Do people tell the truth when they are on morphine?

[Firefly45]

A very good friend of mine just underwent massive serious surgery. I went to see her a few days later (she asked for me).

A family member warned me she was not herself because of the morphine and the nurse also told me lots of people turn bad tempered with the morphine.

My friend was horrible! Swearing, rude, aggressive, rude to nurses and told me several times to fuck off. It was shocking and scary and very unpleasant. I left because I'm not being spoken to like that and also thought maybe me being there was making it worse.

Ive been texting family but not been back yet. Family said she is now much more normal but still very poorly and in pain. She isn't being nasty now.

Family said they don't want her to know how horrible she was being and she has no recollection of it.

I feel really offended and shocked and hurt and like was this her true self?

Ive seen and been with other loved ones and never seen anyone I love turn nasty like this.
I feel selfish feeling shaken up and hurt by her. I also want to tell her when she's better what happened but obviously family have now told me not to?

Anyone any experience like this?

Of course this wasn’t her true self! Stop making it about you and show your friend some compassion!

Your friend is recovering from major surgery and all you can worry about is how they hurt your feelings?

Me three. I couldn’t speak so was just giving a thumbs up then started to speak and was ranting about how the nurse should leave her husband as he sounded awful. I am really embarrassed as I recollect sounding awful and weird. Then I was dumped in my room, it was Covid so a private hospital, and was left to be sick for six hours instead of an iv…then a lovely nurse came in and said I shouldn’t be sat up after having back surgery and sorted me out.

To the pp who said she works and functions well on morphine. You are used to it and it will be in smaller doses staggered throughout the day. This lady deserves sympathy as it’s something she isn’t used to and her body has been through a trauma.

You’re being totally unreasonable and very precious

Morphine can cause hallucinations and other major effects on how your perception. Once after surgery I yelled at a nurse that they really needed to keep the snakes living in the strip lighting under better control.

Being in pain, and feeling helpless also cause major issues with temper and mood, and morphine distorts that while also lowering inhibition. I really wouldn't read anything into their behaviour in that state.

Even the nicest person in the world can be a dick in those circumstances.

How are you imagining the conversation to go?

"Hey friend, hope you're feeling better after the surgery but I just wanted to bring up how horrible you were to me when you were drugged up on morphine. You said all these things which really hurt my feelings and now I feel like I don't know your 'true self'.

Can you please justify all the things you said to me that you can't even remember saying, because you were under the influence of an extremely strong drug to help you with pain after a major surgery?"

You have no idea how you would react to morphine - you could be exactly the same. Would you want to be confronted about it?

Our bodies are so finely balanced - and yet can take an awful lot of ups and downs concerning our individual equilibria - and even though this planet has roughly 7 billion plus people living on it, every single one of us could react differently, even if infinitesimally so. Therefore, almost any reactions to any changes in our everyday health and well being, can have a remarkable temporary, or permanent, change to our minds and bodies.

The personal example I can give to this, is about what happened to my DMiL about 10 years ago. She had suffered from a couple of weeks of really bad diarrhoea and vomiting, and even though she had had several home visits from her GP, she was eventually admitted to hospital with severe dehydration.

After her first night at the hospital she told her DS - my DH - that she wanted to come home, as when the main lights went out at night, a chute would open up behind her bed, and the bed tipped her down it. She also told my DH that she knew he had been arrested by the police for "doing a bank robbery", which she was cross with him for! I can assure you that my DH has never been arrested by the police for anything, and that neither my DMiL, or MDH (or me for that matter) have ever been arrested by the police. So in my DMiL's case, it was her being severely dehydrated that caused her unusual symptoms.

@Firefly45, please believe what people are telling you here, that changes to our physical bodies, can change our mental reactions, and that it doesn't mean that someone who has spent most of their life acting as if their personality was one thing, was really hiding their true horrible personality... It may even happen to you one day OP.

My DM, recovering after heart surgery, thought my dad had done something which meant the whole (large city hospital) had to be completely evacuated in the middle of the night. She told me this whilst I was visiting her whilst my DF was at home. She was so convincing in her telling of the event I nearly believed her and was desperately trying to think what my dad could have done to result in the evacuation of the hospital. Obviously she was talking nonsense. We never brought it up again!

Yes OP. It's a perfect truth serum. No idea why they don't use it in the criminal justice system. Your very good friend has been pretending to be nice her whole life. The person she is while under the influence of strong opiates is her true self. Forget everything you ever knew.

It's normal with morphine. I kept phoning dh to remind him to take the bins out when I was in morphine. And I phoned my mum several times to tell her that ds5 had been born. I was very surprised when she told me she knew already (because I'd already told her 3 times!)

OP is it possible you've grown up around alcoholics/recreational drug users and found your friend behaving like that very triggering? That would be ok, but please talk about it with someone else and not your friend as she really couldn't help what happened.

If that's not the case, i would listen to the advice here and try to forget about what she said. Think of it as her sleepwalking or something. She wasn't present in the interaction in the same way you were. It definitely wasn't her true self revealed, more like her true self was nowhere near.

