hangdog

Wow one year is approaching. I just want to take a few minutes to post here, as this site was a huge source of support for me when I was withdrawing off pills.

I started out taking a pill every now and then as a treat - like many others, it lifted me mentally, made me happy to be alive, whether I was working or whatever. It progressed into a two year landslide, and at the end I was stealing pills from my wife. At the time I never knew about addiction to these. So what made me stop was my wife nearing the end of her bottle and having two weeks until her next refill. Things came to a head quickly, and I came clean, stopped cold turkey. Well, days later I had not slept, not eaten, sweating through outfits every hour, lots of vomiting and poops of liquid. I would cry for weeks at a time and was cruel and short to my wife and sons.

Im getting off my focus on why i wanted to post here. For some reason, when I was in my worst state, I read a post on here just like this. It was just another struggling soul needing help or wanting to help someone else. He/she said something that really resonated through me at the time; they assured me and whoever else was reading that we would in fact get past this, that we would in fact actually eat a solid meal, and that we would one day sleep normally and live life. I cried and cried, thinking I was sooooo much worse than others and that I would be an exception to this mentality and be the one who never gets out of this personal hell.

It was several weeks of physical awfulness, and when that lifted I was left in a deep depression that many others fall into. Before all of this I could never really understand how people could be depressed. I used to think that they had control of it, and they just had to 'get over it'. Along the same lines, I felt like I was sort of losing my mind, and that even though I wanted more than anything to be normal again, day after day it remained. It made me really sympathetic to people with mental illnesses, like being bi-polar. I will never look down upon anyone with an illness of any sort, i don't know their story and who the hell am I to judge anyone?

My wife will sadly be on the Oxycodone for life dealing with lots of autoimmune issues and whatnot. The pills are always around, always in the medicine cabinet. I will never put one of those in my mouth so long as I live. I don't know how some can withdraw 2, 3, 10 times from this. My wife helped carry me through this. It felt so good to just cry and tell her what was going on in my head.

If anyone is needing to quit, please take my advice and ween yourself slowly. I fell off a cliff and almost died doing it. By the time I knew I should have weened off rather than just stop like I did, I was already days into it and I did not want to do it again. I felt like a complete loser, liar, bad father and husband, and couldnt tell anyone what was happening for the months I basically laid in bed all day and night.

You will get through is

You will sleep normally again

You will eat a full meal one day soon

You will be happy again

FT

Hi Hangdog:

Thank you for coming back to tell the "end" of your story. I am not quite two months clean from my own personal hell-ride on oxycodone. I came to this site in the first few days of my withdrawal, grasping for a thread of hope that I was not going to die, was not going to have a seizure, would eventually feel normal again. I think that is the hook oxycodone has -- when you are in the grips of it, the pain of withdrawal from it, your addict brain screams at you that NOOOOO, you won't EVER feel normal again UNLESS you take more oxycodone! I guess that is why I failed to taper off of it over the last few months I was taking it, even though a couple of different doctors were "trying" to help me taper off. My addiction started innocently enough with a couple of orthopedic surgeries back to back, but I placed MYSELF into this personal hell by lying to my doctors and my husband about the level of my use, and only stopped when I ran myself out and had no lies left to cover myself, and, hitting this brick wall, had to make a decision. STOP. The next step would have been the street. I would have stolen the drug from my elderly mother if I knew she had any.

You STOPPED. You SURVIVED. And you are HERE to tell us about it. Thank you. I have been feeling pretty good, pretty close to normal, in the past few weeks. Because of the psych effects of oxys, depression can be a problem. I have made myself so busy I don't know if I would be depressed in other circumstances, because oxy's lifted my mood so much when they were working, I could be one of those dealing with it now.

I come to this forum after receiving the hand up from others who tread this path before me, hoping that what I say, what I have experienced, can help someone else as I have been helped.

I hope your wife does well. There are people who have to deal with pain medically, even with oxy's, and I am so glad she is not one of those susceptible to becoming addicted to higher and higher doses. My guess is -- my hope is -- that her doctors have more than one way for her to cope with pain. I have severe osteoarthritis, and I am dealing with it with non narcotic methods.

SquareHead

Hangdog,

Congrats on a year!

It's quite an accomplishment getting and staying off oxy. There are so many addicts that never get a chance, or take a chance to stop. It takes a whole lot of determination and a set of ba77s to stand up and give up the insanity. I mean, who wants to know that they are going to be extremely sick, and then stick it out for as long as it takes to get better. It's an awful process that no one wants to deal with to get clean, but the pain is part of the healing process.

I hit 5 months clean 2 days ago and I'm so grateful for getting as far as I have. I hope to post my year clean in 7 months, but don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm just living in the moment and that's working fine for me.

Congrats