You are not in danger of becoming "addicted"! You are not abusing the medicine, to become an addict you need to also be an abuser.

There is a difference between addiction and dependence. When you are a long term user of pain meds, you become dependent on them and you may have some withdrawl symptoms if you stop suddenly. Should you and your doctor decide that you are no longer in need of medicine, he/she will come up with a plan to titrate you off of the opiate based meds so you encounter as little withdrawl as possible.

As far as taking pain meds, you are on such a miniscule amount of pain medicine that you really have little to worry about.

If the t4 is working, you are in a great position, because as far as chronic pain management goes, many of us pain sufferers are on much higher and much more frequent doses.

Don't be worried you are not in danger,
brian

Thank you so much for your reply!
I do know that there is a difference between dependence and addiction; I guess I am afraid of becoming dependent on the medication as well. Though I know it is only natural that your body will get used to a medication like this after a while. I have noticed it doesnt work as well as it used to but that is bound to happen. I dont want to take anything stronger or any more of what I am taking now so I hope it will continue to work for me. I am grateful that my pain is controlled by something as relatively weak as tylenol 4 cause I know there are a lot of people out there who need much stronger medication than this. I only worry because I do know someone who has much worse problems than I do with their back, and they have very bad withdrawal symptoms if they do not take their medication. It is a scary thing to think that may happen to me, and id rather be in pain than risk that happening.
Thanks again for your reply and I hope you are doing well with any problems that you have.

Thankfully I do not get in real problems when it comes to withdrawl symptoms. It is said that when the pain is real, the medicine is so busy helping with the pain that you don't really have to worry about withdrawl.

I take my meds as prescribed and I do not encounter any withdrawl symptoms. I am on very high doses of medicine and sometimes when we go out for a while and I cannot get my breakthrough for more than 8 hours I get worried that I may get hit with some symptoms but its not usual for me to have any problems,

a wonderful medicine that doesnt give you any kind of "pleasureable" feeling is the duragesic transdermal patch. It works so well because it goes in all day long for 3 days at a time. You get good sleep and actually have a half way decent life. I guess it can become a very tough medicine to remove yourself from but as a long term patient, I do not see the need to worry about that.

You defnalty need to be seen at a pain clinic and see if there are some alternatives for you. If you are really worried about taking medicine they may be able to help you find a better answer to dealing with your pain.