Offering Hope and Recovery to Chronic Pain Sufferers

hydrocodone for obsessive compulsive disorder

The role of opiate therapy in the treatment of mental illness continues to fascinate me.

A 47 year old woman, knowing of my interest in the subject, sought my consultation. The ostensible problem was painful carpel syndrome, with burning in the hands, especially at night. Her primary care doctor prescribed the opiate, hydrocodone and she found that it not only helped her pain but also her depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

She told me that her OCD, which she described tersly and well as "intruding thoughts" began in her teen years but she never entered psychiatric care until age 32. She was given several different drugs over the course of the years and currently she was on Paxil and Wellbutrin. None, she told me ,had ever been really helpful. That is, until the prescription of hydrocodone for carpel tunnel pain one year before. Thrilled with it's effect in arresting intruding thoughts and allowing, her to become  appropriately mentally focused, she shared her good fortune with her psychiatrist of many years. He was, she said, incredulous and dismissive to the point of rudeness. So much so that she chose to leave his care. She wandered around for the next year trying to find someone who would prescribe the only drug that controlled her mental illness.

Then she found me. I accepted her story for I have heard similar ones dozens, if not hundreds of times before  I prescribed her requested drug. It was certainly not FDA approved for OCD, but it is for pain, and she certainly had that. The opiates can be life restoring in the mentally ill and I have written about their effect in victims of pain who also suffer depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, phobias, or obsessive compulsive disorder.

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robertcochran Posts: 2

PTSD
Reply #5 on : Thu May 20, 2010, 13:14:19

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Linda, I'm accepting of all that you say. I've seen it too many times to not believe it. I wrote on the subject in Curing Chronic Pain in the chapter entitled The Opiate Cure. I hope your doctor will be sensitive but be advised, he or she may not be. Opiates for psychiatric disease is still a very controversial issue. I hope that will change soon. Regardless, I wish you good luck and thanks for the comment. It may help others

Linda Horne Posts: 3

PTSD
Reply #4 on : Thu May 20, 2010, 09:04:58

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I have tried every drug my doctor has given me which includes those prescribed for anxiety and depression. None of them have relieved the terrible invasive fear that keeps me from living a normal life. I have always kept away from opiods(sp?) in the knowledge that they are habit forming. I have developed tons of tricks and coping techniques, but they alone cannot give me enough relief. I had no choice this past week to continuously take hydrocodone at 5/500, for the whole week, for a tooth problem that cannot be fixed for days more. Last night I realized that I was no longer in a cold sweat at work and indeed, I was actually relating to other employees and customers far easier than usual. I am still very nervous about taking this long term, but I will talk to my doctor seriously about it. It may provide an answer to my inability to work longer than 6 months at any given job, to keep my children more than 3 days of the week, and actually be able to walk out in public without worrying someone may kill me. Thanks for this site, it gives me a foothold to believe this may be part of my answer.

robertcochran Posts: 2

Keta Bill all over pain
Reply #3 on : Thu January 07, 2010, 11:38:49

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You sound like most of my patients at least at the beginning . I suspect you just have not found the right doc yet. I.m sure you can be helped. Good Luck, Bob Cochran

Keta Bill Posts: 3

alll over pain
Reply #2 on : Thu September 10, 2009, 06:41:20

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Hello,
Just recently was denied pain meds for my overall pain that started with my neck and now is everywhere--ankles hands lower back
I've done rolfing, chiropractic, am continuing yoga and stretching. I'm a soul and Rhythm and Blues singer who has always performed in heels---like a racehorse, I can't hold back once I'm working. Most every song has some choreography. I know that my shoulder and neck posture is not good when performing and I think that's how I've gotten myself into this mess. I'm going to be 53 next month, I've been performing since I was 18. As well as singing I work hard---I teach music in the public schools and carry in my keyboards and guitar and music. I go room to room, and it's a lot of lifting and setting up.

I love to garden, but my hands don't want to even hold a water hose---
I've always been a hard worker--and now I'm paying for it.
Incredibly painful but I can't NOT work---
WHat can I do? Just more of the same? I guess that's it.

Stephen Force Posts: 3

Oxcycodone
Reply #1 on : Wed July 29, 2009, 13:32:56

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It's amazing but I have found the immediate release oxycodone to be almost a miricle drug. About two years ago I started to have chronic and severe pain on the right side of my body. In addition I had a detatched rotator cuff. I had three rotator cuff surgeries in the last five years and was dissipointed that it did not releive the pain in my arm and shoulder. The orthopod would only treat the pain with anti-inflamitary pain releivers which didn't did not work at all.

In addition the oxcycodone relieved the depression I have had all my life. I want to clrify that the oxcycodone didn't just give me a euphoric high it releived depression. I found a job while on oxcycodone....I clean the house and am more proactive in my approach to life. Oxcycodone also gives me the energy of a Titan.

Thank God for Dr. Cochran.