JCnB

To all who are starting there recovery,

I want to begin by saying GOOD LUCK AND GOOD JOB!!! I am not recovered, but I am on the road to it. I was this thread to be shared with everyone who have the willpower to make it. YOU CAN DO IT! Thats easy to say, but it IS NOT easy to do. I'm on day 5 of my recovery, and I didn't do it the easy OR smart way. Let me share my story.

(I warn you, my story is not legal, nor is it a guide on WHAT TO DO)

My story before 5 days ago is to long to get into. It begins like everyone else who is addicted. What was once a weekend party favor has turned into an everyday job to score meds. You see, my wife and I are addicted to pain meds, which ill refer to as PP's (pain pills). We used to "recreationally" use these meds to get high. It was just the weekends in very very low doses, but as everyone who is reading these forums knows, your tollerance builds quickly. Before you know it, instead of 2 Percoset 5mg I was using 3 OC 40's. This went on for to long. About 5 days ago, my area "dried" up, meaning that there were no more PP on the street for us to buy. Although we were not particularly ready to stop, it was time.

Day 1

On day 1 the pain starts immediatly. I woke up to the usual withdrawal symptoms that you are all experiencing. Chills, sickness, horrible pain everywhere, and insomnia. This began our adventure down withdrawal lane. You see, unlike any other drugs that I've experienced, PP's hurt and they hurt BAD. It took everything we had to get through day 1, but it DOES get worse (before it gets better)

Day 2

After walking out of my college classes, I came home to chaos. My wife and I were in excrutiating pain, and feeling like I had the worste case of the flu ever. Day 2 is definatly where the intense WD symptoms begin, and we WEREN'T ready for it! After about half the day we began to get desperate.

BEFORE I GO ON, I WANT TO PUT A DISCLOSURE OUT THERE. THIS IS MYSTORY, AND THIS IS THE WAY I AM DOING IT, RIGHT OR WRONG. PLEASE HAVE ENOUGH RESPECT TO NOT TELL ME HOW WRONG I AM

Desperation turned into a search for anything to relieve the horrible w/d symptoms. We ended up chosing ecstacy, because in our minds it was a good idea since it is Heroin based. I am not a heroin addict nor have I ever tried it, but when you can't get your brain to functions and you can't move because of the terrible feelings you have, you will do anything. We our 1 ecstacy pill a peice, and it did NOTHING TO HELP! It didn't even begin to make us feel better. Off to bed we went, now with all the full blown w/d symptoms, plus we were halfway rolling, which we had never experienced before, and which was not helping.

Day 3

Day 3 was the worst day yet. I spent the entire morning reading forum threads and learning from people that had gone through the same exact things we are going through now. I read every at home w/d guide on the internet. Once forum thread said that drinking immodium AD, which contains the exact, or a similar chemical to Methadone. We drank the bottle and it didn't help. By this point the wife and I were completly exausted and at the end of our road. We decided to try ecstacy again to help the feelings, or really to just feel something diffrent that the horrible w/d's. This time it did work. We were able to get out and do things. We went to the furniture store and bought things for the house so that when we wake up from this nightmare, things will look good. Maybe we could feel normal after all! Off to bed we went, feeling a little better about our future and hoping tommorow will bring some goodness to our lives.

Day 4

We woke up day 4 expecting the worst. I actually slept very very well, and when I woke up I FELT GREAT! The wife and I had so much energy that we rearranged our entire living room, including wall mounting a TV! AS the day began to end, I started to have those same w/d feeling come creeping back in. I tried to take my prescription ambien to go to sleep, and I was hoping for a bright morning the next day.

Day 5

2/20/11, today. I slept about 20 minutes last night and I feel like I am right back at day 2! Today is a complete mess. This morning I was crying my head off for no reason! I am in horrible W/D pain and my skin is crawling. On top of that im exausted. My wife feels good, which confuses me as to why im right back at day 2 again! I did a bad things today, only to keep my sanity. I went out and got 4 percoset 5's. I couldn't take it anymore, I feel weak, but 5 days of this is hard. My wife tried to reassure me that 4 PP is NOWHERE NEAR the 3 40's we would have been doing last week. Maybe she is right, I don't know. What I do know is that this is the hardest addiction in the world.

