Dear Ted,
I can understand your confusion about addiction, tolerance and dependence,
since even doctors seem to get it all crossed up and confused. But I don't
understand how you can come in here saying nasty shit to others. I would
have thought that in trying to give you a hand with your Mom's issues, we
showed how this group is supposed to function and what kind of people are
here. This post is a valid question and deserves as good an answer as we can
supply, but please, man, chill with the hostility. Catching or pitching, it
does nobody any good.
BTW- more on your Mom- you may want to look in to something called
Palliative care. When people hear that word, much like they do with the word
addiction, they don't get the picture right. Palliative care (before I got
involved w/ more med info that I ever wanted), always brought up the thought
of the last stop before the boneyard and nursing homes filled with the smell
of pee. It's not like that at all. It's whole body care, mostly geared
towards the elderly, but not absolutely. It's more like what a physiatrist
does, being care for the whole body. With palliative care, they toss in the
mental stuff too. So don't let her be scared of it, it's not the next to
last stop that comes to most minds.
Addiction (the easy definition) is basically mental dependence on anything
that reaches the point of obsession for a person that they consciously know
is bad for them and yet they do it anyhow. The continuation of a behavior
that is doing one harm. It doesn't have to be drugs it can be sex, food,
tobacco, anything really. It's when you can't change that behavior, no
matter how bad you know it is for you.
A lot of people get it muddled with physical dependence. When your brain
complains to your body when the chemistry is changed very suddenly. It can
make you sick as a dog, in some cases (not with narcotics however) it can
kill a person. It's not just the abusable drugs, many types can bring on a
withdrawal syndrome. But sooner or later your brain adjusts and all systems
come back to normal. Pain is so under studied, you can't help but get mad.
They have found pain itself can cause damage to certain parts of the brain,
changes, unlike those from medication, that are permanent. In any case,
withdrawal is not a sign of addiction, and is totally normal, however nasty
it can be.
The same can be said for tolerance. Perfectly normal, it's supposed to
happen, and it sucks a big one. With pain meds, the pain receptors in the
brain become saturated at a certain level and the current dose or medication
become inadequate to produce the desired result, it this case, pain relief.
Along that line, there's something else that is greatly misunderstood, pain
relief. Most times you can't reach complete relief. There's always something
left over, a bit of an ache, a sharp pain now and again. People expecting
complete relief from medications are barking up the wrong tree. You can only
shoot for tolerable pain, that allow a decent quality of life. When most
people think of painkiller abuse they think of a bunch of couch potatoes,
laying around, half asleep, drooling on their shirts. Not a quality of life
I would envy. But that's what abusers are chasing, that 3/4 dream 1/4 awake
feeling. But that's a side effect of narcotics. Like most side effects, they
pass fairly quickly, so they have to escalate the dose to keep that side
effect happening. A perfect example of tolerance.
The pain control from narcotics is not like that. Sometimes it's hidden
underneath that groggy side effect. You won't feel true relief until that
grogginess is gone. It can take a couple weeks or a couple months, but it
will go. The pain relief isn't like that. It sticks around a while. True,
you will get tolerant to the pain dampening effects of a certain dose after
a while. A long while in most cases, like years. It can take time to find
that balance point between pain and relief, but unlike addicts, pain
patients will reach a point of enough. You have to balance between enough
and too much as well. Most of us have lost a great deal thanks to daily
chronic pain. We don't want to lose any more to being over medicated.
Addicts live for being overly medicated.
You came through here on the way from the fitness/weightlifting group. Try
to imagine ( I don't know what kind of shape you're in) after all that work,
all the reps, and all the sets, all the running and cardio work and having
built yourself a decent looking, decently functioning body, imagine it all
taken away. Every movement is a knife. Even sitting. You have to watch
everything you worked your butt off for slowly fading to flab. You used to
bust out rep after rep, set after set, of 200# bench presses without
breaking a sweat. Leg press 750# like it's nothing. Rope work for hours. Now
you scream if you sit for longer than 30 minutes. It's all gone and it ain't
coming back. It hurts so goddamn bad, you can't even help the wife bring in
the groceries or shovel snow. Or even go shopping with her, cause you can't
handle the knife that slides in to your lower spine after about 20 minutes
of walking. Imagine being in to your second decade of that. You probably
can't, but I know people in here don't have to imagine it. They live it from
day to day in one degree or another.
The biggest difference between addiction and chronic pain is no one ever
gave us a choice. Nobody here wants this. We'd be happy to give the addicts
our meds and go through the withdrawals, if we came out normal on the other
side. They had a choice and they have one every time the get blasted. Our
pain issues just happened to us, and now we're fucked. No choice, no
options. The only choice we have is seeing another day of the same old shit
come around, or not. Not everybody answers "yes" every morning.
--og
--
Be Sure to Check Out the PAYNE HERTZ blog, for people with chronic pain, by
people with chronic pain.
join in at:
http://paynehertz.blogspot.com
"Ted Sheds" <Tedssheds1039s129@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:xY9gj.46841$vt2.23601@bignews8.bellsouth.net. ..
> It seems that some people are addicted to pain medications, some are
> addicted to weight loss pills, and some are addicted to steroids. When do
> these long-term users cross the line from use into addiction?
>
> When are these folks drug addicts? Is the person who uses an
> anti-itch/anti-stress drug for more than a year a drug addict? Is she a
> drug
> addict when it gives her 3-4 weeks of withdrawals when she tries to quit??
>
> Some people who are in terrible pain must keep raising their drug levels
> and
> using more drugs because they build up a resistance. Are these folks drug
> addicts??
>
> Are bodybuilders who use steroids periodically also drug addicts or just
> drug abusers? It seems many folks self-medicate and often see more than
> one
> doctor in order to get whatever medications they are looking for. Are
> these
> folks drug addicts??
>
> Where do you draw the line?
>
>
> 
Who is a Drug Addict?? 
