Coming off pain killers!

Hi. I'm not a member of this forum. My cancer was elsewhere. Us patients in Head and Neck are often on morphine for two or even three  months, some supplemented with long acting morphine, or buprenorphine/fentanyl patches. Coming off these is an art....slowly slowly reducing the dose over a few weeks. Some go cold turkey....but only for a day! I think maybe you reduced to quickly. Chin up and hugs

I was incredibly unlucky with opiate withdrawal - I had no choice but to go 'cold turkey' and it took a week of feeling absolutely rubbish.

I was discharged after 4 weeks on them (I had complications), and was discharged on a Saturday evening. The hospital pharmacy got my meds wrong, I live on the Isle of Wight but was in Southampton General, and by the time I got home at 9pm at night, all I had was paracetamol, they'd forgotton my morphine. And I had no-one to ask to get anything else until the Monday! By then I was over the worst, so carried on and just took paracetamol every 4 hours and came off the opiates altogether.

It wasn't nice, but I'm REALLY glad I did, as after the initial rubbish feelings I felt a lot, lot better. I hate opiates, it's so easy to become dependent on them, they scare me.

I hope you begin to feel better very soon. It does ease after a few days, I promise.

Thank you Nicky yes it took a couple of days feeling rubbish but think I’m out the other side !! Lesson learnt  !! I moved to Bristol 7 years ago and so have been treated at Bristol BRI which I can’t speak highly enough of , but prior to that I lived in Dibden Purlieu so had this of happened then I would have been treated in Southampton! I do still get this cold shivering feeling and find I need to sleep only to wake up covered in sweat but have appointment on Thursday to find out if I will need more chemo so will mention it then ! Take care thanks for replying Tricia x