I was sedated and had an adverse reaction. Apparently it's rare, but instead of being put into a sleepy and agreeable state of relaxation, some patients go the opposite way and become aggressive raving lunatics instead. I was one such patient, lucky me.

I have no memory of the incident, but I'm told that I physically fought the lovely nurses I'd been chatting to moments before. I couldn't be restrained and they had to call the whole thing off. I swear, I was calm as a cucumber before the sedative went in. I really, truly was!

It a brain chemistry thing. In my case I think it was caused by past PTSD. Your brain receptors get altered and don't respond the way they should. It absolutely won't be personal, in your friend's case, and it's kinder not to say anything.

I'm not going to jump on you because witnessing something so horrible and out of character could make you feel devastated and upset - shocked even.

What you need to do now is realise your friend has been through something traumatic and the drugs obviously caused a change in them - the nurse even warned you about that.

You need to forget it and not take it personally.

My mum had a rare allergy and was allergic to most pain medications. She was very unwell throughout my life and I saw her reactions to morphine many times and it varied. She would hallucinate badly, sometimes would laugh uncontrollably, other times become very paranoid, sometimes she would shout or cry at times she seemed almost possessed. I'm not sure what you would have to gain by telling your friend, what is it your expecting? You sound like you want an apology. Your friend won't remember a thing and you could make her very anxious and upset if you mention it to her. We made the mistake of mentioning some of the things my mam was saying to us and laughing about it when we were children and my poor mum was devastated.

simple answer op, no.

Op read your post again, all the information is there.

Are you the type of friend who felt quite pleased to be asked for, and thinking you're going to sweep in and be the hero, but instead got sworn at.

The way you said you're not being spoken to like that, without taking into account

Your very good friend
Who had major surgery
Who you'd been prewarned wasn't being herself BY TWO PEOPLE no less, including a medical professional.

But instead you know better and choose to ignore all this and be offended.

And worse, go against the family and all sense and think you're going to tell her what she was like!!

Your friend doesn't need a friend like you.

if she were my friend I’d have to pull her leg about her behaviour, perfect my impressions and then grab the chance to make up a few corkers

This happened to my dad after brain surgery. Apparently he threatened to punch the surgeon!

I think you should try not to make this about you. I've always feared that if/when I'm ever on serious medication I might say something horrible. I'd hope that the people caring for me and visiting me would understand that I wasn't myself at the moment.

Why would you want to make your friend feel bad about something she couldn't help?

Some people react differently and
uncontrollably to pain medication (which on this case was strong,!). If you are friends you would most likely just want to be there for them and make sure they are ok? It's a simple choice depending on what was said? But pain meds make someone talk absolute nonsense, so if she has said something personally hurtful, I would ignore. If it's something you can't "get over" then it's up to your choice to do with what you want understanding all the context and her lack of inhibition.

Morphine made my nan racist, like incredibly so, and she was never normally like that. It also made her hallucinate and think things were happening that weren’t, was convinced someone was outside her window trying to talk to her.

My bil got real nasty on morphine, I’ve blocked it out now it was so traumatic. He also got really paranoid thinking the nurses were talking shit about him and conspiring to have him kicked out.

You’ve not seen her true self at all, you’ve seen her vulnerable on very strong drugs. If the family have asked you not to tell her then don’t, why do you need to? What will it achieve other than upsetting her? BIL would begin to spiral again if we reminded him of how he behaved, it’s just not needed, and it’s unkind.

Not morphine, but I worked on a ward and we had a 90 year old man who was incredibly aggressive and he had a UTI, he tried to punch us and was unbelievably vile and sexist. The next day he was the kindest and sweetest man, and was so distressed that he had been horrible to us.

When I had morphine, I felt like the queen of the world, and then next time I had an operation I lied and said I was in pain to get some. It was amazing.

I feel really offended and shocked and hurt and like was this her true self?

No of course it wasn't her true self? Why are you making this about yourself? I'm kind of hoping you were on strong medication whilst writing this post- rather than this being your true self.

I’m currently in hospital on the urgent transplant list and this is one thing we’ve been told about.

Have seen other patients come through who have been delirious/high/have had hillusinations. One patient when he left said “make sure someone films you, so you know how batshit you were.” Stuff that.

I’m actually dreading being incoherent or out of it to that degree. One of the HCA’s said to me that with patients like me who have been here longer term it’s much easier for them, because they know who we really are.

So frankly if any friend of mine refused to text me and took personal offence over something I had no control over her I’d probably ditch her permanently.

How about grow the fuck up, and no. That wasn’t morphine induced.

Of course it wasn’t her “true self,” what a shocking thing to think.

It’s called delirium and it can happen with any opioid medication. It’s most common in older patients. It can present in different forms like anxiety, agitation, aggression, paranoia, hallucinations, or a bit of everything.

My own grandmother suffered from opioid-induced delirium several times, including one memorable instance where she was convinced that the American Navy was doing something that she had stumbled upon and were now after her. She thought my mum was a spy and had to be restrained because she kept doing things like cutting her IV lines and trying to cut open the lining of her purse because she thought she’d hidden something there that “they” wanted. She had just finished reading several spy thriller novels, which is where all this came from. Obviously we took those off her once she recovered. 😂