Best Laid Plans

Foiled Again

What do you do when you are fully committed to ending a habit and in your first day you receive a package containing the very thing you are determined to quit?

I think it was easier when I quit drinking and smoking than it is to quit a product that has made my life easier for the last 10 years, Tramadol.

On the other hand, if someone had handed me a couple of cartons of my favorite brand of cigarettes or a case of St Emilion Bordeaux as I was quitting those self-destructive habits, it might have taken longer before I ultimately quit them. 

So here I am, faced with the choice of do I continue withdrawal and spend my life looking for pain relief, or, now that my prescription has finally been refilled, do I enjoy my relatively normal life for another 28 days?

This is not the first time the Tramadol Rx has been ordered late by my Primary Care Physician. It's the third time this year I have had an unplanned and unpleasant 2 or 3 day partial withdrawal experience before my prescription was approved.

During withdrawal from Tramadol I experience a sensory overload when pain receptors and CNS systems are restored to full power. All kinds of pains, (nerves, muscles, bones, bruises, scars, phantom or not), are turned up to 11. 

The smell of softener in clothing, towels and sheets is intolerable, like a punch in the gut, and that is only one of a barrage of assaults on my senses that I have experienced during previous withdrawals.

The long list of cold turkey opiate withdrawal horrors was exactly what I was prepared to accept for this Halloween weekend, how chillingly appropriate.

I should add that I take 400mgs of Tramadol daily. It has remarkably improved my life since 2006 when it was first prescribed to relieve the constant pain from nerve damage. I take it every day and night. 

Sometimes I may pull or strain muscles. For that kind of pain I take Ibuprofen, (but not regularly as ibuprofen can make pains worse if used more than a few days in a row).

You may have read, or heard that people are dying from Tramadol overdoses. 

I found that hard to believe, so I Googled; Verified Deaths From Tramadol. There are hundreds reported each year, but Tramadol was not the only drug those people who died were taking. 

It was the interaction of other drugs mixed with Tramadol that killed them. 

The physician who originally prescribed Tramadol for my pain from damaged nerves, made it very clear that I should avoid alcohol, sedatives, cold medicines and other drugs that could become a dangerous concoction if taken while using Tramadol.

Back to my current dilemma; The opiod crisis created by Purdue Pharma and their aggressive marketing of OxyContin now includes non-life threatening pain relievers such as Tramadol. 

The wide opioid crisis net has been thrown to obscure the villainous family who are expanding distribution of Oxycontin to other countries even now while people in America are dying daily from having been introduced to OxyContin.

I cant stop a company worth 500 Billion dollars a year who market addictive death, but I am faced with prescription interruptus presumably caused by the misdirected opioid crisis Purdue Pharma caused. 

Here I have put my current situation into words so that I, (and perhaps you, too), can make some sense of my deciding to resume my happy, fairly normal life now that my prescription is once again in my cupboard.

This moon image is from yesterday, Friday, just about and hour and 20 minutes after it was officially 1st quarter. 

Pain doesn't have to dominate my sense of self, thanks to Tramadol.