Registration. And more Suboxone Withdrawal.

Look at me go! I’m now registered to start classes this Fall to become a chemical dependency counselor. I think it will take about a year of school, then a year of work to become fully licensed. I still plan to go on to finish my BA and hopefully grad school – but this is a quick(er) way to get a job skill that might actually net me a semi-decent paycheck and health insurance while I grind my way through the next ten years of college.

Thirty days have elapsed since my last dose of Suboxone. As I predicted, the past week, also known as the PMS week, has been the hardest. My hormone cycle seems intimately and intricately bound up with my fibromyalgia and as my estrogen drops my pain increases. And because I like to fuck myself even more royally, this is the time when I give up and sit around watching tv and reading instead of pushing on thru with the yoga and the walking and all those other things that I “know” would make me feel better. Theoretically.

Give into it I did this month. I fought so hard through the first two weeks of withdrawal that I was just spent by the third week and had fuck-all for the fourth. But hey, that’s why I quit a month early…to give myself time to get through this, right? And getting through I am. I hope.

Lack of sleep didn’t help the situation much either. Doc gave me ambien, which does put me to sleep but I think it messes with my daytime motivation. Seemed like I was actually getting more done before I started with the sleep-aid. Can’t win for now, but it will pass. Still, even with all this PMS bitching, this has been WAY easier than I was thinking it would be. I thought I would be in bed crying and screaming my hate of life but it’s been nothing that dramatic.

I predict that if I force myself to take a walk eery morning for the next 30 days, I will be feeling 100% better at the end of September. So that is what I’m going to do. Take a fucking walk.

Graduation.

In keeping with my theme of wrapping things up, I finally turned in my application to graduate today. In a few weeks I will finally be the holder of an Associate of Arts degree, woot!

It took me a long fucking time to finish this, but I did it. Most of the time I had to just keep my head down and focus on getting through one quarter, one class at a time. Sometimes I got sick and had to drop out. Sometimes I made the dean’s list. It took me three schools and many starts and stops, but I did it.

Can I just say that it feels weird to have accomplished something? I’m so good at giving up. In some way, I’m really not sure how I got here.

Back to school again in another month. Keep grinding, hopefully I’ll get where I’m going someday.

I might be Sleep-Posting. (Suboxone Withdrawal Continues).

Sorry, I just read the package insert for the ambien that I took about 45 minutes ago. The insert suggested that I take the ambien while already in bed, as I would be falling fast asleep within 15 minutes. Also, I should be aware that I might get up and do things in the night – drive a car, cook a meal, have sex – and not know that I’m doing whatever activity. Nor might I remember said activity in the morning. And here I am, nearly an hour after ingesting such a potent sleeping pill, clickity clacking away on my laptop. Hmmm….perhaps I AM ASLEEP. Does that mean I get to say all kind of weird shit and just be all: Oh, that was the ambien talking. Whatev.

Saw my psy Doc today. 16 days off Suboxone and doing fine…except for the insomnia. Today I woke up at 4 am, after going to sleep at 11, waking at 1:30 and again at 3, after the 4am wake I decided sleep was over, such as. So I read for a while and then cleaned. Later I felt spun like I was coming down from speed or my partner’s ADD meds, which I don’t take anymore, either of those things, just sayin that’s what it felt like.

Yoga was good tonight. I love this particular class. Love! We were doing Downward Facing Dogs and for a long time. My arm was shaking. I’m deconditioned due to my lack of working out while I was depressed (see space of many empty blog-months is now explained, sorta). Anyway. I wanted, in my heart and mind, very much for the teacher to move on to something else. Core strength or forward bends, balance poses, anything except all these freakin postures that were stressing my arms. It was hot in there. A bead of sweat dripped off my nose and onto my hand. My arm was shaking. I wanted to rest.

I realized: What I need is not less of this. What I need is MORE OF THIS. I NEED MORE OF THE STUFF THAT IS HARD BUT NECESSARY. I don’t need to skip that stuff and do stuff that’s easy and feels good all the time. I need more Downward Dogs. More pushups. More forcing myself out of bed early to be productive. More looking at the things that are hard and finding out how they will make me stronger. So I guess the moral of the story is: That thing that pushes you, makes you uncomfortable, you want it but you’re scared, it’s a little bit out of reach – that is what you need, quitter, to move on to the next phase of recovery.

I’ll write about that next phase idea soon. Right now I’ve got to get into bed and try to get a decent night of sleep.

Liquid Suboxone Taper Method Is A Success!

Buy-Bye!

Time away from the blog has been time well spent, crew. As of 8/2/2009, I am done with my Suboxone treatment – just a couple months shy of 2 years. As my doctor said last time I saw him: Well, you sure are taking your time with this taper. Yes, I did take my own sweet time, and I did my Suboxone taper the way I felt was best for me. It was all part of a plan to get off Suboxone with minimal withdrawal and no unpleasant, lingering aftereffects like depression.

