Patterns

I've been on 40mg of slow release morphine for 5 days now, and I'm starting to see a bit of a pattern with the increases. Not only do I have the resurgence of side effects on day 4-5 (am pretty zonked today), but I also seem to get a short (at the moment, anyway!) period of total emotional meltdown. Both when I changed to the slow release, and a few days after the increase, I had a night where I was suddenly completely and utterly furious. Ostensibly, I was angry at ordinary stuff, but really it was stupid little things that in no way merited that level of emotion, and I knew that what was really happening was that all the anger, fear and sadness I'd felt as an abused child was suddenly exploding back into the present. Even the nature of the anger was different; it was a child's anger - unreasoning, uncontrolled and completely without limits. It was a full-on temper tantrum time and the magnitude of it was terrifying!

The first time it happened, I managed it on my own, but this time I had to call a friend because I just didn't know what to do. Or what I would do. It was like this angry little girl inside was suddenly in control, and I had no idea what was going to happen (christ, I sound schizophrenic!). Not that she doesn't have the right to be angry - she quite clearly does - but being suddenly slammed with that, out of nowhere, was pretty bloody horrifying. And just when it seemed like it was easing, then the breathing problems and the panic attacks started...

It all ties in with what happened the last time I tried morphine though. Then, I was having a lot of therapy as well; if this drug somehow opens the doors on old feelings, and you're also having treatments like hypnotherapy that are designed to do the same thing - it's no wonder things went so badly wrong! I didn't find this with the immediate release stuff, though, so whatever causes it, its seems to be specific to the slow release stuff.



And as if all that wasn't enough, I'm also investigating another theory at the moment - that the anti-depressants somehow inhibit the morphine and limit its efectiveness. I've always taken my anti-depressant in the morning, and initially I found that the morning dose of morphine that I took at the same time wasn't enough to get me through to the evening dose. I thought it was because it was the smaller of the two, but once they were equal, it was still the same - I didn't really get proper pain relief till I'd taken the evening dose as well. So I've been trying taking the anti-depressant later, to see if the morning morphine works better. I'm only on the second day of the experiment, but early indications are that it does. But then last night I had trouble with the evening dose feeling like it hadn't worked. I can't win.