Health Problems

pharmakos said:

i'm on 10mg oxycodone 6x/day and 10mg methadone 3x/day for my cancer pain and am absolutely dreading the day when i need to get off them. i've experienced opiate withdrawal after shorter / smaller habits before and the idea of going through that again but worse... ugh.

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Just get yourself some 'shrooms!


I was addicted to vicodin for about 2 years after I really needed them. I was up to 6-8 pills per day. Getting off of that shit was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. It was absolute torture. I kid about the 'shrooms but honestly if it does work I'd 100% try them. Fuck addiction withdrawals so hard.

Any of you guys tried Kratom to get rid of the opiate addiction? I know Chris Bell swore by it and talked about it on a Rogan podcast.

LiquidDeath said:

Any of you guys tried Kratom to get rid of the opiate addiction? I know Chris Bell swore by it and talked about it on a Rogan podcast.

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Kratom is pretty much the ethylmorphine cure of yesteryear. Its a weak opioid with a ceiling (ceiling seems to vary from strain to strain though, there isn't much literature on kratom). Works to hold withdrawal off while your mind adjusts to a lower "baseline" which is valuable so you can just focus on fighting the physical battle.

If it was me personally, I'd rather hunt down a doctor (provided you have the gas money, are internet savy, and a good talker and really good at presenting as a sympathetic figure) to procure a piss weak opiate like ethylmorphine. Ride out the ethylmorphine transition which will be a lot of nausea and meh feeling. Taper the ethylmorphine down a bit (you can even get it in solution I'm pretty sure) then just take the withdrawal which will 100% mirror a kratom withdrawal. The opiate and opioid in these two products/substances is pharmacologically the same strength, same ceiling, same equivalent for all intents and purposes on paper if we're talking tapers.

Getting a prescription for enough ethylmorphine to cover what you're trying to do would be pretty difficult. But they used to use it to cure heroin addicts back when the establishment still had a medical interest in tapering people off-- a few decades back. A few very famous authors have used the ethylmorphine method. It was once considered an innovation in addiction medicine.

It speaks to a brutal Spartan mentality that pain patients are not offered a weaker opiate/opioid plan to taper down. Maybe in 40-50 years interest in that will be renewed in the medical community and we'll see that option offered again with doctors being able to do it in good faith.

Kratom is easily accessible, but comes with that "wild card"-- that you have no idea what you're actually getting.

I'm biased and against pretty much all herbal remedies. I'll recommend herbs but won't actually take herbs myself. Had some horrific experiences with unknown strengths of malaysian ginseng.

Never again.

I watched that Kratom documentary by Chris Bell on Netflix one day while I was bored. What I came away with is nobody really knows much about it and it's completely unregulated so you have no idea what you're actually buying (at least at the time of the airing of said documentary).

He really should have stayed away from talking about its use in Southeast Asian countries for centuries as an herbal remedy. I guess he thought that strengthened the case for it but these are the same types of cultures that think Rhino horns cure cancer and impotence... and hangovers.

I've never used Kratom, but I've learned a lot about it and I'm not an advocate. Much of the information floating around (including much of the Netflix documentary) is false or half-truth. In addition to being completely unregulated, it IS addictive. Granted, it's a lot less potent than prescription opiates. However, I just don't subscribe to the philosophy of trading one substance for another. Certainly, it has uses, but using it as a blanket go-to for opiate weening gets a no from me.

Grabbit Allworth said:

I've never used Kratom, but I've learned a lot about it and I'm not an advocate. Much of the information floating around (including much of the Netflix documentary) is false or half-truth. In addition to being completely unregulated, it IS addictive. Granted, it's a lot less potent than prescription opiates. However, I just don't subscribe to the philosophy of trading one substance for another. Certainly, it has uses, but using it as a blanket go-to for opiate weening gets a no from me.

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What information floating around about it is false?

