On 11/8/2011 12:37 AM, Steve Pope wrote:
> > wrote:
>
>> On 11/7/2011 9:51 PM, Steve Pope wrote:
>
>>> There is no way Vicodin is effective taken only once per day, at least
>>> not for continuous pain. But it's not truly "take as needed" either
>>> as there is a strict limit on the amount of acetominophen you
>>> can take. The present guidelines are maximum 4 grams/day for ten days,
>>> and 2.5 grams/day if you're taking it longer than ten days.
>
>> My script says take one every 8 hours for pain. One doesn't even help
>> me anymore, though it did at first. 2 helps but I can only take them at
>> the end of the day when I get home from work. Right now I'm getting to
>> where I can't go to work and people who saw me cry tears in pain today
>> were asking why I wasn't at home. Well, somehow you have to deal with
>> it if you have a job.
>
> I haven't faced what you're facing, but what I did experience, recovering
> from a fracture earlier this year, that even if I could mentally ignore the
> pain, I needed the pain reliever (mostly Vicodin at the time) in order to
> concentrate on work. The pain affected my ability to concentrate and
> otherwise deal with everything.
>
>>> And there's not much margin of safety if you exceed these limits,
>>> and/or combine it with alcohol.
>
>>> The good news is that persons using opiates for pain control are
>>> not really at much risk of becoming addicted
>
>> I have combined it with alcohol. Lots of it. Maybe that's why it isn't
>> working anymore.
>
> Well there's several issues here, at the top of the list is that
> alcohol and acetominophen in combination cause liver toxicity, which
> you really don't want. A single 1.8 gram dose of acetominophen (i.e.
> fewer than four Vicodins) can be fatally toxic to a steady drinker.
>
> The next issue is that, whatever orthopedic problem your body is
> trying to recover from, alcohol inhibits your body's healing.
>
> And finally, yes what you mentioned above, your brain re-baselines when
> you drink steadily, and the alcohol input is needed just to get back to
> normal-feeling levels of various brain chemicals. So there's no net gain
> in terms of pain relief.
>
> So yeah, you might want to dial down the alcohol in addition to
> other measures to address this. Or if not, switch to something
> that does not have acetominophen in it. (Although a doctor is
> unlikely to buy such reasoning, unless you're a celebrity and
> they're a celebrity doctor.) A good alternative is vicoprofen.
>
> Good luck

Thanks Steve. I guess I'm sort of self medicating with the pain
med-alcohol cocktail. I just want to be knocked out. I will take all of
the information you wrote to heart because I know you're right.