Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with narcotics

Can you use marijuana in Narcotics Anonymous?

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:23:32 -0800

Can you use smoke marijuana and still be considered "sober" in Narcotics Anonymous? I have a friend who has battled crack addiction for years. Recently (she says) she has going to Narcotics Anonymous and will show a NA sobriety keyring to anyone without any prompting. Also recently, she also has been smoking marijuana like a fiend, and will be restless until some weed can be scored somewhere.

I don't care about the marijuana use - given the alternatives, I would be delighted if she was nothing more than a pothead.

I just wonder if she is fooling herself, or me, or the program when she is combining weed with NA. Given her history (which includes unfortunately a lot of lying), I'm not sure what to think.

Help my friend stay sober

rachaelfaith — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:35:57 -0800

How do I help a friend in recovery from narcotics make it to two clean years? A friend of mine is coming up on two years of narcotic-free life. He is feeling 'the jitters' and is hinting that he is worried he might relapse or somehow sabotage it. He attends several meetings a week, but he's expressed that he still feels unstable.

I've told him I am open to talk or just listen at any time, any day, but I wish I knew how to go about this in a less naive way. I can't find many resources on this, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong places.

It is less than two weeks until his two-year date and I want to help him make it there, drug-free.

Please share your experiences or advice!

Realllllly Bad Situation

symbollocks — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:35:55 -0800

My friend needs suggestions and advice for a bad situation he's in. His dad has a compressed vertebrate and is dealing with a lot of pain. In trying to deal with his pain he has become addicted to (prescription) narcotics. He can only walk with the aid of a cane. He works at a news station.

His mother has a sciatic nerve problem and a compressed vertebrate. She too is in a lot of pain and takes a lot of narcotics to deal with it, though she is not addicted, she is still out of it for much of the day. She works as a nurse at a local community center. She too can barely walk, except with the aid of a walker.

My friend is 21, he is living at home and helping his parents as much as he can. He is unemployed, after being fired from a food service job and being forced to sell off his car after it broke down for good. He has a suspended license, and has 6 tickets for driving with a suspended license. The next time he gets pulled over for that the consequences are greater than a mere ticket, possible arrest or more.

He would like to get a job so he can help more, but it's hard to get one when the phone is often disconnected. That and he does not have reliable transportation, as his parents have only two cars, one of which is about to be broken down for good.

His parents have a lot of pets, which they are (for the most part) unable to take care of themselves, due to their health problems. He has to take care of these pets.

They are currently heating their house with 3 space heaters, and had previously been using the oven, which is now shot.

They will most likely be getting evicted sometime in the next few months due to financial problems. Their financial problems are primarily due to their health problems. They have health insurance, but it does not cover very much.

There is often no food in the house for days at a time. I subsidized them recently with a box of dumpstered bagels, after they had gone for 3 days without food.

What solutions exist for a guy in a horrible situation like this? or for his parents? Anything, even just to stabilize the situation.

He has given me permission to post this question and I can provide feedback if there are further questions.

Oh, and please, no pity comments. He's got a truckload of that stuff already.

So what is he on?

Evan Gaffney — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:05:35 -0800

Hello MeFites, I'm trying to determine what drug(s) a member of my family is using. A tiny bit of background information

We are sure that he has been abusing prescription painkillers for quite sometime but we have been at a loss as to what precisely he has been using. We would love to have this information so that we may confront him with certainty and not allow him to use any ridiculous excuses.

Recently we have discovered some of his paraphernalia I was hoping that this will help determine what he is using, hopefully with your help

Together in a box was:

a single syringe

a prescription bottle filled with clean cotton

a prescription bottle filled with small bits (approx 1/4 inch in diameter) of grey/green colored cotton that smelled of what I can only describe as tylenol/aspirin

a baggie filled with strips of crumpled up wax paper

I really don't know what to make of it and I don't know how to begin researching it. Also worth noting is that he was caught cutting up a pill into a powder.

