United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Powerful drugs can do unexpected things to you...coming off them suddenly can also do the same...it's not recommended! When I was on the drugs, I slept pretty well, but when I (stupidly) decided to go cold turkey, I wanted to rip my skin off...the itchiness was SOOOO BAAAD (amongst other bluddy awful symptoms)... also, I couldn't relax in bed, was constantly twitching and stuff. To stop it, I went back on the drug at a lower dose, then came off it gradually over a few months. I personally think that Jamie just droppping the methadone suddenly like that might well have started this off...I'm no doctor tho, just my own personal experience and gut feeling. Hope he feels better soon.

Liz B

The key to this problem is in how we approach sleep. Sounds "hippie" perhaps but I have been from one end of the pain dope problem to the other and the the truth is that what "we" need is a good nights sleep. Easirer said then done, perhaps, but the "problem with narcotics is that is they allow us to sleep a bit too well-perhaps, so that natural sleep seems patheteticaly inatiquite, a cycle that can only be promilgated by more opiods; which would be great if we didn't have to drive or interact with our families. In the end if pain is going to be long term, and there is no reason to beleive that it isn't, we need to get control of our sleep. Drugs would be great--if we didn't have a waking life, but in the end it is our dreams that are more important than our drugs or our waking life. Not some esoteric belief, but our dreams. I've realised in nearly three years of paralylisis,pain and surgery that the key to how well all of us navigate the "real" waking world, depends on how well we dream. I'm not sure any "proffesional" can helpv us with that.
Readd EVERYTHING you can on dreams
Onepaw

Isn't dreaming when you're in REM sleep, ie not so deeply asleep? I did find that when I was seriously dosing myself for pain I would crash out like a baby and sleep dreamless sleep, and wake feeling like crap. My arm is troubling me at night for the first time since I was newly injured', not nerve pain but cramping feelings and general discomfort. It's one reason I'm thinking about amputation, the hand just gets in the way now in a way it never used to.
Sorry, just thinking out loud here.......:0)