Posted by kirbyw on October 8, 2009, at 18:41:45
In reply to Hydrocodone equals Normal, posted by bleauberry on October 8, 2009, at 16:39:25
I have had a similar experience with Vicodin.
I was prescribed Vicodin 7 years ago for chronic pelvic pain syndrome. Over the past 6 and one half years I maintained a low dose average of about one and a half tablets per day of Vicodin 5/500. (5 mg hydrocodeine and 500 tylenol) Then a few months ago I was able to stop taking the Vicodin completely for a few weeks.Around the same time I also stopped taking my Parnate which I had taken for most of the past 20 years. I decided to switch to Remeron. In any case, I soon began to experience severe depression and anxiety without the Parnate. It was not a good time to stop taking it.
What I discovered was that if I took a half of a Vicodin, it would also immediately take the edge off of the depression, and I would be able to function much better. I began to do this while waiting to begin Remeron and then during the short period of time that I tried Remeron.
The Remeron didn't seem to work and I am now back on Parnate, and hoping that it will function effectively as it has done in the past.
In the mean time I continue to take small amounts of the Vicodin (maximum one tablet per day, divided into two or three doses)to help me to function better. It has an anti depressant effect. But it is obviously not part of the long term solution. Although if I keep the dose low I am not sure that it is doing me any harm either. The problem would be with tolerance, if I had to take more and more to achieve the same relief from depression/anxiety. I would like to understand the chemistry of this. I suspect that during acute phases of depression while patients are waiting for an anti-depressant to kick in that a drug such as this would be very useful for some people, but it would have to be taken under very strictly controlled conditions by people who would have the will power to not to increase their dose. I don't think any psychiatrists are going to recognize this as a legitimate issue or investigate it further, but they should.
Rick in Costa Rica
> So after outpatient surgery I was given Hydrocodone, 2 every 3 hours for pain. Knowing the slippery treacherous slope of opioids, I have only been doing 1 to 1 1/2 during an entire 24 hour period.
>
> The effect took me by surprise. I expected to be maybe heavily drugged, sedated. Or maybe to get euphoric, but my luck is never that good. What actually happened was that I felt absolutely completely normal, like 20 years ago before illness hit. No depression, no high, no nothing. Just pure normal.
>
> My hypothesis is that, as Larry pointed out, the toxins of infectious organisms have an affinity for the opioid receptors, thus displacing our own natural opioids from attaching to those receptors? I am sure hydrocodone has stronger affinity to those receptors than the toxins, so it displaces them. Normalcy is the result. Remove the toxins, depression gone. Nothing at all to do with serotonin or any of the stuff the psych drugs target.
>
> So now the likely impossible challenge is to find what will bind or neutralize those toxins. In Stephen Buhner's Herbal book for Lyme, Sarsaparilla is one of very few substances that strongly binds toxins in the blood. Dr Zhang has a formula of Chinese medicines to partially do that as well. And it makes me wonder about LDN...maybe that's why I had such a roller coaster ride on it...feeling not much different while the receptors were blocked, feeling randomly much better as the increased opioids hit the receptors, and feeling worse as the toxins moved in to displace the opioids. ???
>
> Well I guess this could be arm-chair quarterbacked from here to the moon. I just wanted to say that low dose hydrocodone equals normalcy for me. That's a bad road though.
>
> I wonder about Tramadol? Doctors prescribe that like candy. SNRI with some opioid action. Horrible withdrawals too though.
>
> Even when we know from where our depression comes and what will fix it, it doesn't always make anything any easier.
poster:kirbyw
thread:920192
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20091001/msgs/920197.html