Morphine has an average half-life of 2 to 4 hours. In other words, it takes between 2 and 4 hours for your body to eliminate half of the dose of morphine. The half-life fluctuates from person to person. This is because everyone metabolizes medications differently. It takes several half-lives for a drug to be fully eliminated from the body.
For most people, morphine will fully clear the blood in 12 hours. However, morphine can still be detected in the saliva, urine, or hair for a longer period of time. According to American Addiction Centers , morphine can be detected in:. A number of factors can influence the time it takes for morphine to clear the body. These include:. The effects of morphine are increased if you consume alcohol.
Combining alcohol with morphine can also lead to dangerous side effects, including the possibility of a fatal overdose. Taking cut, broken, chewed, crushed, or dissolved forms of morphine may lead to increased drug release into the body , which can increase your risk for overdose or even death. These medications have been shown to interact with morphine and potentially increase its effects:. Withdrawal symptoms occur when the body has become dependent on a drug.
In drug dependence, the body has become used to the presence of a drug, so if you stop taking that drug suddenly, or if you miss a dose, you may experience predictable symptoms known as withdrawal. Your doctor may want you to reduce the dosage over time to prevent withdrawal. Your doctor may also prescribe you naloxone if you are living in a household where there are small children or someone who has abused street or prescription drugs. You should make sure that you and your family members, caregivers, or the people who spend time with you know how to recognize an overdose, how to use naloxone, and what to do until emergency medical help arrives.
Your doctor or pharmacist will show you and your family members how to use the medication. Ask your pharmacist for the instructions or visit the manufacturer's website to get the instructions.
If symptoms of an overdose occur, a friend or family member should give the first dose of naloxone, call immediately, and stay with you and watch you closely until emergency medical help arrives.
Your symptoms may return within a few minutes after you receive naloxone. If your symptoms return, the person should give you another dose of naloxone. Additional doses may be given every 2 to 3 minutes, if symptoms return before medical help arrives. Keep all appointments with your doctor and laboratory. Your doctor may order certain lab tests to check your body's response to morphine. Before having any laboratory test especially those that involve methylene blue , tell your doctor and the laboratory personnel that you are using morphine.
This prescription is not refillable. If you are using morphine to control your pain on a long term basis, be sure to schedule appointments with your doctor so that you do not run out of medication.
If you are using morphine on a short-term basis, call your doctor if you continue to experience pain after you finish the medication. It is important for you to keep a written list of all of the prescription and nonprescription over-the-counter medicines you are taking, as well as any products such as vitamins, minerals, or other dietary supplements.
You should bring this list with you each time you visit a doctor or if you are admitted to a hospital. It is also important information to carry with you in case of emergencies. Morphine Injection pronounced as mor' feen. Why is this medication prescribed? How should this medicine be used? Other uses for this medicine What special precautions should I follow? What special dietary instructions should I follow? Morphine granules and some morphine tablets and capsules are slow release.
This means the morphine is gradually released into your body over either 12 or 24 hours. This type of morphine takes longer to start working but lasts longer. It's used for long-term pain. Sometimes you may take both a fast-acting morphine and a slow-release morphine to manage long term pain and sudden flares of pain that break through the long-acting medicine.
Fast-acting tablets are known by the brand name Sevredol. Slow acting capsules are also known as MXL or Zomorph. Morphine does not come as a skin patch. Sometimes people call their pain relief patch a "morphine patch". However these patches do not contain morphine but medicines which are very similar to morphine called fentanyl or buprenorphine. Doses vary from person to person. Your dose will depend on how bad your pain is, how you've responded to previous painkillers and if you get any side effects.
You can choose to take your morphine at any time of day but try to take it at the same time every day and space your doses evenly. For example, if you take morphine twice a day and have your first dose at 8am, take your second dose at 8pm. It's important to swallow slow-release morphine tablets and capsules whole with a drink of water. Do not break, crush, chew or suck morphine slow-release tablets or capsules. If you do, the slow-release system will not work and the whole dose might get into your body in one go.
This could cause a potentially fatal overdose. Usually, you start on a low dose of morphine and this is increased slowly until your pain is well controlled. Once your pain is under control, talk to your doctor about swapping to slow-release morphine. This may cut down the number of doses you have to take each day. When you stop taking morphine your dose will go down gradually, especially if you've been taking it for a long time. Depending on why you're taking morphine, you may only need to take it for a short time.
For example, if you're in pain after an injury or operation, you may only need to take morphine for a few days or weeks at most. You may need to take it for longer if you have a long-term condition such as back pain. If you forget to take a dose, check the information on the patient information leaflet inside the packaging or ask your pharmacist or doctor for advice on what to do.
If you often forget doses, it may help to set an alarm to remind you. You could also ask your pharmacist for advice on other ways to remember to take your medicine. This is not usually a problem but you could get unpleasant withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking it suddenly. If you want to stop taking morphine, talk to your doctor first.
Your dose can be reduced gradually so you do not get unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. If you have been taking morphine for more than a few weeks do not stop taking it without speaking to your doctor first. If you've taken an accidental overdose you may feel very sleepy, sick or dizzy. You may also find it difficult to breathe. In serious cases you can become unconscious and may need emergency treatment in hospital. Get someone else to drive you or call for an ambulance.
It's safe to take morphine with paracetamol , ibuprofen or aspirin. Do not take codeine-containing painkillers that you can buy alongside prescribed morphine and prescribed codeine. You will be more likely to get side effects. Some everyday painkillers that you can buy without prescription from pharmacies contain codeine, which is a similar medicine to morphine. Codeine-containing painkillers from pharmacies include co-codamol , Nurofen Plus and Solpadeine.
Like all medicines, morphine can cause side effects in some people but many people have no side effects or only minor ones. Common side effects happen in more than 1 in people. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist if the side effects bother you or do not go away:. In rare cases, it's possible to have a serious allergic reaction anaphylaxis to morphine. These are not all the side effects of morphine. For a full list see the leaflet inside your medicines packet.
Do not take any other medicines to treat the side effects of morphine without speaking to your pharmacist or doctor. In early pregnancy, it's been linked to some problems for your unborn baby. If you take morphine at the end of pregnancy there's a risk that your newborn baby may get withdrawal symptoms or be born addicted to morphine. However, it's important to treat pain in pregnancy. This is because morphine reaches peak blood concentrations within 1 hour or so of use.
The body quickly metabolizes the drug, and the half-life, or the time it takes for the body to metabolize half of the dose, is just 1. The half-life length of morphine means it will usually exit the blood within several hours, and a blood test will almost always be negative within a day or two.
Morphine exits the urine relatively quickly. Urine morphine samples test for all opioids and are very sensitive. False positives are common. Some evidence suggests that consuming even a single poppy seed may trigger a positive test result. Morphine can enter breast milk, but the quantity of the drug and the length of time it remains there depends on the dosage and other factors.
An analysis of lactating mothers who received morphine in an epidural found that concentrations of the drug peaked 30 minutes after the last drug dose. The half-life in milk was 3 hours. Another study of women who received morphine in their epidurals assessed breast milk levels of the drug at various intervals. Morphine concentrations were highest 3. By 24 hours, there was no detectable morphine in the milk. Women who may be taking morphine while breastfeeding should talk to their doctor about the safety of using this drug while breastfeeding.
Morphine remains in the hair longest. As the hair grows, new hair growth may not have evidence of morphine use, but older hair may show signs of morphine use for an extended time. A study found that morphine was still detectable in hair 90 days after a person stopped using it.
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