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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.
Buy-Bye!
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.
I’m cautiously thinking that things might be getting better for me on the depression front. I’ve started doing this kind of triage on my shit-to-do list, cutting it down to only the most essential of items so it’s not so overwhelming. Like last night, I knew I needed to get some stuff organized for the morning because I had to get to class. Instead of freaking out about the chaos that is my current state of housekeeping, I just got a load of my clothes in the washer, emailed my prof to get the reading assignment, took a bath and washed my hair, set the alarm clock, and let the rest go.
This was pretty successful, up till the point where I somehow knocked my glasses off my dresser and into a shopping bag full of my bath-salt-making supplies. Whoops! I was all ready to go, and running around on the verge of freaking the fuck out because I didn’t want to be late, but just when I was about to lose it (I was actually standing in my room looking up at the ceiling yelling WHY? WHY! WHY?!?!?) I looked down and saw my glasses in the bag. Perhaps this was an answered prayer, but we’ll never know.
Anyway, I made it to class and it was good. I really liked this professor last time I had her. She does this great thing where whenever someone asks her a question, she answers with a question – which usually bugs the hell out of the person asking the question but I think it’s awesome and definitely makes for some interesting light-bulb moments in her classes. She’s from Russia and has a PhD in Philosophy – I think her thing is Russian existentialism or something – and she’s just not like any other teacher I’ve ever had. It’s like she has this way of making you realize how much of an idiot you are, but without shaming you about it. She’s great, and I’m looking forward to learning about Logic too.
After school, I went to the co-op and stocked up on vitamins. My doctor is hoping that loading up on D will help my body absorb the extra calcium that’s floating around messing up my kidneys. I added a B-vitamin stress-formula as well, and I do think I felt a little zip from that today. Worked today and got caught up on stuff there. I stayed busy and it went by pretty quickly. After work a little rest and then a nice long walk to the playground with C. Now, I am really tired but in a good, got-a-lot-accomplished way. I think I will sleep well tonight. I definitely think I deserve that.
Yesterday’s visit to the doctor confirmed that I have a kidney full of calcium crystals, too small to be stones yet, but as the nurse practitioner put it: we don’t want those crystals hanging around and making friends with each other.
The gravel in my kidney is irritating it and causing it to bleed, and it hurts too, but not like passing a stone. And then there’s the collateral damage from the antibiotics I’m taking, blarg. I’m hoping that this kidney thing is just an unlucky coincidence, and doesn’t have anything to do with being on Suboxone. I can’t seem to find any info that correlates the two things – but that doesn’t mean much, really. Other than that, I think I’m on the mend from the infection.
Now for the good news! Through a strange twist of circumstances today, I found out that I don’t have to take a certain math class that I’ve attempted to take two times, and withdrawn from two times already in my illustrious college career. Seems that my school has long had a policy that you can only attempt a class two times, and if you need another try at it, you must petition for permission. Well, lucky me, they decided that this year they would actually begin enforcing this policy – forcing me to petition to take Intermediate Algebra yet again.
Well! The big-cheese who was in charge of that petition process pointed out to my adviser that I could just use my high-school math to satisfy that requirement. Whoa – what?!?! Why has no one told me this before? So, with one conversation today I eliminated the need to take two math classes, and signed up for Intro to Logic – which is the last class I need to complete my associate’s degree! I could very possibly graduate this summer!!!!
Yippeee!!! Well, this is all contingent on my school accepting all the various credits I’ve earned at my previous schools – but that really shouldn’t be a problem, if I can keep my head out of my ass long enough to actually order all of my transcripts and have them evaluated.
School started Monday, and though I just registered today (and paid off my past-due day care bill and returned a year-overdue library book and ordered my textbook, whew!) I will have my first class tomorrow morning. For this, I am utterly unprepared, and I really should be doing my laundry and whatnot. I’ll be a couple of days behind, but still – I’m almost there, the finish line is in my sight….and I’m not locked in my bathroom crying!
Four years this has taken me – at this particular school anyway. I actually started college in 1991. So this feels like a really big day for me, and I pushed through a lot of anxiety and dread to get this done. It’s been a year since I last attended any classes, and quite the fucking year it’s been. It feels so good to be moving forward again, to have tangible evidence of the hard work I’ve been doing to put my life back together.
