An Acid Trip By Another Name: OxyContin

I recall during the late fall of 2007 meeting a woman in the campground we were staying at in New Mexico who, for all intent and purposes, appeared more than just intoxicated. She looked like she had just returned from Hades or from a prison camp where a great deal of torture had been inflicted on her. Menacing dark circles ringed her eyes, her pale cheeks looked hollowed out and a veil of unspeakable torment hung over her face. When she spoke, her urgent words were slurred. I would remember only one word of her brief diatribe.

Little did I know that several months later I too would be under the same influence and in the same predicament as that woman.

My trip was initiated somewhere in the dark, paralyzing world of anesthesia during hip surgery. I would not be fully aware of that psychedelic sojourn until days later following an ambulance ride to yet another hospital in the Arizona town we were staying in.

I am in a car with my wife returning home from the hospital in which I had surgery. Events, reasoning, emotional points of reference are all spinning toward a menacing and terminal “eastward” venue in my mind. I blurt out several warnings to my wife about going west instead and then began screaming at the top of my lungs, eventually descending into a pool of inconsolable weeping.

Arriving at our coach in a once-familiar campground, I soon descend farther. My body begins its own protest and shortly I am at the brink of unconsciousness, unable to breath, my heart pounding at over double its normal rate and my blood pressure rapidly dropping. The EMT personnel who arrive minutes later decide I am having a massive heart attack and rush me to the local emergency room.

The inexplicable “eastward” terror takes hold again as I am being attended to by doctors and nurses in this small regional hospital. Once I am stabilized and transported to a private room, the “trip” continues with a vengeance. An Irish-sounding respiratory therapist is at my bedside intently watching the motion of my diaphragm. We talk briefly through the plastic blur of my oxygen mask, the conversation consisting mainly of his questions. “Do you feel you are breathing okay?” “Do you recall my giving you an inhalation treatment?” “I am going to listen to your lungs.”

I experience exactly thirty of these visitations by the therapist. By that I wrongly assume that I have been in hospital for about a month. The number 3o is remembered as certainly as my date of birth. With each visit I am asked the same questions and provide the same answers. Around the fifteenth visit I become annoyed and upon seeing the therapist at my side I quickly provide the answers to the questions before he has a chance to ask them. He nods, smiles faintly. By the twenty-ninth visit I am aware that something is wrong and that I have been rather rude to this compassionate medical staff. I apologize and explain that I have been experiencing some rather bizarre episodes of deja-vu. He nods, smiles and begins to repeat the questions I have answered for what I think is many weeks. On the thirtieth visit I decide to end what I believe to be the absolute nonsensical nature of these visits by feigning sleep (or death) when the therapist is again at my bedside. Thankfully, he doesn’t attempt to wake me up.

The trip on which I have unwittingly embarked is not over with me yet. On one of the many nights that I am unable to sleep while in the hospital I experience what I can only describe as a psychedelic ride through the ungoverned equations and theories of time and space. The experience has fragmented a tad over these many weeks of recovery, but the germane realness (or unrealness) of the experience is vivid and no doubt will remain with me for the rest of my life.

The trip is both a mind and body travel. I am sweating profusely, my heart palpitates wildly and I am gripping the edges of the soaked sheets with all the force I can muster. I stare at the waiting glow of the nurse’s call button on the TV remote, weighing the cost of calling for help which I fear might land me in the psych ward. I am cognizant enough to understand the consequences and to make my own decision. I decide to go it alone.

In the next few moments I clearly die and experience a brilliant rebirth, one not grounded in any religious context but nevertheless tinged with the “white light” emergence. Briefly, I feel cleansed and whole. Though there is no booming voice, my mind is filled with the incredible explanation of what life and death mean…and what I shall soon experience. Life and death, I am made aware, are a connected circle which must repeat ad infinitum. Each, in the inexplicable collusion of time and space, occurs in a momentary sliver of universal time. A lifetime is experienced and re-experienced on an infinite number of tracks, all simultaneously. I am then shown what this is like without the benefit and grace of exclusionary ignorance. What follows is a terrifying experience of shifting viewpoints. I repeat a personal life experience from a multitude of vantage points, each providing a different sense of values, feelings, emotions and perspectives. One momentary experience is sliced into many, many “versions” of that experience. This is the basis of life experiences: no finite continuum (birth followed by death), rather an incomprehensible infinity of repetitions. A subliminal tone of connection with every other human soul (and possibly a higher power) seals the foundation of this forced knowledge. I know instantly that I have no choice but to fully acquiesce and embrace this new reality. I am tempted to escape it with the foreknowledge that in doing so I must die again and repeat the intricately painful epiphany. Eventually, seeking respite from this torment, I resign myself to this knowledge.

I am and have remained in bed for the duration of this trip. My eyes never closed, my grip on the bed sheets never released. But instantly I am suddenly and profoundly at peace with myself. I still can’t fall into deep slumber but I am able to close my eyes and drift over lulling ripples of well-earned solace.

The reality is that I was in the hospital for only two nights. While what I experienced was (and will always remain) all too real real, that realness has since been tempered by logic, sensibility and a salve of cognitive reasoning.