And, finally, yes, we have attempted to drug test him but unfortunately he has been, well, less than cooperative.

Thank you so much for any help and information you can provide

If not Vicodin, then ... what?

spaceman_spiff — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 22:55:23 -0800

[HouseMDFilter] What *are* the options for treating addiction in patients with severe chronic pain? (Spoilers for the January 9th episode and In the TV show, one of the major subplots is House's addiction to Vicodin. This is explained as having begun 5+ years ago when he experienced muscle death in his leg, which resulted in high levels of pain at the time and (I believe) continuing to the present.

In calling him an addict, is the implication that his pain is no longer real, but is now a physical dependency on the drugs? Or is his pain still as real as ever, but his physical dependency is 'too strong'? Or perhaps he has two issues going on - pain, treated by Vicodin, and an addiction fed by an overavailability of Vicodin, and his behavior and personality are seen as symptoms of the latter. Or his Vicodin-seeking behavior - hoarding the drug, stealing it, etc. (Too many 'or's. I'll stop now.)

Then assuming he is addicted, what would his options for pain management be? In a Season 1 episode, Cuddy tells him that there are other ways of managing pain, but it's not clear what these are - presumably if there was a nonaddictive method of treating pain, that would have been the original treatment. I can't imagine that anything less effective than the narcotics House is on would be acceptable to a patient with that kind of pain. Are there alternatives that are considered more acceptable because there is less of a risk of psychological dependence, at the cost of a greater physical dependence (in contrast to Vicodin, which is the other way around), or a difference in the euphoric effects?

Note: I'm aware that there are a broad range of opinions on pain management, ranging from the relatively prohibition-ish attitude of the DEA to the more permissive attitudes of some pain management doctors, including some who have been accused of acting as 'prescription mills'. But I suspect there's more to this than that.

(One last thing, as long as I'm here - Wikipedia says that buprenorphine is not administered orally. Wouldn't someone have noticed that the pills were Vicodin, or something other than buprenorphine?)

2 weeks of hell

ryanissuper — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 10:20:48 -0800

My doctor is making me quit Percocet(been on for 3 months) and Celexa(been on for a year) at the same time. I will be weening off the celexa but going cold turkey on the percocet. Shouldnt this be against the geneva convention? What kind of hell am I in for?

Online Pharmacies

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 19:46:17 -0800

How do I go about finding a reputable online pharmacy? My wife has daily migraine headaches and recently moved from a pain-friendly state, Colorado. In looking for a new doctor in Washington state who will prescribe strong pain medication (Oxycodone) we have met with a lot of hesitation on their part in prescribing narcotics.

It seems the stigma of taking these drugs is to the point that doctors are finding creative ways to tell you your pain is not serious enough to warrant taking anything greater than aspirin for migraine headaches which last as long as 72 hours. My wife runs a home business that can't withstand this kind of downtime, and narcs are the only thing that has worked so far.

Please help me find an online pharmacy to bridge the gap that will A) Do online doctor consultations; B) Accept our insurance (Premera); and C) Actually prescribe pain medication to the people that need them.

We are not drug abusers but are being treated as though we are. Please help.

Narcotic (legal) advice.

filmgeek — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 19:34:08 -0800

Psst. Been on a Narcotic long? I could use your advice. Legally, for horrible health reasons (kidney stones), I've been on percocets for 16 weeks. Quite a number of them. (6-8/day). Prescription is 5/325 oxycodone... take 1-2 every 4 hours for pain. that could be upwards of 10+ a day.

Medically - the large stones I have are sitting in a diverticulum - a small pouch near the top of my kidney. I'm seeing two urologists...and have a course of action - it's just I'm in a very grey space. Just had my 2nd extra corporeal lithotrypsy on tues.

Bextra and vioxx were taking off the market. Vicodin doesn't do much for the week I took it.

So, while I'm taking all these drugs, I wanna know...your experiences? Hard to get off of them? My life is either foggy and more comfortable....or painful and sharper. Any advice would we welcome.