What I do know is that there are people out there who are in the exact same boat as us. I guarantee that someone is going to read my thread and say, "Wow, that is exactly how I feel!" I'm not here to discourage people. I'm typing my story out so that I can try to relieve the helpless feeling inside my head. I'm typing it out so that I don't feel so bad about taking these PP today. I'm typing because I KNOW that there are thousands of people in the world who feel as helpless as I do. WE CAN MAKE IT GUYS, I KNOW WE CAN! it has to get easier eventually, and of that I AM POSITIVE. I want to hear your stories guys, I want to, I NEED TO KNOW THAT PEOPLE KNOW HOW I FEEL! I am going to get through this, I know I am, but this is the hardest thing in the entire world to deal with. If anyone needs to talk, or wants to share, or just needs to hear someone else who is hurting, or who needs support, REPLY TO THIS THREAD. We are all here to help each other!


---Wife...this **** sucks.

FT

Hi guys,

First off, I think few of us here would have any criticism whatsoever for what you are doing, how you are doing it. If you've read some of my posts, you know I rode the OXY train for a couple of years after orthopedic surgery, with multiple attempts to get OFF.

Cold turkey is hard. I didn't think I could do it. So I tried tapering over and over and kept failing and failing. At the end, I was only using so I wouldn't get sick.

You probably read the OXYCODONE SURVIVAL GUIDE like I did. I didn't buy their vitamins, but their little graphs and charts helped me SORTA know what to expect, although I must say my withdrawal was much worse than they warned it would be.

But they did have one thing right, I think, which I wasn't able to do because I had to keep working. Actually for one week I couldn't function at all, but I didn't plan it out.

Anyway, if you can anticipate how sick you are going to be for a couple of weeks at least, plan ahead and get all the juice, soups, ice packs, DVD's, music, WHATEVER you think will help you get through this.

The immodium didn't help me much either, but I took it when my stomach cramps were the worst.

Like you, I thought after the first 3 days I would not backslide into feeling as crappy as I did on Day 2. I went up and down through the stomach cramps and diarrhea and nausea and restless legs and no sleep and racing thoughts and ALL THAT S--T, over and over for the first couple of weeks. My bowels didn't even BEGIN to work right for the first 2 weeks, and in the third week I started to have more "good" days than bad ones.

The deal is, you need to expect to feel sick and figure out a way not to treat it with opiates. I remember when I used to drink alcohol many many years ago, whenever I'd had even more than I usually did, I always had "hair of the dog" on my grocery list. It was such a common item, I would just use the initials "HOD," and my husband and I knew what I meant.

That went on for YEARS and then we both stopped the ETOH cold turkey over 20 years ago. It took 3 YEARS to not crave alcohol every single day, and we just talked ourselves through it, talked ourselves out of it.

Quitting oxy's was much harder, much worse.

So, I guess my point is this. You haven't failed here. Failure is part of recovery. Without failure, you have nothing by which to measure your success. You have done a week of learning what is going to happen through each of these phases.

You have to do this your way. You have to get pissed off enough at your ADDICT BRAIN, and we all have one, to tell it to go F--K OFF. You have to reach a "bottom" from which you can't tolerate going lower. For me it was the realization that the oxy's were what was making me so sick. I never felt good at the end of my ride, I only felt "not sick", and I didn't feel like that for very long before I finally stopped.

In the end, I did a VERY brief 3-4 day "taper", just to make sure I wouldn't die. Seriously, I was that scared. I thought I would get so sick I would die if I didn't get my drug. But I didn't die. I did get sick enough to where I almost wanted to.

Then I came here. To this forum. And THESE guys helped me gain the strength to continue in my own recovery.

We're here, and we're listening, and we want to reach our teeny little invisible hand out to you, and help you UP.

Peace to you and your wife. You can do this.

JCnB

Thank you for your kind words. I have a question, and I know I'm not supposed to ask medical questions, but after 5 days will my break-down in discipline set me back to the beggining? I am so worried I'm going to wake up in the morning and be in complete misery again. Only the sun will tell me I guess. . .

FT

That's not really a medical question, but I would have answered it anyway -- in "scientific" terms not aimed strictly at what you should do for yourself.

The answer is, there really is no "beginning" or "end" to oxy withdrawal. So, no, you won't necessarily be back at square one. We humans tend to count things that way, in those terms you will probably feel just as bad the first and second days off oxys as you did if you never tried to withdraw.

The thing that is happening with all pain medicines, also alcohol, is that they stimulate the dopamine centers in the brain, the pleasure centers. Our bodies already do that since before birth, so pleasant things all do it. But substances FLOOD the pleasure centers, which is how they make you feel high. That may seem cool and all, and most of us have done it, and a lot of people can continue to do it OCCASIONALLY and never get addicted. They also keep getting "high" whereby addicts do NOT continue to get "high" at the "usual" doses. That's why addicts keep using higher and higher doses of their drug, not because they have lots of money to spend, but the continue to chase after that early-use high, and they can never get it again, at least not as good. Eventually, they don't get high at all, but only use to feel normal. Then, normal never comes again either.

