I know what you're going through. I've fibromyalgia and a nerve disorder myself, (for over a decade now) and a hernia too L5-S1. My doctors are very reluctant to prescribe painmeds, but without it I would be dead too. I know you're telling the truth. Without it I can't sleep at all due to the pain, no matter how tired I'm. Also, due to the pain I can't sit or stand up for too long, so I rarely leave my house.
Anyway, have you tried weed oil? That seem to help for many pain-patients. I've not used it myself, but I'm planning to. I tried kratom, but the taste is awful. I don't like consuming it at all.
Sorry for how long this is, but my situation is a bit complicated.
By sheer luck, back in November, I found out my dad's pain doctor - who's actually a genuine doctor and not terrified by things like pain pumps/etc. - takes my insurance. It took 5 months of transferring out of previous pain doctor(s), getting insurance to approve everything, going through the medication trial, etc., but I finally got the pain pump implanted April 24th and I just got the medication filled in it for the first time today.
It's going to take some tweaking to get the dosage right - for reasons I'll explain in a minute - but it's clearly my only remaining option for pain management. As this guy even said, I'm literally the EXACT type of person the entire concept of the pain pump was created for.
Anyway: I've tried literally **EVERYTHING** in existence. Every prescription opiate (except Opana), every form of marijuana (homegrown, medical, tinctures, edibles, extracts, etc.), kratom, 7OH, even heroin. If I knew how fucked the last 15 years of my life would be, I would've gone back to 2011, learned the dark web as extensively as possible, and never experienced anything I've experienced in that time.
If your opiate tolerance is low enough to where you respond effectively to kratom, it's actually a great option. Yes, the taste is terrible, but after my first medication/doctor snafu in May 2019, finding kratom a few weeks later likely saved my life until I found a new doctor by the end of 2019.
However, while kratom worked from June 2019 - April 2025, I got too impatient. Not to mention, kratom tastes DISGUSTING. Lemonade/orange juice will mask the taste enough to where you can chug it down, but after nearly 6 years of doing that, I couldn't do it anymore. Kratom capsules - in theory - should've been the solution. But, those destroyed my stomach every time I tried them, so diluting powder in your drink of choice is the only way I could take it.
Last April, I got an email from my kratom company one day about this new thing called "7OH". For the first time in my life, I did no real research and just assumed it was a new, more convenient form of kratom. I ordered 2 bottles, used 7OH for 2 weeks while waiting for my next oxycodone script, and then thought I could just transition back to my meds for 2 weeks like I've done for nearly 6 years... lol nope. I completely and totally fucked up.
7OH has a binding affinity 10-13x higher than morphine.
Oxycodone is 1.5x stronger than morphine.
Mitragynine (the main alkaloid in kratom) is about the same strength (chemically) as morphine. This is why I could flip-flop between my oxy script and kratom for nearly 6 years - they were comparatively similar.
That 2 week 7OH experiment? It immediately skyrocketed my opiate tolerance. I got my monthly oxy script, and within 1 day, realized these were basically useless. I was now stuck on 7OH, which was an expensive mistake. Honestly, if 7OH wasn't so expensive (and about to be federally illegal in the next 1-4 months) I would just use that all the time. It's the most effective pain-reliever I've ever used outside of heroin. Unfortunately, the withdrawal is the most evil thing I've ever experienced. I've made 4 legitimate attempts over the last 13 months to stop taking it - especially when Ohio banned it without warning in December - but after 4.5 days of still being in withdrawal and getting no sleep, I had to give up and drive to Pennsylvania to buy some more. I've been stuck making 2 trips every month, driving 2.5 hours each direction, just so I can barely function enough to manage my chronic pain.
My pain pump was filled up for the first time yesterday. I was hoping the dosage would be strong enough to 100% prevent any 7OH withdrawal, but that didn't happen. The good news is that I reduced my 7OH dosage by 75% and it immediately ended the withdrawal, so I feel like once my doctor tweaks the pump dosage a bit more, I'll finally be off of the 7OH for good.
Chronic pain is the worst. Keep mentioning it to your doctor until they refer you to pain management, or just call your insurance and then call every doctor around you and ask if they're taking new patients. Opioidphobia in this country fucked everything up from 2015-2025, but they've slowly been fixing a lot of the mistakes they made. There are still doctors out there who will actually help you, it just takes a lot of searching unfortunately.
