Inaudible

I still can’t talk. My voice comes out in the faintest whisper and when I cough I sound like a baby seal. Or at least what I imagine a baby seal would sound like. If it had a cough.

I’m just sitting and waiting for Monday, trying not to think. I feel like I’m keeping a big secret, even though I haven’t done anything yet.

I don’t usually keep stuff like this secret. Everyone knows I take antidepressants. I’m open about my mental-health history, which includes hospitalizations and months-long inpatient treatments, though they were years and years ago. I actually advocate for people speaking openly about such matters, because it helps take away the stigma and the shame that people with mental illness are so often saddled with.

This feels different. Maybe I’m just being a hypocrite. Or am I afraid of talking about it, in case it doesn’t work out? I do know that I don’t want to answer a bunch of questions about it, I don’t want to hear a lot of judgemental comments, especially from certain peeps in my social group (you know who you are, benzo-abusing chemical-dependency counsellor).

It’s one thing to be depressed, or anxious. It’s quite another to be a junkie – that’s something you bring upon yourself, right? That’s someone who can’t be trusted. Who couldn’t handle her shit.

And while I freely admit that when I quit taking these pills I get sick, and my pain and depression become overwhelming, and I don’t want to or won’t or can’t handle that, I don’t want to be thought of as an addict. I don’t want to be tarred with that brush, and I feel coerced by the nature of the medical establishment and the government’s “War on Drugs” to say that I am in order to get the treatment that I want. This sucks, and yet I’m not as angry about it as I used to be. I guess I’m adjusting to the unfairness as this late date in my ongoing struggle with the system.

Or maybe I’m just sick with this cold and laryngitis and feeling to craptastic to get riled up about anything.

Hello goodbye

I lost my voice. I was supposed to work today, but I guess I can’t do retail if I can’t talk. And I need to rest my vocal cords because Monday is a big day.

I am waiting. My screening appointment with the study doctor is Monday morning. They will ask me a bunch of questions, test my blood and determine if they can help me. If they can, I’ll start my induction onto suboxone on Wednesday.

I’m good at quitting. Or so I thought. I’ve done it enough – I’ve quit schools and boyfriends, cities and jobs. But I can’t seem to quit this pill habit.

It’s embarassing, really. Which is one of the reasons I need to write about it. I’ve got a lot of shit to come to terms with, the first thing being that I am a person who needs help quitting these pills.

I like to tell myself that I could do it, if I had the luxury of locking myself away for a month or so, of not being responsible for a job and a relationship and most importantly a child. If I could just lay in bed and not have to function at all for long enough, I could outlive the withdrawals and I’d be ok.

But that’s not going to happen. And I know that the pain, both physical and mental, that made the pills so appealing in the begining would just resurface anyway. I’ve been trying to quit, I really have. I’ve cut down a lot but I whenever I try to take the final step into abstinence, I get too sick.

That thing about dope sickness only lasting for 3 days, and then you wake up and you’re all better and the sun is shining outside your window and the birds are chirping and you’re so glad to be alive? That is not my experience at all. In fact, I call bullshit on that whole scenario. Maybe it’s like that for someone, somewhere, but I’ve never seen it.

I get sick and then sicker. I lash out at everyone around me. I cry and cry, scream and choke on my own snot. My muscles cramp and my bones ache, I shiver and sweat. And I hate myself for how ridiculous I am. Then I take some pills and go on with another day.

I went looking for help. I heard about a drug that can help people like me. I was told my insurance didn’t cover it. I tried to find a research study that I could get into, but I didn’t qualify. I quit looking.

Lucky for me, my good friend over at I Am Not the New Me kept on looking. She found a study that would accept us. She started her suboxone induction on Wednesday and already she sounds more like herself than she has in recent memory. I’m set to start next week, in a different branch of the same study.

We decided to keep journals of our experience, to help each other and for something to do. That’s what I think will be the hardest thing, once I don’t have the pills anymore. What will I do? I’m going to get myself a coloring book, write this blog, and hopefully get healthy. Great goddess, I hope this works, because nothing else has, and I am tired of being sick and in pain and depressed. I want a life that’s about more than my search for escape. I want to be free to do the things that I know I’m capable of doing. I want to be whole.

This will be the story of my experience. I have some back-up plans, in case I don’t get into this study, or – horror of horrors – I get the placebo. One way or another, I will try this drug. I have to. I have to quit.