Ah, sad sick story. And, yeah, I did that, too.

So now, you are left with screwed up dopamine receptors. Other brain chemicals are affected, too, like your seratonin levels and more. But suffice to say, the receptor sites for dopamine MULTIPLIED to accommodate the FLOOD of artificial stimulation caused by your drug, usually oxys. So, while the extra percs you have taken to "fix the sick" only staved off your addict brain for a minute. But it is unlikely you did the receptors any more harm, YET. By the way, those new dopamine receptors you made with high doses of oxys -- they NEVER dry up or recede. They will ALWAYS be there. That's why addicts who relapse big time go VERY quickly up to the high doses they were once at. That's why addicts can NEVER use just "socially" -- they aren't weak, they just are not physically capable of sustaining it. What happens, needs to happen, in recovery, is your brain lays down new tracks to pleasure, because the damaged tracks can't be stimulated normally any more, only with BIG doses of drug.

You've already figured out that going to higher and higher doses only makes you toxic now, and probably don't make you feel anywhere near the nice stuff they used to. So, every time you cave and take more opiates, you are just putting off the inevitable.

Lots of people on this thread taper their way down to an easier withdrawal, but I personally could not do that. What you do about this problem is up to you. Having looked back at the multiple times I tried to taper off, I was only torturing myself over and over, because each time I got down to a few pills, I was in the process of withdrawal. I couldn't hack it, so multiple times I also went right back up on my dose. A lot of people do what I did -- they go back to using even HIGHER doses than they were on before they tried to go off. I guess it is the addict brain's survival tool.

I don't know if this information has helped you or not. I kinda KNEW all this stuff but just did not want to BELIEVE it would be different for me. I imagined I could stop oxys with NO PAIN OR MISERY. I don't think that is possible unless you go to an expensive detox where they literally knock you unconscious for the first few days of detox. I wonder about that, whether it is effective at stopping, or helping to stop, relapse. Because I do think that, for ME anyway, part of the reason I won't go back to opiates even if I need surgery again, is how sick I know I will get if I try to go off of them again.

I've quoted this before. A wise NA friend I met years ago told me, "You really don't know how many relapses you have in you." I know that to be true, judging by at least one close friend who died before she got that chance, and obviously her relapses had run out.

Good luck, and keep posting. We WANT you to get through this, and we have ALL done what you just did. You didn't "flunk out". You gotta just keep at this, HELL BENT on FOKing da OX!

Sugah

I hope you both get and stay clean. If you find yourself struggling and would like input (i.e., experience from others who've been where you are), let us know.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

Baschoen

REMEMBER THIS PAIN.... remember hwo much the withdrawals sucked and how badly you don't want to have to go through that again. Remember that pain and start getting help... meetings, a counselor, whatever, but none of us can do this on our own!

FT

How are you today?

JCnB

I'm really short on time because we are going to go out and get some fresh air today but we feel fairly good today. I'll be on to post more later!

Dee74

I'm glad you made it clear that's not medical advice JCnB - cos using ecstacy would be pretty poor advice...not to mention this is a recovery board, right?

I hope you and your partner decide to make the leap into full recovery soon.

Have you thought about a support network like counselling, outpatient rehab, NA or some other recovery group?
D

FT

Hey guys,

Please let us know how you are doing. Everyone here is pulling for you.

JCnB

Hey Taper!

Thank you for your support with everything. We are doing better! Let me start by telling you what happened at Denys when we went out for air yesterday. I went out to lunch with my family, which included Me, my wife, my mother in-law, father in-law, and my 3 kids. My kids are 4, 2, and 7mo, and they are beautiful! Anyways, we were eating lunch, miding our own buisness, and we heard a loud obnoxious family yelling at the waiters. The table was a male, early 30's, 2 femals, early 30's, and an older women. The male was yelling at the waiter that he needs to show him som f**** respect and get the f*** away from the table. Next we heard the female yelling at another waitress saying if he comes back around here he will get his f*** a** kicked and blah blah blah. Anyways, we were waiting in line to pay for our food, when the male came up behind my MIL and started yelling nonsense about how he just lost his f**** virginity and all kinds of nonsense. Next thing you know he is calling my MIL ugly and just being extremely rude. Next thing you know, one of the females with him came up to us and started talking smack and she hit my MIL. IN THE MIDDLE OF DENYS! Well this turned into a huge fistfight between My family and their family, right in front of my kids. By the time the police got there the fighting had stopped, but the people were waiting by our car to follow us home. The police asked us if we wanted to press charges and we said no. My MIL ended up with a black eye, my wife got punched, my kids had to be taken to the other side of Dennys so that they didnt get trampled in the fight, and I was trying to break up fights left and right. After it was all said and done, My wife and I were extremely frusterated and we used that as an excuse to relapse. I havent been on as much because I was already finished with my suffering, and now I have to do it all over again. It's almost like, whats the point of staying sober? People in this world are rude and ignorant, and it makes me just want to get high to dull out what those people think and say. I know that we used this fight as an excuse, and I know that our brains werent ready to quit when we did. I'm ready now, and I want to get to the other side of the fence. I want to be sober and see that there is a point to being sober, that there are people worthwhile in the world. Sometimes it doesnt seem that way......

