Oxycontin Abuse Long term problems

I have a 18 year old son, just graduated highschool was smoking oxicontin off and on during his senior year. In july this year he went to a 6 week drug rehab and started back on it in october. Then got seriously into it around november 15 until december 13 he stopped cold turkey because on dec 15th he is going to the military . Before he left
he told his best friend that he is constipated but believes he can simply join the military and his problems will go away since he is in a totaly new and disciplined enviroment. My question to anyone is this true, can he make a new start with his life this way. Can he fool his fellow soldiers and drill sargents while he gets over some withdrawls by faking fautigue. His friend says he has a 50/50 chance of making it, and believes that my son can still find this drug in the military . Again I ask this forum is this true??
Sleepless in Seattle

Hi Zach, is there any hope for my son!

Hey i am only 19 years old and i was addicted to oxycontin for about 3 years. My parents always suspected it but they finally found out when I was 18. Oxycontin withdraws are basically heroin withdraws and is the biggest mistake i have ever made in my life. Not to be negative towards your son or anything but once your body has been addicted to opiates life will NEVER be the same afterwards from then on for the rest of your life you must live life as an addict and make decisions based on you being an addict. I went to rehab and came back and was clean for about a year when i first relapsed due to my old friends trying to get me to do the drug again. If i have any advice for your son when he gets sober is to make sure he doesn't have any communication with any of the old people he used to do the drug around.

I hope this post can help some of you with your loved ones that are hooked on oxy. A big issue with oxy is that abusers at first see it as an amazing feeling, but later end of taking it just to avoid withdrawal. Withdrawal from oxy is one of the hardest things to cope with because it is hard to tell that is even the problem. People will typically feel that they are having other health issues not even related to the drug when in fact it is the oxycontin. Physical withdrawal will usually persist for 5-7 days, if an abuser can make it that long without the drug they should be clear of the physical pain. During this withdrawal it is very important to give a lot of care and support because it is a rough feelings, that may also cause severe depression. The most typical withdrawal symptoms are restlessness, heart palpitations, slow breathing, cramps, and muscle aches. I can't stress giving support, the best thing for those going through withdrawal is to not leave them alone. Being alone while withdrawal is in effect can cause anxiety as well and if you are the person looking for answers on how to deal with withdrawal all i can say is hang in there. My buddy said that to me a while back and it went a long way. Be warned though, most people touched by this drug are changed for life and will try to steal, lie and deceive in order to get the drug. Also recovered addicts are likely to fall right back to their worst stage if they come in contact with the drug. Good luck and Stay strong, you can beat the addiction.

Hi, I started using oc when i was 14 years old on occasion. I started smoking the pills and i was "instantly" addicted. I was waking up in the morning at 17 years old with seizures and my parents had NO idea. I continued to use because it made me sick not using. As well as any other addict i ruined my life, the amazing high wasn't worth the pain i was inflicting on my self and the people around me. I was smart enough to ask my family for help befor it was to late, This was 3 months ago and im still struggling. Its a hard drug to get off of. PARENTS f**k WHAT YOUR CHILD SAYS, THEY NEED YOUR HELP... its life or dealth

Im terribly sorry to hear about your son.. I've been horrifyingly addicted to opiates since i was 15. Rehab clean on my sixteenth birthday. Hurt when i was nineteen and prescribed opiates for pain. i became very addicted to them again. i'm now twenty-four and i've been trying to quit since i was twenty. the reason i'm posting this is because i want to tell you: DO NOT PUT HIM ON METHADONE OR BUPRENORPHINE. Methadone takes twenty-eight scary days to come down and feels like a heart attack the whole time. If you go with him to a psychiatrist and have them set him up on a buprenorphine taper program that's the best thing you could do. Don't let them give him the eight milligram pills! start him out on the two milligram pills trust me on this. Trust not the doctor, he wants your money and would gladly see your son hooked on buprenorphine for the rest of his life. After all it was some kind people minded trustworthy doctor that gave some person so much oxycontin that they had enough extras to be worth selling to someone who gave them to your son. I'm sorry to put this on you but you are your son's only hope. Don't over do it till he is ready. if he refuses to chill put him on buprenorphine and leave him on it just hang onto the bottle and give him 1 every day. DON'T FORGET IF A DOCTOR DOESN'T WANT TO TRY TAPERING HIM OFF FIRST THEN HE WANTS YOUR SON TO BE HOOKED. There is hope and whenever he gets the dose of burenorphine low enough he will have no withdrawls @ all. Start trying to help him now don't wait. I couldn't tell you why but i have completely sobered up had seizures for three days then was totally fine and did sum oxycontin as soon as i was out of my parents house. i live with a beautiful nurturing girl that helps me remember what life can be. possibly the best thing he could have is a sober girlfriend. I'm currently hooked on subutex (buprenorphine). i'm quitting asap. If there is one thing i could tell him it's,"the nothing that you feel when you have to take these everyday doesn't stay fun. Eventually you find yourself enjoying pain or just any feeling at all. If you feel nothing long enough you will kill yourself no matter how intelligent or level headed you are. I had a friend my age who was a doctor that killed himself cause he couldn't live in the nothing, and couldn't live without the opiates." Stop your son asap