Just to make the day even better, I got to spend a couple of hours at the park with my kid. We played on the beach where a creek runs down to Puget Sound, built a sandcastle and turned over rocks looking for crabs. It was sunny and windy and cold and being there filled my soul with peace and happiness. The whole first hour we were there I was fighting anxious thoughts about everything I have to do to get ready, and all the things that might go wrong – but then we started working on building a stone wall around the castle and finally my mind let go and I was just there.
Sometimes that is the greatest thing of all, just to be present, to just be.
I had an appointment at the massage therapy school today. The school was lovely, and everyone I met there was very chill. The whole place just had this very calm, very peaceful vibe and everyone shook my hand so warmly and spoke with melifulous, quiet voices. It was great.
I, of course, felt positively obnoxious and could not stop making wise-cracks and sarcastic comments. Nothing mean-spirited, but still, whenever I’m around relaxed-and-groovy type people like that, it’s like my east-coast persona cranks into high gear.
I hoped that I’d be leaving the school today feeling settled about a decision to go there or not. I liked everything I saw/heard about today, so there’s no problem there. It’s just the money, of course.
There is some financial aid, but I didn’t qualify for one of the grants that I thought I would qualify for. Which leaves a pretty hefty loan that I’d have to take to go to this school. I don’t see how I can do the full-time day program, so I’d be in the part-time evening class. Which would mean that I’d have to take out 12K in student loans.
Which isn’t that bad, I suppose. I know some people who have way more debt than that coming out of college. It gives me pause though.
I was thinking of the massage therapy option as a good job to have to support myself as I slowly wend my way through the rest of my college degree. Ultimately, I would like to be a therapist of some kind. The LMP thing appeals to me because I’m interested in somatic therapy, and because it seems like a good job on many other levels as well.
But does it make sense if I have to take on that much debt? Only if I can actually make enough money doing massage to support myself and pay back the loans, while also working toward my degree. I suppose that’s possible if I only go to school part time, and nothing else goes wrong, a-ha-ha-ha.
Another thing that freaks me out about choosing to take on that kind of debt is the constant chatter I’ve been hearing about the soon-to-come “economic adjustment”, which I believe is republican-speak for “we are all fucked.” If we go into a big recession, are people going to be spending money on massage therapy? I don’t know. In my life, massage is a rarely-afforded luxury.
I feel sick whenever I hear talk of the looming recession. When the dot-bomb happened, it was horrible here. So many of our friends were out of work, and every job had hundreds of applicants. First it was all the tech workers who felt it, but then the people in the service industry got squeezed too. It it gets like that again, I think it might be slim pickings for a brand new massage therapist.
My other options are: Go back to school and finish my math requirement so I can get my stoopid AA and get outta there. I could possibly do that this summer, via the magic of intertoob classes, and then apply to University. I need to go talk with my advisor over there, because I’m not sure how that all works. I’d probably have to hang around there for an extra quarter or something, but whatever.
Or, I can go for my CDP certificate. That’s probaby the fastest way for me to be able to work in a counseling-type capacity, but I don’t know if that’s a job I could handle.
Why can’t someone tell me what to do with my life?
At least I’m working through this stuff. I left school a year ago with all this unfinished business…I wonder if I’m just looking to massage school because I don’t want to deal with my loose ends over at ye olde community college. And I was going to college because…I didn’t want to deal with being a grown-up and having to get a full-time job. Well, sortof. I also want to finish college and have a career and all that too, but yeah, there’s a bit of avoidance in there too.
*big sigh*
I’m gonna sleep on this, and go talk to my advisor tomorrow. Any advice, anyone?
About a month ago, the folks at Suboxone Blog asked me to be a guest blogger. Well, my first post is up today!
Please go check it out and leave a comment to show your support, if you’re so inclined. I would, of course, deeply appreciate that. 
I have wanted to be a “real” writer for as long as I can remember, but I’ve always been hyper-critical of myself and too afraid to send out any of my work for publication. Even during my stint as a copy-editor at my college newspaper, I was often paralyzed by self-doubt. The support I’ve gotten for my writing here, and the compliment of being asked to guest-blog have really helped me get over all that, and realize that I might be able to do this after all.
Who knew that addiction and recovery would finally begin to set me free to do what I really wanted to do? That’s a beautiful thing.
Hope to see you there too!