FT

Hey Guys,

I can totally envision the scenario you endured. Unfortunately, the world is full of crappy people, and the best time to encounter the worst of them is not when you are in the first days of recovery/withdrawal. You get it now, one more down for the books.

Your family sounds fantastic. I LOVE that age of kids, my own two are MEN now -- Geez.

You and your wife have SO much to be clean for, and I am not giving you news here. Like I said before, recovery is not something that has a clear beginning, nor a clear end point, that is for sure.

Each time you try to get clean, you get a taste of what it feels like to be in withdrawal. And in withdrawal is a crappy place to be.

No matter what day you count as DAY ONE, your recovery isn't something so tangible you can get your hands around it. It is a process, and you have played at it now and have felt the burn.

Now that you have felt the burn, it's time for both you and your wife to make a decision that you are DONE with the OX. Really done. That means, you REMOVE ACCESS to oxys, REMOVE ACCESS from ANY other substances that resembles relapse, like alcohol, ecstasy, crack, meth, ANYTHING.

AFTER you have made the DECISION, you will know you have made the decision because there will be no Percs in your house or any of that other stuff I just mentioned. It just takes a minute to make the DECISION. Just flush it, like G2C did, because your "addict brains" will know where it is and you will go find it when you feel like crap again, which you are going to do.

Hey guys, you gotta do this TOGETHER. You BOTH have to decide that you will be the one who keeps the other one clean, keeps the other one from using, no matter what is going on around you. Screaming kids, screaming restaurant people, crap-ass people all around you on the street, in the grocery store, crap-ass attitudes in your face all around.

Okay, so get the NO ACCESS piece together BEFORE you start, because you just saw what happens when you don't. Your dual "addict brains" make a great team to conspire for more use, and you did.

Well, so the hell what? Like I said, EVERY ONE of us here, with FEW or NO exceptions, has relapsed a few days into withdrawal, or even many months or years into withdrawal. When we finally get clean, we aren't starting the old recovery over again. Today is today. Now is now. F--k what you just did, it doesn't count for TODAY. You are feeling like you failed, and that's okay because that's how you measure your success as you move through this. You probably felt relieved to get some oxys back into your system during that high stress moment, but my guess is that the feeling of relief what soon replaced by, "Oh s--t. What were we thinking?"

Okay, back to NO ACCESS. I mean it. Flush it, don't hide it, you can't hide it from yourself, your wife can't hide it from herself, make sure you are both DONE.

Then, PLEASE don't go to Dennys during your first few days clean. You know you are going to feel like crap, both of you at the same time, and the LAST place you want to be is somewhere you need to pretend to feel normal, because you WON'T FEEL NORMAL.

The first few days, you are going to feel horrible, bitchy, cold sweats, sick to your stomach, cramps, probably the runs, and you probably won't be able to sleep because you won't be able to hold still and find anything that resembles a comfortable position. EXPECT this. EXPECT to feel like crap, and have a PLAN to deal with it that doesn't include taking oxys.

I'm sure I'm repeating myself, but ONLY YOU GUYS can make the decision to GET OFF THE OXY HELL RIDE. None of us here can make you do it. We don't even want to try to do that, because each and every one of us has had people who begged us to stop, lost sleep over us because we would not stop, screamed and became angry at us because we would not stop, and hoped to GOD they wouldn't find us dead in bed in the morning. At least, that is what the people around me now tell me they were feeling while I was using. I screwed up so many peoples lives, and I hurt so many of the people who love me, when I was using.

But, I didn't care. And neither do you. You really don't. Because if you did, you wouldn't continue to use. For me, no amount of screaming and crying at me did any good at all. I had to come to an understanding that I was making myself sick and that one day I would be found dead in bed in the morning if I didn't do something about it. For awhile, I didn't even care about that.

So, I tapered and failed, tapered and failed, tapered and failed, and then finally took so many pills one night that I woke up in a cold sick sweat at 3 in the morning, with the realization that I had toxed myself out with pills the night before, to the place where I had CHEATED MY OWN SELF out of my supply that was supposed to last many more days. That scared the crap out of me. I was so sick, I didn't feel good dosing myself like that, and here it was at 3 in the morning and my addict brain was telling me I needed more.

