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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.
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 went to a party today (Saturday). I’d forgotten that it can be fun to go out and be with my friends – I’d had my head up my ass for so long, all I could think about was my pills, and I would only be soical if I was high, and not even then -usually.
There were more than a few inspiring women at the gathering today. Every one of them has big challenges in her life, probably more than I even know, but they were still excited about their lives & talking about all the cool stuff they’d been doing latetly. They all looked so kick-ass and strong and alive. One whom I’ve only really been an acquaintance of for years now offered to be an exercise partner if I wanted. I think I’ll call her. It feels good to be back in the world, if a little scary. Yes, definitely good. Maybe it’s time to spread my wings a little. Maybe it is possible that someone wants to be friends with me, maybe I can find some new ways to bond with people (other than drugs, eh?)
And again, I am so in love with my daughter. We have been having such a fine time lately, and I have suboxone to thank for that. I am thankful. It is a gift to be able to be here with her, able to give her my full attention because I’m not in pain, not miserable, not wasted, not dopesick, not distracted. With all of that lifted, it’s so easy to connect with her, so easy to remember why I’m trying to change my life.
Re: Supplemental Suboxone tally: Down to 10mgs today and that held me pretty well. Has me thinking that the Probuphine implant might be kicking in. I just wish I didn’t wake up feeling so fucking crapy every morning.
My most beloved friend, angstandjoy, who chronicles her experience in the same buprenorphine/probuphine research study that I am in over at I Am Not the New Me, is celebrating a week clean from the evol pills that ruled her life for a while. I am so proud of her, and for her, and grateful for her friendship and support and her company on this lonely journey. I am not prone to saying things like “it’s a miracle!” lightly, especially if I’m saying it without some sense of irony or sarcasm – but the change I’ve seen in her since she started suboxone is freaking miraculous, and beautiful. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her until she came back.
When I read her comment for the day, I counted up the days since I last ingested an unprescribed prescription opioid medication, as they so elegantly refer to my drugs of choice at the study place when they query me about my useage, and it has been a whole 12 days. The only thing is, I don’t feel clean. I guess I haven’t suffered enough or something. I’ve quit drugs before, like when I was pregnant, and that was harder because I had no back-up medications, no antidepressants, nothing.
For me, going from illicit opiate-pill use to suboxone felt like going from an ersatz self-medication regime, albiet a miserably failing one, to finally finding the correct medication for my depression and fibromyalgia. I don’t know why this seems so fundamentally different to me than “being clean,” other than my previous experience with AA/NA, which was years and years ago, but during which time many “recovering addicts/alcoholics” were all-too-eager to inform me that if I was taking any kind of psychotropic medication (i.e. antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds) then I was in fact, not clean nor sober. To which I issued a hearty 14-year-old’s Fuck You Motherfucker, I am too clean – but still. I guess there’s some more baggage I need to set the hell down if I’m going to make it all the way down this road.
I am begining to seriously doubt that there is any mediction in my implants. I think I may have received the dread placebo. I took suboxone 24 hours before the implants, and then 12 hours after they were put in I was starting to have withdrawals. About 8 hours after that, I had my first 16 mgs of supplemental subxone. That was Thursday. Friday, Saturday and today I took 14 mgs. Only on Thursday did I feel slightly over-medicated – the rest of the days I have felt kinda crappy until I dosed, and then felt fine. So, if I do have drugs in my arm, they must not be working too well, as I don’t think my tolerance is that high. If the implants were working, I’d be getting like 26-28 mgs of buprenorphine a day, which is a lot more than I was taking for the 5 days of my induction.
The only thing that gives me any hope is that I think I’m coming down with a cold or flu, which is what w/d feels like, so maybe I was confused by my crap feeling and took the extra medication for the wrong reason, and just felt better because it is an opiate, after all. Yes, I am good at that rationalization thing. Anyway, I’ll see what the doc thinks tomorrow.