I had been given a narcotic by the name of OxyContin during and following my surgery. I had a severe allergic reaction to that drug which resulted in severe respiratory failure, false cardiac warnings, extreme diarrhea and anemia, auditory and optic hallucinations and a torturous psychedelic trip through a drug-induced state of obvious dementia…or was it?

About the Drug

OxyContin, approved by the FDA in 1995, is an opium derivative that contains the same active ingredient as Percodan and Percocet. It is primarily intended to alleviate severe pain in cancer patients and in patients who endure pain from surgeries. OxyContin is an opiate agonist. Opiate agonists provide pain relief by acting on opioid receptors in the spinal cord, brain, and possibly in the tissues directly. Opioids, natural or synthetic classes of drugs that act like morphine, are the most effective pain relievers available.

OxyContin Abuse is becoming a wide spread problem in America. OxyContin is a leading treatment for chronic pain, but officials fear it may succeed crack cocaine on the street. The DEA says it is only a matter of time before every community in the country is confronted with the problem of OxyContin abuse. No prescription drug in the last 20 years has been so widely abused after its release, federal officials say. OxyContin has resulted in 120 deaths nationwide.

OxyContin will provide a high much like high grade heroin but with worse consequences. A 5mg tablet of OxyContin has as many active ingredients as 1 Percocet. Ingesting a non time release 40mg tablet of OxyContin is similar to taking 8 Percocets at once. An 80mg tablet of OxyContin is like taking 16 Percocets all at once.

But what about innocent victims like myself? How does one know if he is going to have an allergic reaction to OxyContin? I was asked prior to surgery if I was allergic to any drugs. Based on the knowledge that I had never suffered a reaction to any drug I had previously taken in my life, I answered in the negative. Even without experiencing a severe reaction to a drug, knowing what I know now about this dangerous narcotic, I would never have consented to its usage. There are several underlying conditions that can trigger a severe reaction to this drug. There is a host of medications that should not be taken when using OxyContin. The risk, at least for me, is too great.

A great deal of attention has been focused on the illicit (or recreational) usage of OxyContin. But not much attention, though, has been placed on the frequency of its use (and possible abuse) by patients who are prescribed the drug by physicians, some of whom are far too liberal in doling out and refilling these prescriptions.

I would later find out that the woman I met at the campground in New Mexico had been prescribed OxyContin for some time. Not only did she suffer severe reactions to the drug but she was also horribly addicted it.

There is a clear caveat here for those who are contemplating the use of this unpredictable narcotic. I may be sensitive to the drug addicts who get their hands on this drug, though I am also sober about their choices in life. There will always be drugs available for so called recreational use and there will always be a prescribed drug like OxyContin available through physicians for patients suffering with pain. Addiction can be the result of a lifestyle choice. It can also result from an innocent and well-intentioned trust in the advice from a medical professional.

Clearly, many patients have used OxyContin without suffering adverse effects. Perusing some of the latest studies on the use and effects of OxyContin as well as the plethora of anecdotal information posted by patients on the Web will contribute to an underlying sense that there is a very dark side to this readily-available narcotic.

In recent years Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, has attempted to wash away the dark side of this drug by promoting new positive literature and funding studies to enhance the view that OxyContin is fully safe when properly used and monitored. I have read these reports with minimal bias, but I am not swayed. I have a lasting personal relationship with the narcotic.

The truth is that OxyContin almost killed me. Its physical side effects are clear, and perilous they are. Its effects on my mind were tantamount to torture. I wonder if others who have taken that “trip” to the edge of reasoning and rationality simply never returned or returned in an altered state of functioning. I have trouble remembering what day it is and my focus is often labored. Is this a result of my taking OxyContin? I conclude that it is probably not….and quickly refrain from looking up a good tort attorney.

Save for a few puffs on weed back in the late sixties with my father after dinner drinks, I have never taken illegal drugs and have never abused prescribed ones. One of my siblings did on a protracted basis, preferring LSD. It eventually landed them in a hospital and resulted in a string of terrifying “flash-backs” which I had to contend with. The impression it left on me I’m sure contributed to my puritanical deference toward the use of any kind drug. I should mention that that sibling today is a successful psychiatrist.

Well, introducing that true fact opens the door to a whole other purview on this subject (no thanks, Tim Leary).

In the grasp of torturous pain should you consider taking OxyContin? Assured by a physician that it is a safe drug to use on a short-term basis, should you rationalize, “I have heard from others who have used this drug for successful pain alleviation. And I am in a lot of pain.”

Should you drink alcoholic beverages? Should you smoke cigarettes? Should you ignore your body’s warning signs? Should you ignore the full warning signs on a bottle of OxyContin?

There are obvious risks in deciding on any of these options. These are personal choices that should be supported by known evidence and research. And by commonsense.

Would I ever consider taking OxyContin again. Obviously I wouldn’t. Would I ignore someone who is contemplating use of this drug. That too I wouldn’t. My experience was too dramatic and my reaction too severe to consider any other option but to accept a valuable lesson learned and to actively share what I have gone through with others.

Recommended links:

http://www.rxmed.com/b.main/b2.pharmaceutical/b2.1.monographs/CPS-%20Monographs/CPS-%20(General%20Monographs-%20O)/OXYCONTIN.html

http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/oxycontin_wcp.htm

http://www.na.org/basic.htm (Narcotics Anonymous)

http://www.aapainmanage.org/ (American Academy of Pain Management)