Withdrawal symptoms..

Hi Loz

Coming of morphine meds caused me some problems with restlessness (especially with legs) and itching.... played havoc with my sleep pattern....short course of sleeping tablets helped ....and antihistamines for itching 

Peter 

yeah, I'll see what they recommend...

You need a more gradual withdrawal . Take your morphine at night. Do you have oromorph? That will take the edge off.

I stopped my long acting morphine first in the morning for a week then I stopped the night time one but I was still taking oromorph three times a day. Reduced that slowly over another two weeks and all was OK.

OR you could tough it out and you'll be fine in a week.

I was even more stupid....I stopped the whole lot at once ....for a day!

I am going to laugh at this as I had exactly the same 10 days ago so I know how you feel.  I now have the ultimate sympathy for anyone in withdrawal from any drug (alcohol, tobacco or illegal and legal)

At 3.30 am after 5 days of having those exact same symptoms I booked an appointment with my GP for a more decent hour that morning.  We came to the conclusion that the tapering off of the patches had not done the job and I was in withdrawal.  Back onto 5mg of Oxycodone/24 hrs immediately (like in 30 mins) solved the problem with a fractional reduction each week until I can cope.

rang the Docs this morning, after having about 1 hour from about 05.45 to 06.45 ish.. 

waiting for  a phone call to discuss it..

So, how much oromorph were you taking at a time? that route might still be an option..

I've just looked up my dosing.  These figures will vary upwards by 10-20% for the equivalent depending on the source of the information...

Frankly I was surprised how much morphine equivalent I was taking at the peak.  Before tapering off I was on a 10 micrograms/hr patch and a minimum of 20 mg of Oxycodone per 24 hrs.  This is equivalent of  56 mg of Morphine (note that Morphine does absolutely nothing for me).

When I came off the patches I was only on a 5 microgram/hr patch and no Oxycodone.  That is still 12 mg/24hr of Morphine, or a 7.5 mg dose of Oxycodone (my opioid of choice).  I got immediate relief from 5 mg/24 hr of Oxycodone and with the agreement of the GP will taper off over the next few weeks.

I've been prescribed diazepam for a few days, to get me over this hurdle.. I hope it doesn't present its own set of problems....

Low-ish dose for a short period of time you'll be fine, it works well; I've taken it on several occasions in my time without problem.

so, 2mg before bed.. no effect.. wife said that she's never known me to be so restless... downstairs, another 2mg.. managed to have patches of sleep.. so, seeing that I have my PET/CT tomorrow morning it'll be early to bed with 4mg.. and fingers crossed.

Looks like you’ll just have to tough it out.