Today was such a perfect Sunday. Little Cappie was at her gramma’s house last night, so I slept in and then laid in bed and read for a while. Mr. B and I went out to brunch and actually talked to each other instead of reading funny shit from the Stranger to each other – it was just like the olden days, so great! Then Lil C met us at the restaurant and we went home and she and I worked on making some penguins out of styrofoam balls and felt. It was fun, really! And we had guests and I didn’t hide out in my room the whole time. It’s like I’ve made a year’s worth of progress in the past couple of weeks. Feels good to be back, hopefully I’ll stick around for a while.
When I woke up today, I thought I would give it a go without taking any supplemental suboxone so I could find out if my implants are working at all.
That lasted for two whole hours! It’s not that I was really feeling withdrawals, I just wasn’t feeling great. Or even good, really. I was feeling a little achy, which is typical for me, but I gave myself a pep talk while getting ready for work and I thought I could get through the day – for the sake of curiosity about the implants.
In the car on the way in to work, I became overwhelmed with the thought of trying to get through my day feeling like I was feeling. Imagine a mild case of malaise, and sore feet. The thing that got me was knowing that I could just take the suboxone stashed in my bag, put it in my mouth, and feel waaaayyyy better in about 20 minutes.
I bargained with myself – I’ll just take 8mgs of the 14 the doc sent home with me for today. At least then maybe I’d sorta kinda know if the implant was at least helping, right?
Then I got to work and took one look at the unswept floor and the messy racks and the mountain of crap that I have to move today and I took 4 more mgs, reasoning with myself that I still have Sunday, my day off, to try the abstaining thing…
Now I’m feeling bad about this whole transaction, and about myself.
I wonder if I even know the difference between feeling “normal” or “ok” and feeling “high”.
And, is it ok for me to have the expectation of feeling better than “just a little bit crappy?”
I honestly don’t know. I have felt so badly in my body, mind and spirit for such a long time now that I don’t think I know how a person, myself specifically, is supposed to feel in her body, her mind, her soul, on a regular day. And I don’t know – is happiness something that other people feel on a regular basis, or is it just that the suboxone is making me feel happy because it’s making me high – or is it fixing something that’s fucked up in my brain and now I’m just experiencing what some folks call a “good mood.”
It’s harder to tell than you might think. Suboxone – or more correctly its active ingredient Buprenorphine – is an opioid, and it definitely has analgesic effects – but it doesn’t make me feel high, by which I mean euphoric, warm-fuzzy, and like I-don’t-give-a-shit or like everything-is-fine-even-though-it-really-isn’t, the way the pills I used to take made me feel, once upon a time, before they didn’t.
So I definitely feel something when I take the suboxone. I remember the first pill I took, on the first day of my induction, felt like a huge sigh of relief flooding my body. And for the rest of that day, and the next, and the next, I continued to feel that relief, and all my negative mental bullshit seemed to quiet down, and I just felt good. Not fucked up, not flying high, just good in a way that seemed so normal and natural that I didn’t even think to question it. And my physical pain was so immensely decreased – that in itself was a huge revelation. I didn’t realize how much mental, emotional, physical energy was being sucked away by my pain.
My hope was that the implants would make me feel like that, in an even, steady way throughout the day – because I do feel the oral suboxone wearing off by the end of the day. At first, I experienced that feeling as the urge to take more pills, but I figured out that I was just tired, or hungry or both and after a few days I realized that I could meet whatever need I was experiencing and I’d be ok. With the implants dispensing a steady stream of medication into my blood, I thought I’d be able to basically forget that I’m being medicated and get on with fixing the mess I’ve made of my life.
Right now my mind is all tangled up with questions and doubts. I wonder if I’ll ever know what it feels like to be healthy – physically and mentally – without the aid of medication. I don’t even know if I know what it feels like to feel like me. And because today I couldn’t just wait a little while to give the fucking implants a chance, I think I’m weak, and I am afraid that I will never be a whole person, a well person.
