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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.
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 almost didn’t go into the class. I stood on the threshold, looking anxiously around the dimly-lit studio, assessing the situation. This was not my regular yoga class, not my usual yoga instructor, and I was feeling deeply unsure that this class was going to work out well for me.
Why the trepidation, especially when I love yoga so very dearly?
Well everyone in the class was skinny. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that I’ve noticed that the kind of yoga instructors who are good at adapting yoga poses to different body types tend to attract students of different body types. When I see a class full of wiry students, taught by a wiry teacher, I get a little nervous.
But I really wanted a yoga session that day and this was the only one on the menu. So I went in and plopped my fat booty down on a mat and hoped for the best.
Things started off all-right, with some chanting of Om’s and a bit of centering meditation. Then we started right in with some flows. The teacher was exactly as I feared he would be – presenting every pose in exactly one way and not giving any modifications or any instructions or assistance for those of us who needed props to get the job done. He seemed like a totally nice and chill dude, and he was great at demonstrating the asanas. And he made a point to call out the few students who were especially strong and flexible for their good work.
But. When it came to telling me how to make a pose work for my body, he totally wiffed. Lucky for me, I’ve been practicing yoga for a long time and I have some experience with modifying poses and using the props. Seriously, if this class (which was billed as all-levels) had been my introduction to yoga, I’d probably never have come back. You would think that if you loved something enough to teach it, you’d want to make it accessible to as many people as possible – but then again, I’m not doing so hot in my Logic class, so don’t trust my reasoning.
Things went from frustrating to uncomfortable when the teacher announced that we’d be doing some partner work. First up – some preparation for locust pose, in which one partner was to lay on her stomach while the other partner sat upon the prone partner’s legs and pulled her arms back (click the link and look at the picture!). Of course, I was freaking out that I was going to totally crush my tiny little partner or pull her arms out of their sockets or something – but it all worked out fine and she was way cool. Whew!
Then we worked on wheel pose, which is a backbend. We were supposed to spot our partners, which was no problem. My partner went first, and did a beautiful backbend. When my turn came, I was feeling pretty relaxed and groovy, because I’ve been working on this particular pose for a while. Just as I was ready to push up, the instructor finally noticed my existance and ran over to help my partner spot me. I guess he was afraid I might fall over and hurt her or she might bust a gut trying to life my fat ass, I don’t know…but he sure did book it over to us.
I did my backbend, and the instructor actually sputtered. He definitely seemed caught off-guard, and asked dubiously: Have you done this before? WTF? I didn’t know whether to be proud of myself for busting a stereotype or angry at him for being such a tool. I was keeping up with the class the whole hour, no thanks to him. Did he really think I was totally inexperienced? Is that how he treats all newcomers to yoga? Bah! (He did recoup minor credit for quickly recovering and telling me I did a “beautiful job.”)
In the end, I was feeling to good to be angry (thanks, yoga!) but I am definitely going to speak to him next time I take his class. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he’s just not had many fat students. But he’s got one now, and he’s going to have to adapt and make sure that his class is safe and beneficial for me and any other fatties who might wander in.
And can I say how strong I am feeling in myself, and how glad and proud I am that I didn’t turn around and walk out of that class when I was having my moment of indecision? I have grown so much in the past six months, learning to take risks and even feeling ok to put myself into uncomfortable situations so that I can grow. This is pretty remarkable, considering that when I was abusing opiates, my main goal in life was to avoid any kind of discomfort whatsoever. And I’m rediscovering the things that I used to do to make myself feel “high” – by which I mean “happy.” It’s not always (ever) easy, and I know that I still owe a lot of my stability to suboxone, but I am feeling better than I have in years – and I love it.
Erin has a good post up right now about the ebbs and flows of recovery (and life in general). She makes a great point about doing the work we need to do when we’re feeling good and able to to it, because this is the work that will sustain us during the hard times. She’s totally right, and I’m so glad she reminded me of that. I’m definitely on an upswing right now, feeling the rewards of hard work I put in even when I really, really didn’t want to do a damn thing. And I’m fully aware that the wheel will cycle round again and the hard times will be back – but for now I’m going to soak in this feeling of happiness and well-being. It was hard-won, and I’m profoundly grateful for every moment of it.