ok so there is the liver problems when taken in high doses your liver is screwed if you are steady on it for years. Now also, its a narcotic and if narcotic sounds scary to you it should... This one specifically has one of the highest rate for addiction out of most narcotic painkillers. The addictive stuff comes from the codone in the pill which produces the light headed high feeling. I myself have tried a similar pain killer with codone in it which is vicodin also known ad hydrocodone. My experience was bad i had 4 of these pills and in the time period of that i had twisted thoughts of taking more until i realized what i was doing then i literally had to force myself to not try for more. Oxicottin being more heavy doses of it id believe it would be worse. Tell our son to cut the sh*t and stop. Also common ways for kids to hide these drugs are in their backpacks for school or any bag from a friend or anytime going out so check them. Also teens are masters at hiding stuff i have to admit i can hime something from anyone if you give me 20 min in my room so look beyond the normal oh hey there it is under that in a box type thing im talking full sweep outs under sinks and dawrs and everything. be creavtive on where you check cause that how they think to hide it.

I've read that it basically destroys the "feel good" centers in the brain - *Especially at a young age*

He'll feel less good with the digestion problems associated and have to stop one day sooner or later.

He'll feel more sensitive to pain after he's stopped.



Double-edged SWORD.

I am thankful for these meds since they really help when you hurt,(as in muscle disease) but the digestive side effects suck.

If you take this when you really don't need it, you are messing it up for yourself and the suffering people out there who can't get it because of this med. demonizing.

Stay strong, healthy independent of chemicals. Do you really want to make a company richer? :cry:

I'm addicted to smoking OC 80's, I used to have a good life and always had money in my wallet. Ever since I got hooked all I think about is getting high again, I started by snorting about 10mg and I would be messed up all day from that and an 80 would last me 3 days. Now I have to smoke two 80mg OC's to feel high. I hate to admit it, but I'm a drug addict and have been for the past two years.

All my childhood friends don't talk to me anymore because I they I do OC, if my boss knew I was doing it I would be fired but I still go to work high because I can't function without it.....I try to quit without rehab and the longest I've gone was 2 weeks and I was eating suboxone so I wouldn't go through withdrawals. Now I out of suboxone and still hooked on OC's, I don't like to pop methadones because the withdrawals on methadones are 10x worse than OC's withdrawals and last a lot longer.

I want to get help but I don't want to loose my job, my girlfriend is also hooked but she went to rehab and is now clean, she's hasn't done OC in over a month and I'm proud of her for doing that, so now I gotta wake up and smell the coffee and follow in her foot steps so we can both live happy again, like how we did before we started using. I miss being able to go shopping and buying clothes, taking my gf out to dinner and not worrying about the cost because I want to buy an OC afterwards. It's time to make a change in my life even if I had to suffer, as long as I get clean I know the outcome will be better for the both of us!

I was going to contribute to this post in a way that I felt was important information to share, but it seems more have caught on to the pros and cons, and the argument isn't missing much at this point. However, I will throw a few of my comments into the mix, based on my personal experiences. Sorry if you view this post as a rant, as it is my story of my own personal struggle with the drug and recovery. Enjoy.

I am a 23 year-old father of two daughters. I have chronic pain, a pilonidal cyst (abcess at the end of the tail bone that flares up in excruciating pain from time to time, it's what got Rush Limbaugh addicted to OxyContin, look it up), and lower back problems from contorting my back so that I may sit comfortably without pain. I decided to see a doctor specializing in pain management. After $500 and an MRI, I walked out of my follow up visit with 180 Oxycodone 30mg, and 90 Oyxcodone 15mg, along with Soma, Flexoril, 30 Alprazolam 2mg (Xanax), 60 Ibuprofen 600mg, 60 Naproxen Sodium 500mg, 12 Lidocaine patches for my lower back, 1 bottle of Capsacin, and a stool softener, Senna Docusate, 30 pills, 100mg. Because all those opiods start rotting your insides by making you inhumanly constipated.