Somewhere, deep in my mental programming, there is a voice that is telling me that the disease model of addiction is a bunch of bullshit, and that what my real problem is is that I’m lazy, overly dramatic, have no willpower, and feel sorry for myself. That what I should do is just quit the pills, quit whining, and start making my life happen. Pull myself up by my psychological bootstraps, so to speak. Everybody gets depressed. I’m nothing special, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with me that couldn’t be fixed by an attitude adjustment.
I’m trying to shush that voice – I have been for a while. It’s the same voice that argued against the necessity of antidepressants and against the reality of depression as a disease for many years. Maybe I need to let it speak, hear what it has to say and really think about it. Maybe it’s time for me to fully come to terms with the fact that I have an illness (illnesses?), and that I might require some kind of treatment for ever. Because trying to do it on my own, I’ve made a royal mess of things, and I can’t go on beating myself up for not being the person I think I should be.
If you’re still reading, I’m amazed, because this is an unfocused, pointless mess, but thank you – I appreciate your faith in me, or at least your persistence. I can’t think of any way to end this, I don’t feel any more sorted out than when I started writing. I wish I could go home and crawl into my bed and just shut out the world for a while. It all just feels like too much at the moment.
I like looking at my blog stats to see what search engine terms have led people to my blog. Now, this blog is quite new, so there haven’t been a lot of terms, but the ones that I’ve seen are golden.
My personal favorite thus far is today’s: Life is Full of Shit.
Seriously, if you google that, I’m right there at the bottom of the first page.
This makes me perversely happy.
A couple of other good ones are: Tizanidine to get fucked up (doesn’t really work, just makes you sleepy) and Suboxone the hardest thing to get – which is really quite puzzling, since it’s pretty easy to get.
I’m glad that anyone is reading this. It makes me feel less alone. I appreciate the comments I get so incredibly much. Last night, a&j’s comment that she was loving the strength I was showing was just what I needed to decide not to use. I’d just gotten home (very late) from work and I was exhausted and in pain, and there was oxy in the house and I was mighty tempted. But I looked here first, and I read her words, and SuboxoneMom’s words (shout of thanks to her too!), and I read over my own posts and by that time the desire was ebbing away and I felt so encouraged by the words of my friends.
Something else I noticed was that I was able to think through the repercussions of my decision. If I decided to do that line, would I be able to take my sub the next day, or would I get sick? Would I tell the study docs, or would I lie? How would doing that line effect me getting the implants on Wed? Would they postpone it? And, How would I feel about myself? Would the 30 minutes of buzz really be worth it? Was I feeling so bad that I really, really needed that oxy? These questions may seem really obvious, because they are obvious, but when you are addicted to something you can effectively shut off that part of your brain. I think it’s called your conscience, Jimminy Cricket!, and I’m glad mine is asserting itself again.
When I returned from inspecting my navel, I realized that I was just tired and I needed to eat. I made some beans & rice, rested, visited with a friend for a few, took my klonopin & tizanidine and went to bed. Not very exciting, but probably good for me.
And so ended the third day of suboxone treatment. It seems like it’s been much, much longer than that. *sigh* I guess this is where that one-day-at-a-time philosophy comes in handy. I wish that those recovery slogans weren’t so overused and tired and cliched, because there is a lot of wisdom there. I just have to get over my gag reflex I suppose.
I am in withdrawals, and it’s really starting to suck. I asked Mr. Bottlecappie to please please make sure I wouldn’t run out before I start this induction, but shit happens and there was no money and so here I am. Plus, some asshole took all of my cough medicine that had codine in it, so now I have to deal with this fucking cough too. Joy.
As you can tell, I’m a little pissy. I’m restless and my muscles ache, soon the bones will start too. Of course, no one is answering their phones so I can hook up a few pills. Good lord, I just ned to get through till Thursday am, which means I only need pills for today and maybe Tuesday am. Then I’m free. I hope.
The whole point of this thing was to not have to fucking suffer through the dopesick. Well, that and to get better, but still. This Fucking Sucks.
I guess I’ll go see if I have enough benzos to knock me out until something better comes along. Like my new life.
I hate this.
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