Flexeril and Flying

The night before our early morning flight to Alberta had seen me on night shift. With only a little over an hours sleep before heading to the airport I was very concerned about my back surviving the approx 7 hour flight to Alberta, so we packed my Flexeril for the trip. Flexeril is a muscle relaxant which I had been taking 3 times a day when my back was at its worst. After boarding the plane I could tell the terrible seats were not good for my back. Shortly after take off the passenger in front of me leans his seat back crowding the already miniscule amount of room I had to help reposition my back. Uncomfortable I decide to take a Flexeril to relax my back for the flight. After about 45 mins I got drowsy and passed out. The plane landed in Toronto for an hour or so layover. Trying to get out of the plane was difficult as it felt like I could fall asleep if I stopped moving. We wlaked down to a food area where sat down and again I was falling asleep. Linda went to get in line for food and I could not keep my head up off the table. I was fading in and out of sleep. When I would wake I tried to fight the sleep but it would sweep over me and I would fall unknownly back asleep. I was not able to fight back the waves of sleep. After eatinf a delicious middle easern meal we boarded the plane again. Once seated I was asleep again. I woke for a few seconds as the plane was taking off...but that was it. I woke later in the flight, a little confused, but not in pain. The Flexeril left me uncomfortably sleepy but my back did survive the flight.

On the 8 hour Ottawa-Sudbury bus trips I used to pray that Greyhound would invest in a technology that would pipe-in some sort of aerosol opioid that knock us all out.

Here is a quote from a web fourm:

"Packing, unpacking, and hauling luggage to and from airports always causes lower back pain for me. I take one cyclobenzaprine/flexeril and I'm out for 12 hours+. Totally legal and solves two problems. I've got a prescription and have never tried to buy it in Thailand."

Erowid is always a great source of information.

Here is one experience:

I took 20mg and an hour or so later started to get really drowsy, like I hadn't slept in a week. A friend and I left school early and I started falling asleep in the car. Finally I got home and fell asleep on the couch and then upstairs in bed. I went to bed in my room and didn't get up until the next day, and then I was all drowsy and sluggish. It sucks because I was supposed to go to a movie with my friends but I couldn't stay awake to save my life.

The time that I was awake I felt like I was a robot and just did as I should [...] there was no emotion, no excitement, everything just was. It kind of seemed like purgatory..."  

Citation:   kman. "Bad for Getting High, Great for Falling Asleep: An Experience with Cyclobenzaprine (ID 43602)". Erowid.org. Jun 27, 2007

The Flexeril has that effect on dulling everything. While I was taking it three times a day I was ambivalent towards most things. After taking the Flexeril on the plane it made me realize just how much pain I must have been in when I was taking them three times a day. The pills at the time seemed to do very little in easing the pain. This back injury is going to take a long time to heal. I hurt my back on April 14 and I my back is still weak. I lifted a box of tiles (not particularly heavy) into a shopping cart the other day and I have paid a price for it. I am not sure how long this is going to take to heal.

Seems like Flexeril is an anticholinergic so that means it is blocking acetylcholine. You know this far better than I do but I always thought of acetylcholine as the ignition primer for muscles. I know everyone gets a daily dosage of acetylcholine each morning to wake you.

Besides the crippling back-pain how was the trip?

The trip was good. We went to Waterton National Park which is beautiful. We also went to Prince Albert National Park which is very similar to northern Ontario and very beautiful. We saw lots of wildlife. We also went to Writing On Stone Provincial park which had a lot of Hoodos which look like stone mushrooms. I could see why natives would view them as spiritually important. There were as petroglyphs which including animal carvings and a battle scence between two tribes. We also went to Dinosaur provincial park which is park of the badlands. It was quite beautiful. After that we went to the Royal Tyrell museum in Drumheller which was an awesome museum! On top of having some of the best dinosaur fossils in the world it had a pattern through the museum where you walked through the differwnt epochs. So starting about 500 million years ago and going to ice age. It had the fossils representing each epoch as well. There was an awesome Silurian Reef set up showing what it may have looked like. Overall it was an awesome museum. So it was a good trip that involved lots of driving but was really pretty and awe inspiring!

Sounds like a cool mixture of biology, anthropology, archeology and paleontology. The Silurian Reef sounds like good brain fodder for populating the Atlantic sea of the far future....