Here I sit, four months after starting Suboxone treatment, and I am still struggling with the idea that I am an addict. Actually, struggling-with-the-idea isn’t even accurate. I still basically reject the idea, but I am struggling with my thoughts around why and what it means.
So far, it has worked for me to just kind of ignore the issue. You may have noticed that I don’t refer to myself as an addict, though I do say things about addiction and recovery. I don’t talk (or write) about this much because of the prevailing belief in & around addiction recovery is that a person such as myself is suffering from Denial. Also, I have heard it said that the mere fact that I would even question whether I am “really” an addict means that I am, in fact, an addict. This is frustrating, and I find circular logic to be most unhelpful.
I don’t deny that I was, and still am, addicted to opiate painkillers. Suboxone is a partial-agonist opioid, but it’s still an opioid. And it is all kinds of addictive. It really bothers me, though, to think that this one problem somehow defines me in a way that my other problems – or even accomplishments – don’t.
I don’t know why it bothers me so much. I mean, I read stuff on recovery sites & blogs, and much of it seems to apply to me. I recognize myself in the stories, and I see that my progression through this recovery process is pretty fucking typical. I know it seems like splitting hairs, arguing about the difference between “having an addiction” and “being an addict,” but I’m stuck on it. So please forgive me while I think out loud and try to figure out wtf?
One thing that bothers me is this feeling that if I say “I’m an addict” it’s like saying this is something that I’ll never recover from. And I really don’t believe that. I also don’t believe that addiction is my fundamental problem. I believe that depression, PTSD and fibromyalgia are the real basis for my problems, and that my addicton to painkillers is a symptom of those things.
I also have a problem with the idea of abstinence, from everything, forever. I still drink wine with dinner once in a while. I drink a glass, and that’s it. I’m on too many meds to drink more than that, but it’s a pleasure in my life that I’m not willing to give up – because I don’t have a problem with drinking. I’ve quit smoking pot, for now, because the doctor who prescribes my suboxone requires it and they test me. This really rubs me the wrong way, but I put up with it because I want the treatment.
I do believe, however, that I will smoke pot on occasion in the future.
And I guess that’s really the point of it. To say that I am an addict feels to me like I’m saying that I am a person who should never use drugs of any kind, ever again. And I’m not ready to accept that yet.
Part of me absolutely recognizes how ridiculous the above statement is. I have a long history of recreational drug use, that from time to time teetered over the edge into recreational drug abuse. But I always managed to pull my shit together, and I’d basically left that party-lifestyle behind when I had my daughter.
Then came fibromyalgia with it’s constant, overwhelming pain. I do believe that if my a*hole doctor would have treated my pain appropriately I never would have gotten into this mess, but who knows. I will take responsibility for the fact that after many months of being a responsible user of illicitly purchased narcotics, I started escalating my use because I wanted to get high. After so much pain, that opiate high was truly bliss, and I didn’t want to let it go. After that, it was only a few short months until I’d basically stopped coping in any other way – and that is truly a problem.
Which brings me to here. Because I took too many opiates, my brain developed a tolerance. Hopefully, by slowly tapering my suboxone dose over time, my brain will be able to heal from that tolerance. I have high hopes of that, because I didn’t have a huge habit and I was using for a relatively short time. One day, I will completely taper off of Suboxone, and if that happens without withdrawals, that should mean that my brain has healed.
So where will that leave me? Physically, my addiction will be healed. The other part of my “program” for recovery has centered around removing triggers from my life. This basically means depression and pain. So I have been working on healing my body and mind, as well as developing (and rediscovering) some life-skills that I’d let atrophy.
Bah. I’m not any more sorted out now than when I started writing. I almost wish that I didn’t have such a chip on my shoulder about AA/NA – then I could just accept their program for recovery and get with it. But I just can’t get with that powerless thing, or the higher power thing, or the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with me that I will have to do battle with forever and will only conquer by the grace of god or whatever. I wish “addict” wasn’t such a loaded word.
And does it even really matter? As long as I keep doing what I need to do to get my life to where I want it to be – does it matter what I call myself?
If you’re still reading this, I thank you and I also apologize because I’m not going to be able to come to any kind of conclusion right now. Rest assured, though, that I will keep on keeping on and that I really do want to be well.
I’ve been struggling with questions of faith recently. Not faith in a higher power or in any religious sense, but faith in this process that I’m going through.
