Posted by musil on October 30, 2002, at 7:26:35
When I take my prescribed meds for chronic pain and depression, I feel happy sometimes.
When the meds wear off, I am phobic of them and it takes my wife hours to run through the same logical arguments with me before I'll dose up again.
We do this every day and night. My fears are irrational and psychotic and exacerbated by severe chronic pain. I worry about being a true addict/junky because when I take the meds, I feel good.
Not high, just good -- but when depression and pain are the norm, I can't tell whether feeling "good" is actually a high, because feeling good is so much "higher" than depression and agitation, and I feel guilty about feeling happy.
Like last night after she convinced me to take my meds as prescribed, I felt a feeling of unbelievable joy when giving my son a bath. I'm so unaccustomed to being without chronic psychotic agitation and pain that the moment of peace I felt in the bathroom scared the hell out of me. I wanted to feel that way all the time and so made the illogical leap that my craving for feeling joy was a craving for the meds that allowed me to feel joy, therefore I'm on a downward spiral of hellish addiction.
Also, I get freaked out at the tail end of a script because I'm afraid my doc won't refill. Which is silly, because he always does.
The meds I'm talking about are well prescribed, do the job, yet have the potential for true addiction, and that scares me enough so that I refrain when I need.
Can anyone relate?
poster:musil
thread:125789
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021025/msgs/125789.html