Your stance seems like a weird one to take. Are you saying that people on their own volition should not go get kratom to help themselves ween or that the medical community should not accept it? I think you'er in little danger of the latter and who gives a shit about the former?

Best way I've found to kick an addiction is to fly somewhere where you know you can't obtain the drug, and also has activities to distract you. I've found the two "keys" to addiction are a) availability and b) boredom. The two times I quit smoking were both when I flew to some isolated resort that didn't sell cigarettes and spent my entire time working out, snorkeling, and trying to pick up women. It's amazing how between the acceptance of the fact that the drug simply isn't available, and keeping your brain busy, the withdrawal is A LOT easier.

Not really fair to compare nicotine withdrawal which isn't debilitating to opiate/opioid withdrawal. You aren't going to be working out, snorkeling, or trying to pick up women when going through opioid withdrawal. You aren't going to be doing much of anything except puking and praying for death.

Anyone ever have any form of dermatis near the mouth? I have had a very thin line basically on the border of my lower lip, so most of it is on the skin but it's partially on the lip as well. It's about an inch, maybe slightly smaller, and you can't really notice it unless you look very closely. It's really uncomfortable though. Since it's like 1/4 on the lip, I don't think it's perioral dermatitis. Maybe just general atopic dermatitis or something else, unsure. I've tried the following medications so far with little to no success.

- Cephalexin antibiotics for 7 days
- topical Betamethasone 0.1% 3x daily for about a week
- Back to cephalexin antibiotics for 10 days
- topical Protopic 0.1% once daily for about 2.5-3 weeks
- Currently on oral Prednisone 50mg once/day for 5 days. Just started it this morning.

The doctor referred me to a dermatologist because at this point he has no idea, but since I live in good old Canada it'll take 8 months before I can see a dermatologist. At this point he thinks I'll just have to manage it until I can see a derm who can do a biopsy etc. Anyone have any natural things that can help with this type of issue?

I put some 40% zinc oxide cream on it last night to see if that might help. When I first got this issue, it would burn and was reasonably painful for like 2 weeks. After a while the pain subsided, and at this point it's mostly just uncomfortable, not really painful. The whole ordeal though has given me some anxiety, making it tough to sleep at night, which sucks as well. I am starting to get past the acceptance phase that this is just something I'll have to live with, but I'm still hoping I can find a cure or at least something that gets rid of the constant discomfort.

Could be mono flare, EBV reactivation. Get checked in the off chance its lymphoma.

Come next year and I can change my home state back to TX I think I'm going to get insurance and hope I can find a doctor not tied into the hospital systems like all the doctors here are now. You show up and they instantly know what you've been diagnosed with even tho the doctors at the clinic/hospital that diagnosed you can't back up each other on that diagnoses. I've pretty much quit looking for a fix and would settle for something to level it out. It's a major up and down up and down. A second opinion? LOL. 50+ doctors, same in the same building/group as the other doctor can't provide a 2nd opinion that matches the first one.

I really don't mind doctors have different opionions but they act like it's a game they are keeping scoreon. No changes? I told the other doctor that's the way it would be "chalk one up for me". Gets old.

We only have one MS clinic as apparently it's not very common in the south and can be tied to vitamin D deficiency which is not my issue. But even doctors at the clinic in together can't decide if it's MS or not. But even the "one" that thinks it's MS won't treat anything that could be MS related. So next year I change home state and insurance and go back to my "friend" that's a doctor. His dad was a doctor and both are in a small town. We will see. At least if he can't do anything I'll talk about LSU baseball with him as that's where he went and played ball on 1/2 scholarship.

If that doesn't work out I assume the medical center in Houston has more options, apparently it's the largest medical center in the US now. We shall see.

Edit - it's very hard for me to concentrate on anything anymore. I leave out words, letters in replies on here and elsewhere and have to edit them all the time. Also it's near impossible for me to even play games anymore. Not doing any side work at all. Did a little and had dad check it as usual for side stuff and he scrapped it and redid it for me. It physically makes my head hurt.