A deep sense of apathy has come over me, and I don’t like it. I haven’t felt like writing, or going to therapy, going out with friends, or cleaning the house, or playing with my kid, or dancing, or anything really. And there’s no reason for this feeling of apathy to appear in my life right now, when I’ve been working so hard and doing so well, right? But here it is, as pervasive and funky as the smell of unwashed dishes in my kitchen.
Something tells me it’s one or more of the medications I take that’s causing this feeling. Along with the apathy, for a while, I also had a crushing fatigue that drew me back to bed every day for one or more naps – but that seems to have resolved as my body has healed from its recent traumas. The apathy lingers still.
Surfing around the intertoobs I find myself repeatedly drawn to websites and blogs about withdrawing from psychiatric medications. I’ve been reading stories and stories about people like me, people with a long-term psychiatric diagnosis and a long history of medication. People who are getting off their meds, and finding a way to be well in the world, undrugged. I devour these stories, as well as stories about people who have successfully treated pain issues similar to mine with trigger-point therapy. These stories are the only things that stir me lately.
I want off of all of these medications. Well, maybe not the thyroid medication – but that’s the only one that I can get a blood test and see that I really need it. I want off, and I am afraid to talk to my healthcare providers about it. Afraid that they will agree, afraid that they won’t. These drugs, I curse them even as I clutch at them like the security blanket they’ve become. Afraid that I’ll fail, unable to do it, afraid that if I succeed I will have to live my life without the handy excuse my “mental illness” has provided for my repeated fucking up.
The tapering process has already begun. It started quite a while ago, when I stopped needing to take a muscle relaxant every night before bed. Starting Suboxone treatment also decreased my anxiety attacks and I’ve decreased that medication significantly. The past 4 days I’ve cut down my Suboxone dose pretty drastically – which I was probably able to do because I was on too high of a dose anyway. Cutting down the Subxone doseage made me feel better, more connected and engaged – but I tried to go down too fast and ended up with some physical withdrawal symptoms, so I bumped myself up in tiny increments yesterday until I got comfortable and stayed with that dose today.
Probably I will stay at this dose for a little while. Something deep inside is pushing me to get off the drugs, but I don’t see much point in making myself sick over it. This is a difficult decision to make, as I have long been told that my desire to get off the meds is merely a “symptom” of my “illness”, which is pretty fucking perverse I think. Nothing like a lifetime of psychiatrists to make me doubt my own inner wisdom. Fuckers. Well, I guess the apathy is giving way to anger a little anyway.
I’m not making any promises, to myself or anyone else. I’m not going to tell my doctor. I want to see how this goes first. Who knows what might happen if I say I want to lower my dose, and I don’t know this new doc well enough yet to even try to predict.
This past week has been a strain. Only half of the kidney stone, as seen on the CAT scan, has vacated my body so far. Pain has been pretty manageable – just some strange cramps in my kidney (I guess) and a diffuse ache in my lower back. What I don’t understand is why I’ve been so tired.
My boss and coworkers totally rock – they’ve covered all my shifts since last Friday. I’ve had plenty of time to rest, and yet I’m profoundly tired. Sitting quietly and trying to listen to what my body needs has led to many naps, and not much else. Somewhere in my recent internet surfing, I came across an article about health. It was an interview with a naturopath, and while I don’t recall the exact subject of the interview, this one statement stuck out: If you have a global problem; look for a global cause.
I wish I knew how to implement that wisdom in my self care. Some days, it seems that I’m just suppressing one symptom after another. I was wondering why, when I think that I’ve been working so hard at taking care of myself these past few months, I would suddenly get another kidney stone, and then have such a hard time recuperating. I wonder if all I’m doing has even been good for me at all.
In Care of the Soul Thomas Moore talks about how what most psychologists consider symptoms of pathology, he considers evidence of the soul’s attempt to be acknowledged, to have its desires fulfilled. He also talks about the lessons that we can learn from so-called “mental illness”, and about the need to honor what are minds and bodies are trying to communicate – instead of just medicating everything away.
While his writings interest me, and at times even really resonate with me, I feel lost when I try to think about how to implement those ideas in my life. I feel like finding the “global cause” of my health issues is somehow key to this as well, and again I feel stymied when I try to take steps toward figuring out this puzzle. Hell, I feel stymied just trying to figure out what steps I could take, let alone actually taking any.
