Forget the painkillers, I'll deal with the pain instead of the demons

[NightWatcher]

Screw Pain, just please don't anyone ever prescribe me anything stronger than Tylenol ever again. I can now add Opiates (hydrocodone and oxycodone) to the list of chemicals I've fought with for my independence.

Sure, a severe posterior dislocated shoulder and the surgery to put it back together with little titanium screws hurt like hell, but at no time during the recovery did I feel spiders climbing every inch of exposed skin. Nor did I have to slap myself in the face during many sleepless nights in an attempt to jar the crazy voices loose.

Nor for that matter was the "anxiety" treated by the Klonopin any bit worse than the hell of shaking that vicious monkey off my back.

From now on, I'm going Old Skool, a gulp of whisky while biting on my leather belt (or Tylenol). Pain is one thing, but the demons are another.


Sorry to get all deep so early in the morning. I'm three days passed all the withdrawals and finally feeling straight again. Good thing too, because I'm stuck on a ship for another 20 days, give or take. The crew calls the 21 day rotations "Sea-jab" and they couldn't be more right.

[Bossy Monkey]

1. Sympathies. The only time I ever needed painkillers was codeine after wisdom teeth withdrawal

and after the technicolor nightmares, I reached the same conclusion you did. Just got by on aspirin thereafter. Hope the dislocated shoulder heals quickly and as pain-free as possible.

[HopeHoops]

2. Just don't mix the Tylenol (or the opiates - they contain acetaminophen) with whiskey.

Livers don't like that.

The trick to the opiates is to treat them strictly as "AS NEEDED" drugs. I mostly rely on ibuprofen, but the opiates are a real help when I have to get something done and my back disagrees. I shattered several vertebrae and went through a bunch of drugs. Straight morphine in the hospital was the best at relieving pain. Fentanyl almost completely knocked it out but made me puke constantly and the flying monkeys were starting to get annoying. I also didn't like having something in my system that has a half-life. Hydrocodone wasn't bad, but not strong enough. The oxycodone does the trick and when it is gone six hours after taking it, it is totally gone. I'm cool with that. I rarely take two doses in a row and vary the quantity by how much relief I need. I can go several days without it so I'm not really worried about addiction. Still, I can't see using it as a recreational drug. It doesn't kick in quickly enough for that and the "weirdness" factor is pretty low. Nothing at all like a bud of red-haired killer weed through a bong filled with whiskey.