I could go on, but I've said too much. I don't know you guys, but I know where you are at. Life with little kids is EXTREMELY stressful. Life under any circumstances right now, maybe always has been, but RIGHT NOW is really pretty damned stressful. Oxy's only APPEAR to help, and only in the early "honeymoon" days of using. You are already experiencing that higher and higher doses don't make you feel better and better. They only drain your resources, financial AND physical, and only make things worse.

I'm so glad you came on to post, even though it was to tell about how you fell back into the OXY hole. But it's not too late. Maybe it would help if you could farm out the kids to your MIL for a few while you and your wife hit this thing hard and are willing to suffer through the pain of withdrawals that you know is coming.

This time you gave yourself an out. All that means is that you weren't ready that day. If you were, you wouldn't have provided yourself with an out.

I don't know if I am helping you or scaring you. I want you to know that those first few days and maybe a couple of weeks of feeling like hell are worth the freedom from this drug that can ONLY be obtained by STOPPING it. A "little bit" or "just tonight" ain't gonna cut it. It is a rapid fall down the cliff back into the oxy HELL PIT.

Tell me how you are doing. Get some sleep.

FT

You don't have to post anymore if you don't want to do that. But lots of us here know what is happening, because we did it ourselves.

You and your wife are nearing the precipice of your drug use. You know what you need to do, and now you just have to decide to do it.

People come and go here, and maybe we won't hear from you anymore.

But, I for one, know you are out there and hurting, struggling. You don't what this sh--t for your lives. You have kids, and whether you think they see it or not, you are showing them how to live. This is not what you want them to remember, because this is how they will pattern their own lives.

It isn't too late. Post, please. We're here.

JCnB

Hey taper,

Im still here, and were still hurting. We slipped this week, not terribly bad, but enough that it's going to hurt. We are currently going to begin a taper regime and do this again, the right way. We weren't ready before, so we are going to give it hell this time. Nothing silly, nothing serious this time. I unfortunatly dont have anywhere to take the kids, so we are going to just suck it up. Ill be back on here tommorow when things begin to get serious again.

FT

Hey JCnB,

Everyone here will tell you that you are going to relapse if you have access to your drugs. Until the drugs are OUT of your house, you are unlikely to stay clean. When you start to withdraw, you will feel sick. This time, being sick is a good sign. It means your body is noticing the drug deprivation. Very few of us have the resolve to resist dosing up again when your dope is sitting right there in front of you.

I failed at tapering and earned my name big time. I even had doctors "helping" me to taper, but I just lied and took extra doses behind their backs.

You guys are two "addict brains" feeding off of each other (no insult intended). When you withdraw, you will not be rational. It is easy to say you aren't going to use again while you have the drug still in your system. The true test is -- who is calling the shots when you are sick from withdrawal? Two addict brains together are double trouble. "Next week," they say.

I would STRONGLY recommend that you both go TOGETHER to an NA meeting, like now. I don't know if they have childcare, but my guess is you can find one that does.

Your kids are seeing MUCH more than you think they are. They see and hear things you have NO idea they are perceiving. On some level, your kids KNOW something is wrong, and you are teaching them the wrong way to cope with life. RIGHT NOW, your kids are learning that you cope with life by TAKING something.

Lots of unsaid stuff and things you didn't know were obvious to everybody else, including kids, is being passed along to the next generation. Ask any addict, and most will give you a family history of addictive behavior.

I don't mean to lecture, but I'm really worried about you and your kids. No one can parent well while high. And you are doing just that.

Tryin2Recover

Hey JCNB, I read all of your posts and want to say THANK YOU for reminding me how horrible it is going through those WDs...UGH! I feel your pain, and remember clearly the things you describe. Let me just throw a couple things at you.

First of all, basically no ecstacy is heroin based (that is a myth). I too tried the replacement method-booze, LOTS of weed, other various pills...nothing worked until i was dedicated to getting totally clean. Just my story you may or may not be the same.

Next, I had to get a real plan and some real support. These pipe dreams I had of tapering, cold turkeying it without help of others etc only caused me the same pain you mentioned, going through terrifying WDs only to throw it all away because I rationalized this evil world full of rude people as an excuse to pick up. Eventually all it took was for me to REACH OUT to other people who had been through and were going through the same dilemma. Check out an AA or an NA meeting and give it an open minded shot, it might just change your life. It did mine. Keep posting here and being open and honest, it was the start for me that changed my life. Thanks again!