so fast. But not to the point where you are in agony.

That said, there are still other drugs the doc can try. Morphine, fentanyl, roxy, dilaudid, for example. I would never recommend Demerol, at least not for me. Demerol is such a fast acting med for me that it stops working after an hour. Your dosages can be increased, the short acting meds can be doubled. Also there is no ceiling on Ms contin so your doc may just up that and double the Percocet or switch to something else. He may also add a booster. Wellbutrin seems to help a lot of people when added to the pain med regimen.

My doc told me that Percocet only lasts 3 hours really so you may need to lower the time between doses.

I know your pain. It's not fun to have to go through the agony while waiting to get the meds adjusted. Since each change has to be given time to see if it works, we have to live with the pain until the right combo is hit upon.

Normally I would use SWIM when posting but I don't see the point when talking about legit scripted meds.

[120daysofpoppy]

The way to counter tolerance is to take less often,not larger doses..Taking more, will give you diminishing returns with increased side effects.The hellish path,dont go there...Opiate receptor sites will get distorted with all the meds that use them...So I would take my morphine or poppy tea every two or three days.In between I might use,aspirin,small amounts of gin,pain killing pot,st johns wart,ephedrine tea and study herbal remedy's..There are many,many .Buy seeds from your local etno-botanicls.Make teas and tinctures ,and chose one or two a day..Its the receptor sites that are key, and we want then in tact with low tollerance and the pain killers will work better . One can even get repeated cherry highs for being a connesuir.The winding path to heaven.

[missparkles]

Swim was taking Sevredol 10-20mg (morphine) x4 for liver pain. When she had a bad bout of kidney stones (renal colic) fuckin' pain like swim has never experienced before (and she's had four kids so she knows pain, she was put on 50-100mg of Demerol (pethidine) for breakthrough pain. The doctor also offered her Diazepam to help her relax, but as a recovering addict she decided to keep it to a minimum and only took 10mg of Sevredol on rare occasions.
The high she got scared her, it was too nice.
Now she uses pain relief when she has no other option.
Usually she tries heat packs, relaxation (when she's tense it hurts more) and Ibuprofen.
She also has some 120mg DHC m/r (it's slowly released into swims system so there's less of a high) but she keeps the use of any drugs to a minimum now for obvious reasons.
Swim feels for anyone suffering from long term pain, it's such a damn problem. It affects every area of one's life.
Good luck to swiy in their quest to become pain free.