DOSE:

repeated

IV

Morphine

BODY WEIGHT:

70 kg

I just thought that I’d quickly write this to inform those who are about to undergo surgery that if they receive morphine to ‘manage the pain’, it’s not all pleasantness and bliss. I’ll try to be concise and to the point.

About a month and a half ago, I ripped the cruciate ligament in my left knee, which required me to have a full knee reconstruction. I had surgery 3 days ago and I was discharged yesterday. It’s a pretty painful operation and given all the nasty leg drains and ripped muscles, it’s not surprising that for the duration of my stay in hospital I was pretty much given as much morphine as I could take, in addition to codeine, paracetamol and anti-inflammatories. While I was in hospital, I was injected with morphine every four hours. Between these injections I was given 60mg doses of codeine and 1000mg of paracetamol. This kept me in a pretty drowsy and ‘out of it’ state, sometimes it was even quite trippy.

The first night was bizzare, as sleep came only in short little doses. After my morphine injections, things would get quite weird - my visual field would distort slightly, not in a psychedelic way, but it was noticeable nonetheless. I would find myself in the middle of nonsense conversations with people who weren't there. I'm not sure if I was speaking out aloud, I assume I wasn't for the nurses did not seem to notice. The patterns on the ceiling were affected in way that I can't really describe - again, it wasn't a psychedelic effect, just 'an effect'. I'm sure these all of these effects had something to with the stress of surgery, the anaesthetics in my system and my inability to sleep, but the morphine definitely exacerbated them in a major way.

By the next day, the 'trippy effects' were much less pronounced, but still there. They would become stronger after each morhpine injection, but somehow I was left unable to explore the drug once it was administered. Even so, as my stay progressed, I found myself requesting more and more morphine and I became much more conscious of when it was wearing off. In the beginning, the morphine had distracted me from the pain – the pain was still there, but it was pushed into a very distant corner in my mind. Then my mind became better at staying coherent and aware of the pain. Morphine is a subtle drug, for when it is working its strongest, I am least aware of it. That’s when it’s doing its job, when I'm letting it do its job. I must say that I honestly wasn’t sure at first if the morphine was doing anything, because I found it quite hard to identify and feel.

When I began being able to feel it, I begin to yearn for its effects. *Remember that this experience is in the context of being under intense pain.* Then once I'd had a hit, I only seem to realise that I was on it once it starts wearing off. In addition, morphine constipates like hell, this is a nasty after effect that became apparent in the days following surgery. If you’re in enough pain to warrant being given morphine, I can promise that being constipated doesn’t help matters.

Yet it was when I went home that I fully realised the extent to which the morphine had aided/broken me. The day I didn’t get any morphine I was really grumpy and impatient, my pain seemed unmanageable and I felt like I was getting the flu. I had a slight temperature, my body was tender and my head spun and felt sick on occasions. Did I forget to mention nausea? I was told by a nurse that all of these symptoms were a result of having been on constant morphine for over 48 hours – my body was in a minor sort of withdrawal. These symptoms would subside after a day or so. I’m not exaggerating any of the effects of the morphine withdrawal, though bear in mind that there were other factors, such as not being attended every 10 seconds by lovely nurses etc, that I’m sure played a part in my overall feeling of crapness when I was discharged.

I’d consider myself a pretty experienced person as far as drugs are concerned, and before going to hospital I was interested to see how morphine would shape up. Even though my foray into the world of opiates has only been brief, professionally administered and under painful conditions; I’d have to say – based on this experience and several recreational experiences with codeine - I don’t think I’ll ever go near painkillers again. In my limited experience with opiates the only potential I could find in them was for that of escape… into a very deep hole.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 40122
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 15, 2008	Views: 38,235
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Morphine (211) : General (1), First Times (2), Retrospective / Summary (11), Addiction & Habituation (10), Hangover / Days After (46), Multi-Day Experience (13), Medical Use (47), Hospital (36)