The Right Opioid Dosing And Avoiding The Addiction Trap

By Kevin Graham


The miracle of opioid pain relief is fatally limited by tolerance, addiction, and respiratory depression. Buprenorphine, when combined with a mu agonist, results in game-changing effects. Patients experience potent, dose-related analgesia from the agonist, but have NO euphoria. The therapeutic window is widened. Patients unable to control their use of a mu agonist alone gain that control when on buprenorphine. And most exciting, buprenorphine indefinitely anchors tolerance, maintaining analgesia WITHOUT DOSE ESCALATION. This finding offers huge implications for pain management and opioid dosing.

Opioids are compounds like morphine, opium, and heroin which cause alteration in the way the human mind perceives the world as well as altered sensations like the well-known feeling of being on top of the world. Among the most sought after effects of opioids (a misuse) are the hallucinogenic effects.

Is it possible for chronic opioid therapy to make patients worse? The answer is yes, and it is termed opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH). It is a paradoxical condition whereby patients become oversensitive to acute pain. There is a scarcity of literature on the subject of how often it occurs, what presents risk factors for its occurrence, and whether or not there is a dosing relationship for narcotics towards developing OIH.

For some individuals who take narcotics, they get a burst of energy. People may spend more time cleaning the house, car, completing chores. The pain is lessened by the narcotics, but the medications also have an effect on other neurotransmitters such as dopamine. After narcotics are stopped, a lowered energy level may result in substantial incapacitating fatigue.

Methadone is a synthetic opioid mainly prescribed as a long range replacement therapy for dependence to opioids. While methadone was once administered strictly at licensed methadone rehabilitation detox hospitals and drug clinics, within the past several years the drug is being prescribed in a pill form for severe pain. As such, the drug now can be discovered on the street, and quickly has become a top cause of accidental overdose within recreational drug users.

Beginning a patient on a high methadone dose or raising the dosage too rapidly may put the individual in jeopardy of an accidental overdose. Well-managed, high-quality centers carefully will observe their patients while in the induction and cooperate with them to get them to a dosage level that is comfortable as soon as possible, yet without taking unneeded risks.

Sleep is affected significantly by opioids. A large review of studies was published in Postgraduate Medicine looking at the effect of narcotics on sleeping patterns. What popped out? Well, opiate users displayed significant incidence of insomnia, arousals, and wakefulness.

A tolerance will develop as the body gets used to methadone treatment that will require methadone users to consume higher doses to experience their high. As very high doses don't offer the same effects, users are going to move forward with harder drugs.

The objective in utilizing opioid replacement therapy includes removing the uncomfortable day-to-day withdrawal which interferes with an individual's capability of normally functioning. The level of opiate withdrawal sickness differs from one person to another as does the severity of each individual's addiction.




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