FYI – So far in my practice I’ve found viniyoga to be the most fat-friendly, and it’s also my favorite type of yoga. Viniyoga is known for lots focus on breath, being gentle and having lots of modifications for poses for those of us who are not gumby. Viniyoga classes feel the most healing to me, and though it is a gentle yoga I always manage to get some really amazing stretching done as well. The thing I like about it the most though is that the focus is more on the process and feeling balance in your body and getting the most out of the movement – rather than just trying to force the poses.
Hallowed Ground
they are buried here
where the earth swells like the body of a woman, gravid
but without expectation, in this womb full of secrets
among the roots
under the tree, umbilical
coupling heaven and earth
conduit of energy, of light
here that which separates each from the other
is breached
what was complex becomes elemental:
bodies that once danced, ran, fucked, played, loved, fought, lived
are rendered back to the Mother
earth, soil
and their souls reborn as
leaves, branches,
the very air above the distant city.
-bottlecappie, c2008
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Link to bigger version of this weeks image here.
This is my first time participating in the collaborative poetry project over at Rick Mobb’s blog, Mine Enemy Grows Older. I borrowed the title of his painting for the title of my poem (hope that’s ok!) Rick has generously offered up his wonderful paintings as inspiration for anyone who would like to participate. Check out his site for more information, more art and to see the poems and stories that he has collected so far.
Though I have long loved both reading and writing poetry, this is the first poem I’ve written in well over a year – possibly close to two. I didn’t realize what a loss that was until I started writing today. Hours slipped by while I contemplated the painting, thought, wrote a little, took breaks to read or engage in other tasks – but all the while I could feel my mind engaging with the subject at varying levels of consciousness.
I used to do that all the time – poems would come to me in a flash, whole or in fragments, all the time. Poetry informed the way I approached everything in my life, making it more beautiful, more intense, more profound. I lost that as my drug use/addiction became more the focus of my life. I was content to accept the surface of things and I stopped looking for the mystery.
Hopefully the fact that I was able to squeeze out a poem this week, after looking at the prompts but chickening out every week for the last several weeks, means that I am moving toward including more poetry in my life again on a regular basis. Hopefully, this will be another means for me to grow and become stronger in my recovery. And I hope you will try too. This kind of creation and expression feeds the soul, and I think Rick’s idea to make it a collaborative process is wonderful.
I’d like to thank everyone involved in this project for creating a space that feels safe and supportive and thereby encouraging me to write and take the risk of posting. Big fat special thanks to Prester John, who told me about the project and jumped right in, inspiring me to follow.
Oh, and in case anyone was wondering – I’m doing fine. I’ve just been really busy and I was a little burned out on my blog. I’m feeling recharged now, and should be back to more regular posting again. Thanks for bearing with me.
Today I realized that things are not going to just “get easier” for me again.
Those first few months after I started suboxone treatment were filled with the excitement of doing something new, plus the motivation of desperation. Now, the newness has worn off and I’m left here with myself and my habits and no easy way out.
So it is time for me to recommit myself to this process of healing. This point, right here, is the point where I usually quit. Where the inspiration has run out and the goal is still out of sight, I give up. I start in with the self-sabotage, craftily stirring up some kind of drama so that when I do quit, it looks like events have conspired to foil me, once again.
Now I’m going to go to bed and feel grateful that today is over. Tomorrow I’m going to see what I can do to refocus. I’ll keep ya posted.
Today was a beautiful day. There’s no school this week, and we spent the afternoon at the park. I packed us lunch, and we ate and climbed trees and played tag.
Some reading and some thinking, mixed with fresh air and sunshine, made me realize how I’ve allowed my focus to drift to the negative lately. I don’t know if it’s a habit, or some inherent part of my personality – maybe it’s a little of both – but my compass seems to point that way. I see how it can be so easily corrected – if I just stay conscious, stay grateful, stay focused on what’s good. The past couple of weeks I let my head slip under, but I came coughing up to the surface today, and I plan to stay.
I know it’s a process. A practice. I see the things I haven’t been doing, and the things that I have been doing that have led me off course. And still I’m suprised at how easy it was to make the switch back to gratitude and joy, when just yesterday I felt profoundly fucked.
I am still committed to keeping a lower dose of Suboxone for the time being. I have been treating some of my pain with trigger point therapy, and it is starting to really pay off. I have a date with myself at the gym tomorrow (yay yoga!) and I think I’m due for a new, inpirational-type book. I cleaned (most of) the kitchen today, and now I’m getting ready to watch a movie with some friends. Life is, indeed, good.
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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