Can percocet tolerance level be returned to my original level before I have total knee replacement if the dosage has been at 2 tablets 10325 every four to six hours for the last 24 months?

Answer 1

Oh God yes. I wish I was on that low a dose.

Tolerance levels take a long time at lower dosages to be realized, and even then it depends on the person. Dosage levels can be reduced much easier and faster though.

Depending on how fast withdrawal symptoms come upon you and how bad they are, the easiest and safest way to do it is to drop your dose incrementally over time.

Try cutting one pill in half, and then using 15mg instead of 20 per dose, and see if you can handle the withdrawal symptoms. If not, cut it in quarters, and start with 17.5mg per dose and work your way down. Try decreasing the dose every week at first to see if you can handle the withdrawal, if not extend it to 2 weeks. You get the idea.

If you have a problem with that, you can always get a drug from your doctor to help ease the withdrawal symptoms, but it's easier to do it the way I've listed above.

If you're curious, I've been in Pain Management for over 10 years and I've done that myself. Prior to my last spinal operation in 2006, my L3 disk had finally collapsed, with the vertebrae touching bone on bone. In addition to using between 120/150 Percocet 10/325's per month, I also use Duragesic 100 patches for primary pain. The pain was so bad that I had already had to double my patch dose because I was using a lot more Percocet than normal. When it collapsed, I was using my patches, my Percocet, 100mg Demerol tablets, AND 30mg MSContin tablets. It still didn't help the pain much. In the end I wound up using Prednisone to lower the inflammation enough so the pain meds could work.

It took about 6 weeks and a lot of withdrawals, but I was able to get back to my original dosages of 1 Duragesic 100 patch and Percocet 10/325's (2 or 3 as needed, still use the same amount per month).

I still don't understand though why you'd want to lower your dose before a major surgery though - you're still going to wind up needing more, so why lower the dose if you're just going to have to increase it again? Since you've been taking a set dose for a long time like me, it'll take a long time at a lower dose for your actual tolerance to go down. By "long time" I mean many months or longer depending on your system.

Depending also on how much you take regularly and if your pain is chronic and steady like mine, you might benefit more from a long term chronic pain med like Duragesic. The dose you're taking is relatively low for those of us experiencing severe pain. There's a direct conversion table for the equivalent amounts of Percocet related to a relative amount of morphine. Knowing that amount, you can then figure out the relative amount of morphine it would take to equal a certain dose of Fentanyl in a Duragesic patch. Knowing those, you can figure out how much Percocet is equivalent to certain dosages of Fentanyl in Duragesic. For your dose, I'd guess probably a 25 or 50 micro patch would be the equivalent. Something to think about.