[ultrapped7]

Hi everybody,
I've been reading your posts, and you all should be commended for your bravery and honesty. I was addicted to utram for 7 years, checked myself into a drug rehabilitation center-was detoxed over a course of 5(dreadful) days, along with group thereapy. To make a long story short, I relapsed exactly 8 weeks later, a month after that I made an apt. to go see an addiction specialist-thinking, maybe I will finally be able to get the real help I need. I told her my hystory, and she had my records from the rehab hospital-I went there and told her that I wanted to but was unable to stop ultram on my own and could she help me?
I ended up leaving her office with a prescription for ultram (2pills twice a day) and another for effexor xr. She told me that I would need constent monitoring(I see her every month!) and that if I slipped back down the slope-she would check me in to the hospital again. Apparantley ultram is partly an anti-depressant. It works on seratonin and norapenephrin-sort of like an a prozac or paxil, and has been used even as a monothereapy(no other drug, but ultram) treatment for depression in patients that do not respond to other anti-depressants-and I've been on them ALL.
Of course it also (unlike traditional anti-depressants) works on the mu opiod receptors in the brain-like any other narcotic. It's actually a synthetic morphine derivitave. Needless to say, my husband and I left her office confuse, dumbfounded, and ambivelant to say the least-after all, I was in rehab for ULTRAM ADDICTION. She made us promise that my husband would have the pill bottle at all times and he doles out my 4 pills every morning. A year ago this week I started seeing the specialist-and I have to say-I feel like I'm taking the easy way out of this, or that I'm playing russian roullete every day now-because I do want more, and that's a bad sign. So, this is my quandry. Deep down, I feel that it's a bad idea that utram is in my life at all-like I'm skating on very thin ice here. But, my life ultram free is worse.
I could really use your input-from everybody and anybody-because it seems like I learn different things from all the threads I read, even if your story is about a different drug, or whatever..we all still have the "bond" of addiction, which makes us all in the same boat. I'd really appreciate any input. I'm trying to be strong, but I don't know if I can keep tempting fate every day like this......
Take care of yourself today,
Thx!