At first, the medication seemed like a miracle of modern medical science to me. After spending over a year in agonizing pain after my first flare up, I took the OxyCodone and I could finally sit down, stand, lift things, walk, and drive without feeling the burning in my tailbone and the throbbing in my lower back. I took one Xanax a night for sleep, and I would sleep comfortably through the night, without tossing and turning in pain. I was able to play with my kids and enjoy my time with my family again.

I was told to take the Oxycodone every four to six hours (or "as needed," for pain, there's the 'pain clinic guaranteed addiction return customer money maker' words, written right on the bottle). I would take the 15mg pills during the day, and the 30mg's around dinner time and night time before bed, because of the drowsiness. I never took Oxycodone "recreationally," so this is the inevitable addiction from someone with serious chronic pain's perspective.

After about two months of taking Oxycodone on a regular basis, things started to change. I lost weight, I had very little appetite. I stopped having bowel movements altogether, went 7-9 days at a time without having one, then almost died on the toilet trying to pass a softball shaped stool that was as hard as concrete. I stopped taking the 15mg pills altogether, and traded them for more 30mg pills, as the fifteens didn't do anything for my pain or my craving anymore. My mentality changed. You lose your sense of humor, your smile, your priorities are controlled from the minute you wake up in the morning, all geared around first getting your necessary dose in before being able to do anything else. All the other medication I was given was now irrelevant, and I started getting refills only on the Oxycodone when I went back to the "Doctor," who was starting to seem more and more like a drug dealer with every visit. Eventually, it rules your life, you can't feel anything, the pain-numbing effect wears off, and you lose everything that was once important to you.

So you try to quit taking it. You ease off of it, trying to cut your dose down, but find yourself waking in the middle of the night dripping sweat, shivering, thinking about pills. You dream about pills. For instance, lifting up your bedsheets to find 14 little blue pills, or counting a whole bottle full on your nightstand, or looking on the floor next to your bed and finding six or seven pills that you dropped. You wake up to find that it was all a dream. Then you get sick. Your stomach is in knots and cramps. Your body is so sensitive to temperature that you are freezing all the time. You get shivers, up your spine and all over your body, like a cold in your bones. Your body aches. Your muscles twitch and spasm. Your tone of voice changes. You vomit. Your pain is far worse than you ever remember it being before. You can't think about anything else but those little blue pills.

This is because, according to the Suboxone (Buprenorphine) pamphlet, which you must read to fully understand the dangers of opiod dependency, not only does such a high dosage of oxycodone (two 30mg pills every four hours is eventually the least you can get away with taking) completely defect your body's natural opioid receptors, it also destroys your body's most natural functions. After only a few doses, it locks-on to two key areas in your brain, that your body usually uses to stimulate appetite, tell you when you're hungry, and the part of your brain that reasons... that differentiates between right and wrong. That's why people steal to support their opiate habit. The drug literally clouds your ability to reason and interperet like a normal-functioning human being.

Suboxone is a true miracle drug. It takes away the disgusting feeling of "dope-sickness," and enables you to get through that crucial five-to-seven day period in which your body is in full-throttle dopesick mode. You don't think or dream about pills. You find your priorities falling back into the places where they used to belong. Your body starts to feel normal again.

What I haven't seen here, and what most people don't understand, and also what causes most relapse cases, is that crucial part of the brain that the prolonged use of the drug attatches itself to. That part comes back quickly with Suboxone, and people think they're fine. But in all actuality, the drug does not leave you for 100 to 190 days. I've been off opiates for five months, off Suboxone for three months, but still every now and then I get that familiar chill. Break a Suboxone in half or into quarters, and that chill dissipates immediately. It takes dedication to recover completely, you have to want your life back bad enough to know that you must never go back to the way you lived before. You have to make a pledge to yourself, spiritually and mentally, to never, ever see the bottom of that bottle and the 3AM coldsweats and sickness again. You have to decide for yourself that it's not worth it. That's what I did, and life has been so much better ever since. I got my smile back and enjoy laughing again. And you know what? I'm not even in pain anymore. You can do anything when you put up a wall in your mind that says "Never again." Never forget, and never again.

