Patient control of opioid use |
[What is your PCP is concerned about?] “That you might overdose. Yeah, but I know how much to take.” |
“I’m not going to take no four to five pills a day. If I have to take four or five pills a day then they need to figure out how to do something different with me. Because I’m not going to sit up there and commit suicide [unintentionally overdose.]” |
Responding to clinicians’ concerns |
“She said she couldn’t prescribe it [opioids] to me as long as I was unclean. She went on to tell me what effects it would have on me, that it wasn’t good to mix the two [illicit drugs and opioids], that I have to give her a clean urine sample over a period of time before she can give it back to me.” |
“[Clinicians are] always afraid that it’s going to cause you to go back and use[illicit drugs]. That’s what bothers [my clinician] that it might make me go back and use. But I told her it doesn’t affect me that way, it just doesn’t. Thank God it doesn’t make me feel like I want to go use.” |
Stigma related to opioid policies |
“She did it [opioid monitoring] because … she’s risking her reputation or practice…She wanted to make sure I wasn’t drug seeking.” |
“People with jobs, when you can afford it, they don’t put you through that [monitoring]. You don’t sign all these contracts and, ‘Oh, if you go and do drugs then I’m not going to give it to you.’ No, you don’t go through that. |
But you get a county hospital all of a sudden, ‘You need to sign a contract or we’re not going to give you this [opioid].’” |
Risk of addiction to opioids |
“I have never been the type of person that likes pain medication, because I didn’t want to get hooked on it. I’m not hooked on it now, but that has always been one of my fears.” |
“I don’t want to be addicted to long-term medicine because I don’t like taking pills. If I don’t have to take them, I don’t want to take them. Right now [my PCP is] helping me out, we’re trying to get a drug that won’t let me get addicted. Norcos, you can get addicted to them and you can get a tolerance toward them, but with the methadone, from what I researched and we both researched, it helps you … you don’t get addicted to it.” |