To explain the Liquid Taper for anyone who might be interested, I’m going to copy a post I made at a The Suboxone Talk Zone Forum – which, by the way, is a great resource for anyone who needs support in their Suboxone treatment, or just has questions about it. The forum admin is an MD & recovering addict, he treats patients with Suboxone, so he knows what’s what. It’s a good group over there – so check it out: Suboxone Talk Zone Forum.

So here’s the scoop:

A while back, Dr. Junig brought up (on his blog) one of the problems with tapering off Suboxone – the fact that you can’t get pills in low enough doses to taper comfortably. He suggested a way around this problem: dissolve the Suboxone pills in a small amount of water so that you can measure out smaller doses and taper in smaller increments.

Since I’d been “stuck” at about 1mg of Sub/per day for a while, and every time I tried to start skipping days between doses I got sick, I thought I’d give it at try. This is what I did:

I crushed an 8mg pill and dissolved it in 10 ml of water, so every 1ml of water would contain .8 mg (800mcg) of Suboxone. This was a reduction of .2mgs (200mcg) of Suboxone from the dose I was taking at the time. I used an oral syringe that meaured in mls (available at pharmacies, used for measuring kid’s cough syrup, etc.) to dose myself with a half a ml in the morning and half a ml at night. I know Dr. J is big on the one dose per day thing, but my doctor ok’d the 2 times a day because I have chronic pain issues and it works better for me that way. I keep the solution in an empty pill bottle in the fridge so it doesn’t get funky.

I kept the amount of water low so that the solution would be fairly concentrated, and it works really well. The dose does seem to hit me a lot faster than when waiting for a pill to dissolve though, which caught me off guard at first. As always, I am shocked at how strong a drug Suboxone is. Even at .4mgs per dose, I can definitely feel it when I take it.

So that was 10 days ago. I took my last dose of that solution today, and I will make up a new solution tomorrow. I’m thinking of using the same amount of water but only 6mgs of Suboxone, which will be a reduction of .2mgs again.

The drop from 1mg to.8mg produced only the mildest symptoms, some restlessness and a little irritability. Much better than what I was dealing with trying to go from 1mg a day to 1mg every other day.

Other things that have helped are hot baths, swimming, exercise generally and keeping myself distracted. The less I think about it the better off I am. I’ve noticed that when I read other people’s withdrawal experiences I feel worse. Hmm…

If you want to read the rest of that thread, you can go here.

Basically, I tapered down by .2mgs every 10-20 days until I got to .2mgs. I was going to go down to .1 and .05, but the summer’s almost over and I need to be ready for school, so I just took the plunge ten days ago. Here’s a description of how the first 5 days went – since then it’s been about the same but I’ll write more on that later (also quoted from the forum):

I took my last dose of .2mg at 8am on Monday – it’s now midnight (Friday am) and I’m feeling…uh, quite good actually.

What, you say? Good. Yes, good.

I’ve had a few moments of crankiness, but that’s mostly related to being tired and/or hungry. So far my symptoms have been pretty negligible.

Monday was fine, as I dosed that morning. Slept fine that night after taking 1mg clonazepam.

Tuesday I was a little tired. Got by with lots of rest, ibuprofin, reading…I also think I was beat from a long and busy week last week so I just needed some downtime.

Wednesday I was still waiting for the horrible withdrawals to kick in. Mostly I was feeling lazy, but restless. So I fought the laziness and cleaned my daughter’s room. Physically I felt fine. Seriously.

Thursday (today) Woke up at 4:15am. Oh shit! I’ve been taking clonazepam before bed and it’s been working fine. But I went to bed at about 11:30 Wed night and woke up at 4:15. I read for about an hour, then was having very mild discomfort in my lower legs. This could be w/d or could be my fibro, who knows. Took a hot bath. Figured I was awake, so I might as well do something. So I did housework (laundry & light cleaning) until it was time to get ready for work.

Went to work @ 10am and had an amazingly productive day. No physical discomfort and I wasn’t tired. My mind felt really clear and I was in a good mood. I did sneeze about ten times, but that was it. Got off work at 3:30, by which time I was feeling tired but still in a good mood. Went home, ate a sandwich, and took a nap – fell asleep with no sleep aids.

Got up, played with my kid, did some more housework (did I mention that my house is a complete freaking mess?), had some dinner, played online – and I’m still fine.

Will see how sleep goes tonight. Tomorrow will be 5 days since my last dose, I have to work a half day and then all day Saturday. I’m kind of glad, because it’s easier to motivate at work than it is at home and keeping busy really helps.