Being addicted to Oxycodone is like being tied to a pole and blindfolded in a dark room, where someone walks in every two hours or so and shoves a pill down your throat, as you fight, scream and kick to get away and resist. It is nearly impossible to break the cycle. It has to come from within you, you have to seek help in the same way that you sought pain releif or drugs, and you need to commit and dedicate yourself to it like nothing you've ever done before. Once you get over that mountain, life is so much better, you feel great, and as many people who ridiculed you for having a drug problem will be battling with their own personal problems, nobody can take the personal pride, a quiet pride, away from you, having known that you did it and beat that drug by yourself and for your health. It's like a scientifically engineered Hell in the form of a pill, you're not only playing with fire, you're eating dinner side-by-side with Hitler and Satan himself in hell, every time you pop one, cut a fresh line and snort, pick up a straw and a piece of tinfoil and smoke, or water four pills down in an upside down soda can and stick a needle in your arm. It's disguistingly, sadly, humanly true, and it's the nature of the drug, period. I've seen it done in all of those ways, and they're all equally disgusting and horrible for your body.

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that "tough love" doesn't work. Telling (or yelling at) your friends or kids or husbands or wives to get off the drug and get help WILL NOT work. The individual has to see what bottom is, feel the pain of being there, and understand that they need to make a change for themselves, not for the others around them, because an opiate addict's brain is certainly not functioning in the interest of the others around them. It wasn't until I let my best childhood friend, who had become badly, BADLY hooked, along with his girlfriend who was just as worse off, live with me in my home that I truly saw what bottom was. They were liars. They stole from me and my family. They abused everything in the house. They used me. His girlfriend attempted to ruin my relationship with my wife and children by telling my spouse that I was seeing other girls and snorting, smoking, and shooting Oxy's (which I wasn't, I was way too disgusted by watching them shoot it up that I completely stopped and got on Suboxone). When you realize and see what bottom is, that is the only way to know that you are done for good. All I can say is don't do anything to enable or support their habit, just be there for them, know that the person you used to know is still in there somewhere, but that in the current state of their brain's functioning, they're not coming back unless they figure out how bad they've gotten themselves. That is the sinlge most important part of kicking this habit. Good luck to anyone who is trying to get off it, see a doctor, a REAL doctor, regularly, who will prescribe you Suboxone and support your recovery. Know that you're NOT alone. This is an epidemic. I thought it was a Florida based problem, but this is a nation-wide epidemic. Keep your head up and stick through it. Pray, if it's your thing. Only with time and dedication, things will get better. I would say good luck, but luck has nothing to do with it. Be good to yourself. The end.

"""""""Hi My Husband Of fifteen years hid very well I might add smoking oxicontin off alumanum foil for two years. I was on to him that he was doing somthing but I needed proof. The longer he did it the more proof I had becouse physicaly his body was deteriorating.He thought he was a master at lying, but I new when he was lying.I would even confront him over and over in a calm way,I geuse I was pleading with him to tell me what he was doing.He would have severe night sweats,vomiting,body pain,leathery looking skin, watery eyes, and he would stop breathing in his sleep,flushing of the face,scratching and twitching in his sleep,he would nod off wile you talked to him,and wile eating. Then on the other side of the coin he was so sweet and loving it was sickening,ore he was racing around like a maniac. He would also Get violent when he added alcohol.my husband is a hard working good person and a father,works for the same company 18 years,married 15. ALL IT TOOK TO DESTROY THAT WAS 1 STUPD PERSON WHO COULDNT AFFORD A HOLE 80MG TABLET TO ASK MY HUSBAND TO LEND HIM 20$. MY HUSBAND SAID WELL YOU HAVE TO PAY ME BACK AND THE GUY SAID WELL HOW ABOUT WE SHARE IT INSTEAD.MY HUSBAND SAID WELL I GEUSE IT WONT HURT TO JUST TRY IT ONCE. HE WAS ADDICTED. TWO YEARS LATER HE SLIPPED UP AND LEFT TEXT MESSAGES OF A DRUG DEAL ON HIS CELL""""""""............................................................................................................

your full of it lady this is and advertisement for a hospital program preying off sick ppl for money u sick piece of trash. ang if u are real quit goin thrrough that mans phone or atleast ask to see it if he denies it than ges hiding somethin. other than that you wouldnt go throuh other ppls things as if u deserve or have the right[img]