Dancing, for sure, is something that totally feeds my soul. And this past week, I wasn’t able to do any, and I feel that lack. Maybe this really is just fallout from the kidney thing. I don’t know. But I do know myself well enough to know that I need to stop dwelling on this or I’ll make myself anxious and depressed. So I’m going to work on accepting what is, for right now, and trying to trust that what I need to know will be revealed to me when I’m ready to know it.
I accept that I feel ambivalent about the regiment of medications I’m using to treat my self. I accept that right now, it doesn’t seem to be working. I accept that I am tired, and achy, and grumpalicious. I accept that none of these things are good reasons to stop taking care of myself, in the best way that I know how. I accept that anything can change, and I accept that it is entirely possible that I will find my way to health.
Tonight I experienced the strongest urge to get high that I’ve felt since I started Suboxone treatment.
Someone was crushing up a pill on a bit of glass from some old picture frame, getting ready to snort some oxycontin. And at the moment that I walked in on that, I felt like every single cell in my body was just longing for that feeling and I burst into tears. Much to my horror and embarassment, I even wailed: It’s not fair! I want to get high too!
WHOA! Where the heck did that come from? As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I retracted them. No, I don’t want to get high. And even if I did, I couldn’t because I take a high enough dose of suboxone to block the effects of any other opiates I might take. But I need to look at that feeling, that longing, and see what was behind it – because I need that self understanding if I’m ever going to be able to do this without the Suboxone someday.
First thing, I am tired and in pain. While the Suboxone does a pretty damn good job of managing my fibromyalgia pain (or at least it has so far), I am in the middle of a moderately bad flare-up right now, so my baseline of pain is higher and my pain tolerance is lower and I am more easily fatigued. I worked 7.5 hours, on my feet the whole time, and my upper back/shoulders/neck are very stiff and painful right now. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can do about that, except to recognize that I need more rest and to take some comfort measures.
Also, I didn’t really eat all day – which usually results in me being a mess by the time I get home. And is not good for the fibro either – anything that upsets the tenuous balance can precipitate a disaster.
Those are the obvious things that I needed to take care of, but I think there’s something else at work here too. And I’m pretty sure I know what it is.
It’s fun. Or the lack thereof in my life of late. Especially shared fun with my husband, J.
Getting high is what we did for fun for quite a long time. We really liked getting high together, watching movies and talking late into the night. Because no matter what hell you finally arrive at that inspires you to quit the drugs, in the begining, drugs are fun. It feels good to get high, which is why people do it. It was also a way for us to connect, which sounds crazy, but you’ll just have to trust me on that.
For about 30 seconds tonight, I really wanted to “play” with my husband. We’ve been having some difficulties in our relationship, and haven’t been connecting. I wanted to go there with him, be in his headspace, share that euphoria. I wanted the mini-vacation from reality. I wanted my body to stop hurting for a couple of hours, to float in that blissful cloud again…
Not. Gonna. Happen. I left the room where the drugs were and found something to distract myself. I remembered that, even if I could get high, which I can’t, it wouldn’t be worth the negative consequences. I would feel bad about myself, I would jepordize my hard-won beginings of stability, I would want to do it again, and then again. And all for what - a feeling - something that never lasts.
But there is something that I need to learn from this experience. I’ve got to find other ways of cultivating pleasure and connection in my life and in my relationship. I need to have a ready list of self-care things I can do when I’m feeling so bad that using starts to look like an option, even if it’s only for half a minute. I also need to keep doing the work I need to do in order to live sucessfully with fibromyalgia. Sure, the suboxone helps with the pain and I’ve added exercise into the mix, but there is much more I could be doing with diet and supplements and time management and meditation.
And maybe I do need a little vacation. The past 6 months have been really intense, and I think it’s time that I got to go away for a long weekend by myself, to be with friends or do a yoga retreat or a writing workshop or any one of the many things that I’ve never treated myself to because all my extra money went up my nose. I’ve been working harder at this than I ever thought I could, and some breathing room, a little space sounds fantastic right now. There are a few places where I’ve been that brought me the feelings of peace and ease that I was always seeking from the drugs – maybe I’ll ask the universe just how I could get back to one of those places sometime soon. That would be just fine.
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