Other things that have helped:

Having easy to make, comforting yet nutritious food in the house: premade soups, sandwich fixins, cheese & crackers, fruit.

Kombucha Tea – it’s taken me a while to get used to this stuff, but now my body craves it. I really think it’s helping.

Ginger – ginger tea, ginger snaps, ginger candy – good for the stomach – though my stomach issues have been really minimal. Like not even as bad as just eating mexican food can sometimes do ya.

Rest, and when I’m doing some kind of work I just work at whatever pace is comfortable.

Exercise.

Keeping a positive attitude – just thinking about how hard I’ve worked to get to this moment, knowing that I’m ready and that I can do this, and looking forward to plans and goals.

So, to all of you who are worried that getting off Suboxone is impossible, horrible and hopeless, I offer you this hope. You can do it with a little planning, a lot of patience, support and considerable work. If you use your time on Sub to get right with your life, and if you take good care of yourself through the taper and withdrawal process, it doesn’t have to suck. It’s mildly uncomfortable – like no worse than having a cold. A very mild cold. It’s totally doable.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or like I said, head over to the forum for more info. I’ve got lots of other stuff to write about as well, so I don’t think I’ll wait five more months to post again.

Addiction Recovery is Boring.

I am tired of being on Suboxone. I am tired of being “good.” Tired of not partying, tired of staying home, tired of trying to fix what’s wrong with me. 

I don’t want to go to meetings. I don’t want to see my therapist. I don’t want to write about it. I don’t want to call a friend. I don’t want to read inspirational stories about recovery and redemption. I don’t even want to go to yoga. I want to get into a time machine, go back to the year I was 23, drop a hit of ecstacy and go to a rave. Or something.

I am bored. And an addict being bored is a Very Dangerous Thing.

I recognize that part of this is that it’s February in the Pacific Northwest, and while the light is slowly returning…it’s still pretty frakking dreary. I also realize that part of this is my depression, which returned with a vengance this winter, and which is just starting to lift enough that I realize that I’m in a rut…but not really enough for me to do much about it.

Which is really the essence of boredom, isn’t it? Tolstoy wrote that boredom is “the desire for desires,” and that is exactly how I feel. I want to want to do stuff, but I don’t want to do stuff. And while there was a time in my life when a quick cure for boredom might have involved bong hits or tabs of LSD, that time is long, long gone.

So what then? How do I move past this feeling of boredom, before it turns into a relapse or another bout of depression?

First, I’m going to be patient with myself. The past several months have been physically and mentally hard, with my thyroid disease worsening and a recurrence of major depression. Healing takes time, and it sure as hell takes it’s own sweet time. Maybe my life IS a little boring and slow right now, but it’s what I can handle, and it won’t be this way forever.

Second, I’m going to make an appointment with my therapist. I’ve been avoiding her since I got depressed. Well, I was avoiding everyone, but I especially didn’t want to see the lady who wants me to confront my issues, jeesh. Maybe she can help me make a plan to be more proactive in my life.

Third, I’m forcing myself to be social. That’s right, real life friends, I should be returning your phone call any day now! Today I managed to get myself out to the gym for the first time in forever, and even though I missed yoga, I worked out and I think I feel better for it. And I went to a sorta-party at my work on Friday, and I might even go out to the movies some time soon!

That’s Why I Keep’em in the Front…

Endlessly amusing…

Giving “party” a new meaning…

We had a little party at  my place of employment tonight. J brought down his turntables and spun for a couple of hours. We moved the clothing racks out of the way so we had a nice open space to dance & for the kids to play.

It was strange, listening to a bunch of my favorite house records being spun in a kid’s boutique while the shorties boogied down. Such a far cry from years gone by when I’d have been listening to those same songs in some dark warehouse, high as a kite, not a care in the world.

Nowadays it’s my daughter who wants to put glitter dust all over her face, and I’m content to be home by 9:00. Funny how things change, and yet my love for the music and the dancing is undiminished, and I shelter it in the place in my heart where I know who I truly am.

Dear god, I hope Love does prevail…

So, you should watch this video. Have a tissue ready.

Click to sign the petition.

Do it.

Vote.

The Abundance

My friend hooked me up with some friends of hers who do this thing they call The Abundance. Every Friday, they get the culled items from one of the local organic-produce delivery companies, and they set all these awesome veggies out in boxes on the side of their house, send out a text message and it’s free for the taking.

I went for the first time a few weeks ago. There were boxes of little potatoes, big green leeks, leafy Swiss chard, peppers, onions, grapes and my favorite apples – Jona Golds. It was like an awesome, free farmers market, and because the produce was a gift, we all felt inspired to cook up some delicious soups and quiche and have people over for dinner. 

Read the rest at The Second Road…