Posted by:
midwestanon
(
)
Date: July 07, 2015 11:47AM
There is no answer to this question that will fit for any given situation or for every person. How people react to opioids/opiates depends on their bodyweight, age, prior tolerance, interactions with other medications, and even things people might consider trivial I don't even know (i.e. eating grapefruit and drinking grapefruit potentiates medications like benzodiazepines, making the effects faster onset, and if someone is sensitive, potentially dangerous).
If your pain issues are chronic but only require occasonial (based on what you wrote, not even daily) narcotic use, you usually won't develop tolerance, and like someone else said, if you are responsible with usage and have been prescribed the correct dose, you won't experience the 'high' that people describe when abusing opioids and opiates. Hydrocodone is a moderate to highly powerful opioid, it just depends on the dosage. If your usage is infrequent and you haven't had problems driving with it before, I don't see why it would be a problem. I have heard of people getting D.W.I. for impaired driving for things other than alcohol, but for people responsibly taking prescribed medications, I think this is less frequent. In England, they make you renew your license every few months and go through other hoops if you're on Methadone Maintenance Therapy.
Someone mentioned the problem with hydrocodone and liver problems. Actually, more people die in the United States from liver problems with opioids with acetaminophen than from overdoses- they take tons of the stuff, and because it has so much acetaminophen in it, (which they are either oblivious to or just don't care due to their addiction) it can cause liver failure. There are a couple of solutions to this. In response to this problem, there is now a medication that is hydrocodone only called Zohydro, that I believe comes in formulations from 10 mg to 50 mg. Also, Codeine, Oxycodone, and Hydrocodone all have formulations with lesser amounts of Acetaminophen- for example, you can get pills that have 5 mg hydrocodone/ 325 mg acetaminophen, but there are also some pills that might have 600 mg's of acetaminophen and or more. You just need to talk to your doctor.
Anyways, it sounds like your pretty responsible with your narcotic use, and if you're not getting high or feeling high, and only take it a couple times a week anyway, I wouldn't worry about things like driving. When people start having to take things like Oxycodone, Dilaudid, Miperidine, MsContin, or Fentanyl, then it's time to worry. those are typically the medications associated with extreme intoxication and producing the most potent highs, and worse addiction.
As a recovering heroin addict, and someone who is currently in the process of weaning off methadone, I can tell you that after a while, nothing you take is enough if you keep taking enough of it, both in terms of the actual amount, and what you want it to do to your body. So you can really never be too careful, even with something like hydrocodone, which can become addicting, and is one of the most commonly prescribed- and abused- medications in the U.S.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2015 11:53AM by midwestanon.