Severe Opiates Adverse Reactions, Please I need help !

Ive been trying to take opiates for over 1 year now for chronic pain however my body seems to reject all these drugs and causes me very horrible adverse reactions. For example an hour after taking only a small 4mg dose of Oxycodone I start experiencing irregular heart rhythms and then the fever kicks in, my face and body becomes extremely hot whilst my hands and feet become icy cold, then my blood pressure and heart rate starts to mess up, at first my pulse falls below 45 - 50 bpm and my vitals and breathing becomes shallow and supressed and then my blood pressure rockets up to to 160 bpm, I end up getting massive headaches and neck pain and feel really weird, uncomfortable and odd sensations in my brain. When I lay on the bed and try to relax to drop my blood pressure then my pulse drops even lower to around 40 bpm and then I end up nodding to sleep but my breathing keeps stopping (apnea) and I keep opening my eyes gasping for air. This is been happening for 1 year every time I try and take my medication. Ive tried every opiate out there including fentanyl patches, tramadol (ultram) but the adverse reactions occur with all of them.

Ive been to allergy specialist, neurologist, neuropsychiatrists but no one can work out why my body is so messed up. Something is very very wrong with the way my body processes stimulants, sedatives and anelgesics. It all started 9 years ago after an overdose and severe hyperthermia on ecstacy and amphetamines at a rave party and immideately after I developed a neurological condition called Autnomic Dysfunction and somehow that incidence left me with a chemical sensitivity to all drugs that effects my autonomic system and since that day Ive been unable to tolerate even small amounts of any psychoacting drug. But I need this medication to manage pain, Im so angry at my body and for being so different to everyone else. Ireally fucked myself up when I overdosed but no one seems to be able to work the mechanics of how I went from being so drug tolerant to suddenly becaming so sensitive just from an overdose and the damage it left me with.

Any thoughts on this matter would be appreciated.

 

First of all, I want to express my extreme condolences for your situation. While your doctors say that your overdose somehow caused a dysfunction with your ANS that is an extremely unlikely cause and effect chain. You say you overdosed: what did you overdose on, and what was the exact situation? Did you go to the ER? Did they treat you with medication in the ER to bring you back from your overdose?

Try to think about anything else that might have happened during that period of time that was strange... did you take drugs you got from someone you don't know well or you are unfamiliar with? Did you have a reaction to some sort of drug you used to take regularly that was out of the ordinary? Did you use a drug you hadn't used before or in doses/concentrations you hadn't used before?

The reason I want you to think about all these things is that you having an overdose experience is highly unlikely to have been the cause of an ANS Disorder. What is more likely is that you had a dormant condition that was brought on by some sort of environmental factor or some other illness contracted through some change in your everyday activities.

I am surprised that your allergy specialist, neurologist and neuropsychiatrist never questioned the cause of this dysfunction. What I am worried about is that this problem you are having is maybe the cause of something like an infection in your brain or spine, or maybe a tumor pushing on some portion of your brain stem (the part of the brain which regulates the autonomic nervous system). It could also be some sort of acute toxicity to some drug but if that is what it is it should have worn off by now.

All I know is that you blaming yourself for this problem is WRONG. This condition is not your fault and I don't think your drug use caused it. Again, drug use is highly unlikely to cause this kind of severe ANS reaction.

If you indeed cannot take any sort of opiate or psychoactive drug without a severe reaction, then you either need to have this ANS condition diagnosed and treated/cured, or find a different approach to treating your pain.

I know it sounds hard, but there are other ways of treating/managing pain than drug therapy. One thing that would help me give you some advice on what those other possibilities might be is if you could tell me what the cause of your chronic pain is?

So, to summarize my post:

1. Your ANS condition is most likely not your fault. An overdose of ANY, I repeat, ANY drug is highly unlikely to cause this type of condition. AND, if indeed it had caused this condition, once the drug had cleared your system the condition should have gone away.

2. Consider the period of time right before and right after this overdose experience as well as the experience itself for things that are out of the ordinary, especially the ER visit if you were taken there after the OD. Get back to me on this and on the cause of your OD (what drug, etc)

3. Tell me what causes your chronic pain.

Hopefully with this info I can give you a clue as to what might be the cause or what to talk to your docs about, also I might be able to indicate alternative pain treatment therapies that would help with your pain that wouldn't aggravate your ANS issue.

