High doses of meds - Pain Management Message Board

pain research · 01-04-2007, 11:04 AM

What is the highest dose of meds you have heard of anyone being on? With all this talk of tolerance, I'm wondering, how high could a person go? My doctor once said that there is no ceiling for narcotics in this situation (incurable pain), but how high HAS anyone gone? Are we the guinea pigs? Or the canaries in the mines? Is there really no limit, or can these meds harm us at very high doses? (I am not talking about a sudden change, but the slow increase after a person develops tolerance.)

whitfield · 01-04-2007, 11:39 AM

Interesting question and it made me think. I have a friend with a husband that died of pancreatic cancer--I do not know what they gave him while he was in the hospital, but before that while at home he had a 100Mcg Duragesic patch, 160Mg Oxycontin--2x per day. Percocet (5mg) every 4 hours. I am sure other people have heard of or seen higher, but that seems like quite a bit to me.
Roger

RetiredDirector · 01-04-2007, 11:53 AM

There are people who are on extremely high doses. I know Dave (Shoreline) has posted about some people he knows who are really on high doses. When I was on Oxycontin, I was at 160 mg TID (480 mg per day) and 30 mg of Oxy IR QID. I was switched to Duragesic from there.

Shoreline · 01-04-2007, 03:04 PM

I've read about folks wearing as many as 12 100 ugh patches, another used 1800 mgs of morphine a day plus BT meds, another used 600 mgs of methadone a day, anyone using more than a couple 1200 or 1600 mic Aqtiqs pops a day is prety phenominal tolerance compared to these daily doses spread over 24 hours.
I got up to 600 mgs of Kadian a day. It's how you tolerate the side efects and how functional you want to remain that truly limits the dose. Some people will spend 20 hours in bed from just a couple hundred mgs of morphne a day, some take that much in a single dose and it doesn't phase.

I guess the next logical question is how long does it take? There is no absolute answer, I've seen it takes a couple years and I've seen it take less than a year to increase too thousands of micrograms of fentanyl per pay using Aqtiq. I've also seen folks stay at the same dose for sevral years although it may apear high to some.

There is no right dose somone should be on for failed back surgery or Fibro or Migraine or any problem. It has to do whith what you have been exposed to in the past and how well you tolerate the meds and side efects. The dose has to be suited to the patient and controlled by a doc that is aware of what that dose is truly doing to the patient.

Good luck, Dave

forginon · 01-04-2007, 04:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shoreline

I've read about folks wearing as many as 12 100 ugh patches, another used 1800 mgs of morphine a day plus BT meds, another used 600 mgs of methadone a day, anyone using more than a couple 1200 or 1600 mic Aqtiqs pops a day is prety phenominal tolerance compared to these daily doses spread over 24 hours...

Good luck, Dave

WOW.

12 100µg patches at a time.

At one time I was prescribed 250µg (2 75µg patches and 1 100µg patch) Duragesic patches every 48 hours, and up to 8 1,600µg Actiq lozenges per day. I reached this point over a 3 month period with three consecutive bad lots of patches that were dumping their contents in a matter of about 7-10 hours or so. I would complain that the patches seemed to be going flat really quick and was told to replace one if it was bad. I could tell they didn't believe me, and it took months for the problem to come to light publicly. Problem was my blood level of Fentanyl was going through the roof. What a horrible experience. It's hard to believe that now I'm using 80mg of Methadone per day and am enjoying much better pain management than ever before.