[Lovemyhubby]

My husband was injured in 1998. He has been on so many medications since then. He has always convinced me that "all they do is help the pain".
Getting his prescriptions filled means more than anything else.
I can't count on him to do anything he says, but I know if his prescriptions are running low, he is on the phone with the pharmacy.
He says that it is only "so he can feel SOMEWHAT normal".
Since about Sept 2007 he doesn't get out of the house, except late at night to run to the store. I plan things, we never do them.
He sleeps all day. He used to have 2 jobs in the house, doing laundry and putting out the trash. Now he doesn't put the trash out until I tell him and he doesn't do the laundry.
We do nothing. He always says he doesnt feel good.
He has severe stomach problems, that I think are associated with his prescriptions.
He tells me he wants to get off all this medication, but he is waiting for the approval for the pain specialist.
He is currently on MS Contin, another Morphine Sulfate (I think it is time released), Soma, Donnatol, and has the Duragesic patches.
His shoulder has been bothering him for a little over a week.
Tonight he said he was in so much pain. He took 4 Soma's and a Donnatol.
He stood up and almost fell down.
I don't know what to do. We have been together for 15 years. I was only 18 when I met him and he has always had an excuse for this. He really has me believing him. I don't want to lose him and I don't know what to do.
He does not think that he has any problem. He thinks that it is prescribed by his doctor and it doesn't get him high, so nothing is wrong.
What should I do?

[Daigaisai_Taren]

Dude, he's not an addict...I mean he is...but he's not doing that stuff to get high, and any euphoria he's getting from is is just a nice side effect. He's in pain, people who are in pain take pain meds, lots of them. Things like taking stuff and almost falling down happen because his tolerance is high, so it takes a lot to relieve the pain, enough so that side effects (such as messing up his balance) are much more pronounced, because tolerance doesn't affect all of those. If he places a high priority on getting his medication, it' probably because without it, he's in pain. He's definitely physically dependent, so without pain killers, he'll be in worse pain if he runs out than he was to begin with. He sleeps all day because of the increased sedation caused by increasing large doses of pain meds. He may also be depressed because due to pain or medication side effects, he can't do the things that he's used to doing, because of pain, or medication side effects. If he wants to get off of them (and he says he does), help him, be supportive, but don't pressure him to, and don't treat him like an addict. If the underlying pain is still present, and still intense, he may never be able to quit them, but cutting back might enable him to do more, and have fewer side effects.

[Lovemyhubby]

[QUOTE=Daigaisai_Taren;203829] He's in pain, people who are in pain take pain meds, lots of them. Things like taking stuff and almost falling down happen because his tolerance is high, so it takes a lot to relieve the pain, enough so that side effects (such as messing up his balance) are much more pronounced, because tolerance doesn't affect all of those. If he places a high priority on getting his medication, it' probably because without it, he's in pain. QUOTE]


When he almost fell down, he couldn't even form a sentence. I was worried he had overdosed. He was slurring his words and needed my help to the bed.

Also, his priorities should also be on getting HIS children to school and ensuring that his daughter graduates, but he doesn't seem to think that either are important. **Sidenote** His children's Mother passed away 2 years ago from drug addiction.

[Robert_325]

[QUOTE=Lovemyhubby;203831]

Originally Posted by Daigaisai_Taren

He's in pain, people who are in pain take pain meds, lots of them. Things like taking stuff and almost falling down happen because his tolerance is high, so it takes a lot to relieve the pain, enough so that side effects (such as messing up his balance) are much more pronounced, because tolerance doesn't affect all of those. If he places a high priority on getting his medication, it' probably because without it, he's in pain. QUOTE]


LoveMyHubby ... When he almost fell down, he couldn't even form a sentence. I was worried he had overdosed. He was slurring his words and needed my help to the bed.

Also, his priorities should also be on getting HIS children to school and ensuring that his daughter graduates, but he doesn't seem to think that either are important. **Sidenote** His children's Mother passed away 2 years ago from drug addiction.

Your husband has definitely developed a dependency, an addiction to these medications. Falling down and not being able to talk is not a positive state of being, but rather a state of oblivion. We don't take pain meds to get to this point. This type of situation, a real pain issue, is how most of us started out prior to becoming addicted. Your story is just a classic situation of how we start out addressing real pain and end up in the depths of hell fighting addiction to opiates. This needs to be addressed before it gets beyond help.

I am not saying that your husband doesn't need help with the pain. But what happens all too often is that we become so addicted to the pain meds that they cause us more pain than the problem does. In my case, I was taking more meds than your husband is. But once I was detoxed from the medication I became aware of what my true pain level was. When addicted, if we don't take large amounts of opiates every few hours, we go into W/Ds. It's very simple. And those W/Ds are often more painful than the ailment originally causing the pain is. When we clean out our systems, only then do we eliminate the pain caused by the addiction and begin to deal only with the real pain level, the pain caused by the original problem. This is a painful process in itself. And it's a real drag to have to go through this. But sometimes we have to endure some pain to finally get well.

Your husband may very well need to continue on with pain meds. I don't know and have no way of knowing that answer. But I would contend that right now the addiction is causing as much pain as are the remnants of the injuries. If his addiction was dealt with, he would likely be in less pain and could possibly move ahead with less pain medication and a better life. This suggestion does not come from judging your husband, but from an ex-opiate junkie of several decades who finally cleaned up. Won't go into my story, but I had lots of real pain issues. Once I got off the opiates, only then could I see that my pain was not near as bad as I had remembered. Good luck.