::Griffblog::

I’m now 9 days in and it’s been far far harder than I had anticipated!

I’d optimistically thought that the worst would be over after 3-4 days but over a week in and I’m still struggling with the side effects of the morphine withdrawal.

With 24hours of stopping I was suffering the expected symptoms of aches and pains, headaches, flu like symptoms etc but the worst was the agitation and a weird feeling in arms and legs which caused me to shake them continually for hours at a time. A mix of pins and needles, a buzzing feeling etc.

It meant sleep was very difficult and for the first few days I could only sleep when pure exhaustion took over, sometimes grabbing a few hours at most.

Most of these symptoms are now much less severe but the restless legs/arms hasn’t gone, it has subsided a a little which helps but sleep is still difficult albeit I am so tired now that it happens sooner!

A new symptom now is I have little energy and anything I do saps what little I have left. We travelled to Wales last week to visit my folks and within 30mins of setting off I had to hand over driving to MrsG as I was struggling to concentrate.

From all I have read (and once the symptoms kicked in I did the research I ought to have done beforehand!), it seems that the worst should be over anytime soon with symptoms subsiding after 2wks. I hope that this is true as, had I known how bad this would be, I would never have contemplated attempting it!

MrsG discussed options for alleviating some of the many side effects with a local pharmacist and he said I should never have stopped dead even at the low dosage I had reduced to. Instead I should have continued to reduce much more slowly, too late now!

Thankfully, my decision not to leave any Oramorph in the house has meant I can’t cheat, had there been any here I would have given in on day 2/3 without doubt. Indeed I’m not sure I wouldn’t give in now if I could get access to some of the medication. But as it is, I’m not going to go back and ask for a new prescription as I’m sure the worst is behind me.

Those of you who have followed the progress of my operation will know that I was taking morphine, tramadol and voltarol regularly to deal with the pain of the ilizarov fixator device.

Whilst I could never have coped without the help of the pain medications, the downside is of course that, now the procedure is complete I have to go through drug withdrawal.

I had been taking tramadol and morphine at 4hourly intervals for over 6mths. Both are very strong opiate based medications and both have known addictive side effects. So I was somewhat prepared for the fact that my body would have developed an addiction and I would have to suffer the symptoms of withdrawal.

I’ve been here before, when I had the original accident and broke my back I was on strong opiate meds for over a year. And so my GP agreed that I should undertake a slow progressive withdrawal. This involves my reducing the meds by small amounts in gradual stages.

I started with reducing the Tramadol, a tablet based med. This was relatively easy. Reducing from two tablets to one and then none over a week . But the morphine reduction is proving much much harder.

I started out at doses of 10mg 3 times per day. Now after two months I’m taking 5mg three times per day.

Initially I was able to reduce the dose by 1 or 2mg without any noticeable side effects but as I approached 6mg they kicked in with a vengeance!

Now, each time I move down a step and reduce the dose I have to endure a range of symptoms including nausea, anxiety, clamminess and various aches and pains.

Even describing the symptoms doesn’t come anywhere near to how awful it actually makes you feel but I know there is an end game. It does make you realise how hard it must be for heroin addicts to give up.

The hardest part for me is that I have a large bottle of the medicine to hand. I know that I can all too easily resolve all of my symptoms by taking more morphine and so it takes a great deal of will power not to succumb.

For anyone who has struggled with a diet or given up cigarettes, think back to how easy it was to cheat. Then imagine the hunger pangs or desire for a cigarette were replaced with nausea, pain and all the other nasty side effects of withdrawal. Hard eh?