Again, I know how hard it is to live with both A) Chronic pain and B) a chronic health disorder.

I want to stress that I am not a physician or medical student. however I have a chronic health condition which causes me to spend a lot of time in hospitals and going to doctors appointments, and also doing a lot of my own research about medical problems to keep myself informed. I also have chronic pain so I know what you are going through.

If you don't want to post some of the more personal info I am asking for you can PM me, and if you don't want to share it at all then that is ok as well. I just want to help and need more info.

I wish you the best and hope you can find some relief from your pain.

 

Thank you for being so kind enough to offer me help, I was vague on alot of information as a problem as complex as this can end up quite lengthy when described in detail, but I will attempt to keep it short

Before my overdose I had been going out to rave parties for 5 years and taking a combination of ectsacy, lsd and amphetamines every weekend without any bad effects whatsoever. On the unfortunate day I had the overdose day I had taken some ice along with 3 different pills one of which was mdma the other mda and the third one I have no idea. I went to my girlfriends house following the party, things became intimate and during our lovemaking I suddenly began to burn up with the most intense feverish heat I have ever experienced to this day. I immedeately ran for the cold shower but it did nothing as my whole body became numb and tingly from the severe hyperthermia, we called the ambulance and I lost conciousness while waiting, I later woke in hospital in a state of panik and shock to find myself in an ice bath, I was almost certain I would die at the time. Later I was told that I was given dantrolene to manage the hyperthermia and how lucky I was to have survived. Immedeately upon release from hospital I found that when I tried to move or walk my heart would race and I constantly felt feverish, I thought nothing of it and went to bed, but the heart problems continued the next day when I tried to move along with the fever which has now been constant for the past 9 years. Since that day my life has never been the same again.

When I finally became diagnosed with "Autonomic Neuropathy" and "Postural Orthastatic Tachycardia Syndrome" by an Autonomic Specialist and Neurologist I found out that these symptoms I had developed following the hospital release were infact the begining of Dysautonomia. I was told one of the causes for Dysautonomia is toxic exposure and that I was one of the few unfortuante people to have developed my Dysautonomia directly as a result of neurotoxic exposure and heart valve damage due to the severe hyperthermia which had had aslo damaged my hypothalmus causing constant overheating problems everyday with my body temperature.

I have been overheating everyday for the past 9 years, I wear a cooling west to be able to go outside into the sun and spend the majority of my time in front of an air conditioner, 1 month later I thought I would try the tiniest amount of speed (not enough to get me high) to see if I could continue enjoying drugs however to my absoloute horror I began to burn up once again and ended up in hospital this time with only a fever just over 39c and discovered at that point I had now developed an allergic type reaction to the very drugs I once consumed in abundance without any complications. I cant even drink alcohol anymore or smoke some pot or take a simple diazepam without becoming horribly ill from it and its all because I damaged something very complex in my brain. So you see if I go on explaining anymore this is just going to end up real long as it is only the tip of the iceberg of this strange illness so I have no doubt the overdose and particularly the hyperthermia left me with this neurological damage, because one day I was fine at %100 health and the next day after release from hospital I wasnt, the change was so immedeate that how can I even look for other explanations, especially when it came no suprise to me that neurotoxic exposure is a cause for this illness. If your still willing to help me I will answer all your questions but I just dont want to bore you with the complexity of it all.

 

Ok so you not only have Dysautonomia or Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction but also Autonomic disregulation... wow man I am so SO sorry.

I was imagining an opiate type overdose, but an MDMA OD like that which causes hyperthermia can definitely cause ANS symptoms like this, I am wondering if your doctors have considered the fact that you probably had a Seretonin Storm during that OD which probably messed with the way the nerves and synapses are working in your brain, and like you said, particularly in your hypothalalmus...

So, clearly as you said you caused some pretty severe damage to some very complex systems in your brain because you overheated so bad. One thing I can say is that you are very lucky you didn't die, because with hyperthermia that bad you were inches from the coffin man.

However, that being said, the condition you have been left with is awful, painful, and I feel for you.

