Right now I’m on some hardcore painkillers. Vicodin to be exact. Apparently this is some pretty hard stuff. In fact I believe that Vicodin, along with most other narcotic painkillers, are closely related to heroin, which is why it is so easy to get addicted to them.
I got my first prescription for Vicodin after going to the emergency room right after I broke my leg. I got a second batch after a visit with the orthopedic surgeon. He prescribed me a lower dosage which caused me to go through withdrawal. I typically only take the pills right before I go to bed. My leg doesn’t really hurt all that much, but it can get very uncomfortable at night. Taking painkillers helps me forget about that discomfort. However, when the doctor gave me a new prescription, the new pills were only about 70% as potent as the old pills. Apparently, my body wasn’t going to stand for that, so I started getting withdrawal symptoms a few hours before I usually go to bed. Unfortunately at the time, I didn’t know they were withdrawal symptoms. I thought that I had come down with a really bad fever. I ached all over, I had the chills and couldn’t get the heat high enough, and I was very irritable. I decided to go to bed, and of course, take a painkiller.
About two hours later I woke up, drenched in sweat. My wife had left the heat on that night because I was so cold before I went to bed, but now I was hot! I also felt completely better. All my symptoms were gone. It was at that point when I realized what had happened. I originally didn’t associate the way I was feeling with the painkillers because it had been nearly 24 hours since I had last taken them. I had read that withdraw usually happens after 8 hours, but then again, I’m no expert.
Another weird side effect of painkillers is the dreams. Occasionally I will have terrible dreams that wreck my sleep for that night. Now, I’m not really sure what makes these dreams bad, but I hated the. One dream was about a reality show about people who had broken their legs. Their legs had healed and the show was featuring what they were doing now. I remember one guy had started a pizza parlor, as if that has anything to do with breaking one’s leg. But nobody said dreams made a heck of a lot of sense. Another dream was about my dad. He was teaching my brother and me how to snort cocaine.
So bizarre.
