Hi Stacey.
We’re probably very different in terms of body composition – I’m a fairly big man in my 40s with a long history of recreational drug use and a high tolerance for everything I’ve ever consumed! However, what I can say is that I was taking over 60 Nurofen Plus and 8 Solpadeine Max every night (4 at a time x 2) for weeks before I gave up, and at least 40 NP and the Solpadeine on and off for a couple of years before that.
The Solpadeine was simply because it has codeine and I wanted to take less ibuprofen and didn’t mind 8 doses of paracetamol in 3 hours, 4 at a time…ridiculous really as, even though I was extracting as much ibuprofen from the NP as possible, I know there was still loads in there.
Anyway, the reason I mention is twofold:
1) I’m on day 14 now of cold turkey and yesterday I swam in the sea for a good hour, walked a couple of miles over the cliffs of Dorset and didn’t think or feel the effects of my addiction once. The day before, my legs had felt the fatigue that’s plagued me since giving up the pills but I still walked about 5 miles across some serious hills near Corfe Castle (lovely if anyone knows it – highly recommended!).
2) My doc told me that, whilst he wants me to go for a blood test in a month or so, he would be really surprised if I’d done any lasting damage. The kidney is the worry and he says you have to seriously abuse it for years to do anything that would affect its functioning. He wasn’t concerned about liver or stomach (he said the former is pretty bullet-proof and regenerative, and the latter doesn’t store problems up but, rather, tells you very quickly if you’ve got a problem).
Everyone is different, of course but I hope this gives you some extra comfort that you can kick the pills without any physical after effects.
That said, I’m with Lotty and Casey – don’t go cold turkey if you can taper but if you can’t stick to a taper (I tried several times and couldn’t) then CT is short and sharp, horrible for most but over quickly in the grand scheme of things!