So, that being the case you either need to find some obscure drug that doesn't cause an ANS reaction, or undergo another battery of expensive, complex neurological tests in order to help more clearly diagnose the portion of your brain causing this issue so that maybe it can be treated (I am wondering about a drug that I read about years ago which was used to treat autonomic disregulation... and of course I can't remember what it was called but I think it was a very potent anti-psychotic used maybe originally to treat schizophrenia, but I might be totally wrong. Anyway someone tried it off label for someone experiencing hyperthermia similar to yours (although without the drug sensitivity) and it worked and the person was able to not overheat while on the medication.

I wish I could help you more man, and I am still willing to have you PM me any updates and anymore details (or you can post them here too) and any other questions you might have, but at this point If I were you I'd seek out two things:

First: I'd have my neurologist run a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study, or an FMRI. It is an MRI which of course maps your brain function, but they hook up electrodes to your head and body to allow them to study the way your body responds to certain stimulus. They could run an FMRI and dose you with something with a short half life like Ativan in the hospital setting so they could treat you right afterward but this way they could watch your brain respond to the drug with the MRI machine in real time, not just see it after or before the issue takes place.

Second: I'd seek alternative pain management, especially acupuncture because it is proven to help re-regulate your peripheral nervous system and therefore can have positive effects on your pain while also maybe having positive effects on your hyperthermia. Another option would be herbal therapy. although if you are that sensitive to drugs, herbal methods might cause problems for you too. I would try though, maybe see a naturopathic doctor.

I really hope you can find some relief. One thing I am sure of is that you should NOT use any sort of CNS stimulant drug like MDMA, speed, coke or anything like that because that is what caused the ANS problems and they could easily make it worse.

Again, I sure hope you can find something to make you feel better, and I really feel for you: being in pain with no way of getting relief is awful, and nobody deserves to live in pain. Keep in touch, and good luck

-V

 

Hi, you seem like a very insightful, wise and logical person. I appreciate your attention and help. Ultimately I would very much like to undergo tests in order to help more clearly diagnose the portion of my brain causing this issue but however I dont have the funds to do so, on that basis I have to somewhat accept my fate and learn to move on.

In terms of accupuncture I have had them before and currently building up motivations to start back up again. The Mri was actually done very early into the investigations about 8 years ago to look at the hypothalamus and the brain to rule out any possibility of any tumuors that may have been responsible for the temperature dysregulation but the MRI came back clean.

The pain is in my back and in all my connective areas in my joints where I have developed many tears in the cartlige, even though I have adverse reactions to opiat medication, the the pain seems to dissapear when I take the pain medication or maybe its just that the adverse reaction is so horrible that I dont notice the pain anymore. I would like to hear of any alternative therapy yo may know of, and I wish you all the best in dealing with your chronic condition also, I would be interested to know what it is that you have, feel free to pm me also anytime you want, was great to meet someone as kind, friendly and knowledgeble as you. Thanks again for all your help. :cheers2:

 

Dude maybe you should go to a fucking doctor if that shit is happening to you and the pain is that bad.

It sounds like you're just buying opiates from a dealer and self-medicating. See a pain specialist or pain management therapist. If you don't know what's going on with your own body then a bunch of opiophiles on a forum aren't going to be any help either. See someone who has gone to university for 4 years and has a degree in this stuff!

EDIT : not trying to be a dick when I say that, but stop trying to play doctor with yourself and get some real help.

 

Twizz, at what point did you suddenly decide that I was self medicating ?

It was the fhe pain managment clinic put me on the medication, they also changed the pain medication at least 7 times to different opiates every time I went back there because of all the adverse reactions, now they dont know what to do with me anymore so they refered me to an allergy specialist(immunologist) and he also said my situation is very complicated, Ive been to so many specialists and neurologists to figure how to fix myself so my body would react normaly again but I keep being told science is not evolved enough to repair intricate damaged areas of the brain.

Ive even been to psychiatrists and psychologist even though I dont have any mental issues and they confirmed that none of this is in my head and that my autonomic system is messed up. So now Im stuck because the medical world cant help me so Im here hoping that the people who use these drugs regularly and have experience with them can give some insight as to my specific symptoms during adverse reactions. If some of the symptoms I experience are normal or happen to you guys at higher doses where as I experience them of the smallest dose.

 

some people get hyper taking Aleve.. ?? idk..

 

sounds like ur body dosent like oxy...... sucks

 

What kind of chronic pain?

 

^Here's what he said about his pain so far Salmon.

Hope that helps.

-V

 

What an awful situation..