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I mentioned before how challenging it’s been trying to wean off of morphine completely. I’ve been realizing lately that the effects of withdrawal might be even more subtle than I realized before. When I took 30 mg before bed, I would often feel great and full of energy, so much so that I usually stayed up long past my usual bedtime (which, to be fair, would sometimes be as early as 7:30). When I took 15 mg during the day, I felt incredible fatigue only an hour or two after waking up from a good night’s sleep or even a long nap. When I took no morphine, I definitely had signs of withdrawal, with muscle aches and cramps and generally feeling super yucky.

After some experimentation, it seems that I really do need 30 mg of morphine to feel “normal,” without fatigue. I don’t love that my body seems to need this, but I do love feeling good/normal, so I’ll go with it. I do want to talk with Palliative Care to see if they have any other suggestions for how to wean down even more, partly because I don’t want to develop more of a tolerance than necessary. Knowing them, there are other medications I can use to help with this. They always have more meds to try!

The good news is that I really do feel quite good on 30 mg. Instead of wanting to nap constantly and feeling like I’m forcing myself through the day, I feel motivated and excited to do things, especially creative things (maybe this is why artists were morphine addicts? I hope I’m not at that level!). So I suppose that for the time being, I have to content myself with being where I’m at at feeling OK with what my body needs. But I am going to call the docs and see if there isn’t something we could do about this to help me along!