Hi, my name is christin and i'm an addict...

...and this is my story.

I came to SR back in November. If you read my first post, you'll see that I hadn't started taking pills yet. Looking back on the post, now, I see what my sponsor saw when she read it and told me that, even before I picked up, I was an addict. I had never been physically dependent on anything and had even gone nearly twenty years without picking up so much as a beer. Then, something snapped near the end of November 2008. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that something snapped.

I started to have, what I think were, panic attacks. I couldn't conceive of the idea of going to my doctor or to a counselor. I was so ashamed that something like that was wrong with me. I knew that if only I could numb things, it would be better. I learned from an intake counselor for an IOP program that my past experience using opioids for legimitate physical pain (though it was seldom) had set my "addict brain" up to correlate opioids with pain relief... including emotional pain. It makes as much sense to me as any other explanation for why I would ask my father for some of his unused hydrocodone (faking my well-known neck ailment).

It worked. It worked so well that it not only took away the anxiety but it seemed to fix everything inside of me. For the first time, I felt like I fit in the world. I wasn't fighting it or fighting to be part of it. I could look in the mirror and what I saw looking back at me was acceptable. I hear claims of getting energy from opioids. I've always been extremely energetic. What they did for me was to slow my thinking down so that I felt like I was living in the present moment. My brain wasn't three steps ahead of me, planning what I would be doing next.

What I didn't see in the beginning was all the things that the pills would take from me, things that, later, my sponsor would have me list as part of the unmanageability of my life. I posted on SR, telling folks that I had taken the pills and how they had stabilized everything. I was so certain that I would take them for a few days (after all, I only had enough pills for a few days) because everything would get back to normal and I wouldn't need them anymore. I was warned that my actions were dangerous. But, I couldn't see it. I had no doubt that people who had problems with drugs wouldn't be able to take an opioid for anxiety, but I could take them. I wasn't an addict. Funny, that's exactly how I titled my first post, "A non-addict who needs help". Sugah replied to one of my early posts and explained the difference between physical dependence and addiction. Her explanation made sense. But, I couldn't see in me what everyone else saw. Then, once I started to see that there might be a problem, I couldn't stop.

Of course I wasn't instantly dependent on the pills. But, I was instantly addicted. So, when my supply ran out and I still needed a little more time for my head to straighten out, I did the unthinkable. I stole some pills from my father. I lost my soul the night that I did that. In fact, I came home and posted on SR. It was the blackest place that I had ever experienced. I think that it's beneficial to copy the post here. If I ever wonder if I would do anything to get my DOC, all I need is to think back on this time.


I don’t know what to post. I want to post everything and I want to post nothing. I don’t want anyone to know but then I want someone to know so that I’m not the only who does know.

And I want someone to care. Care about what? I don’t know, just care.

I laughed tonight. I laughed hard and had a great time with my father and my husband and one of my sons. Sounds good? It felt good and I felt like me but that was only because I gave in before leaving work and sucked down some of the expired hydrocodone syrup that I was so relieved to find in the back of the medicine cabinet yesterday. I wasn’t enjoying myself because I was high. I wasn’t the least bit high, any mild rushes were long over. I was just having a good time. But, I also felt terribly bad. I felt horrible because I was doing all this with three pills that I stole from my dad’s med bottle in my pocket. STOLE. I stole them from my father! He gave me a handful in the beginning of the week (which I LIED to get). As he dumped them from the bottle, I protested, “You don’t need to give me that many.” When inside I was saying, “Please, just give me the whole bottle.” I’m ashamed. I’m even more ashamed to admit that, although I regret it, it’s mainly because I’m afraid of him realizing that I stole from him.

Yesterday, I thought that things were getting better. I woke up and the first thought in my head was something other than how I’m going to find a way to get more hydrocodone. I can’t remember exactly what the thought was, but I was glad to have it. I took nothing before work (I work afternoons) unlike the day before. Then, I’m talking with a coworker who is on Vicodin for a back problem. She was definitely feeling her meds and I couldn’t stay near her. She was making me crazy. I returned to my desk and finished off my last three hydro.

This morning, I spent ALL MORNING trying to find a way to order something online without getting my butt landed in jail or getting scammed because the Attorney General’s office isn’t going to be an option if I get ripped off. I don’t have money for this stuff! I know it. But, there’s something about looking that appeases me, gives me a morbid kind of a hope. I just want enough until the obsessive thoughts stop and the craving is gone. My stomach gets so tied up in knots that I want to puke and just hide in a dark place.

That’s why I took the pills from my dad tonight. I have to spend the entire day with my husband tomorrow. I have every intention of not taking anything (just as I had hoped for today, and yesterday, the day before and the day before that). Maybe I haven't been successful because I have the stuff with me. I don't know but I can't risk it. I can’t be crawling out of my skin around my husband. The pills are my insurance. I’m hoping and praying that I won’t take them and then I can sneak them back into the bottle this weekend.

When I was walking tonight, I decided that if, after spending the whole day distracted with Christmas shopping I have to take the pills because I’m feeling too desperate not to, I’ll look into going to a meeting. (If I do, no one would have to know why was there, would they? God help me for asking this but I can let them think that its for my kids. At least in the beginning?) Although I say that I've decided, it’s not the kind of decided that I used to mean. My commitment seems rather easily swayed lately.

But something has to give. I have enough syrup for a few days and that’s it. New stuff isn’t going to just keep “appearing.” Medicine cabinets are only so deep.


It's hard to read this and imagine that my first post had only been ten days before and that the first pills had been swallowed only five days before. Everything was spiraling downward incredibly fast. Still, I didn't think that I was an addict. My denial was strong, even when my research for online hydros brought me to a website where people were sharing about how not to build a tolerance in order to continue to enjoy the high of opioids and my jaw dropped in response to reading about people going weeks and months between using in order to stave tolerance. It seemed inconceivable. I thought to myself, "You mean that you don't miss it every day?" But, as I said, I didn't believe that I was an addict.

Looking back at that I time, I now know that I was already building a dependence. I was experiencing physical craving, even though I didn't know it. Again, looking back on my SR posts, things seem so clear. Someone had commented that my experience sounded very much like a physical addiction. But, I ingored it, convinced that it would take at least a year to become dependent. I didn't worry much. I was sure that it would never take that long for my head to get back to normal. At some point, though, I began not to care if I became addicted, just as long as I didn't have to give up feeling the way that I felt.

Finding that it wasn't so easy to purchase hydros online, I continued to steal from my father. I faked neck pain and had scripts written for me. My father developed Multiple Myeloma and was prescribed oxycodone. That became my DOC, not so much because I wanted a better high (I wasn't using primarily to get high but because it was readily available, and it was pure oxycodone, nothing in it to compromise my liver. Of course, I needed fewer because they were stronger. I didn't need fewer for long, though. It was quickly becoming apparent that I was an opioid sponge.

I didn't understand obsession and compulsion, even though I was living them. When I picked up one of my dad's scripts (5mg oxycodone #360), I would start my day with the typical 15mg, then 20, 25, 30... but as the day would progress, I would find myself popping pill after pill, not knowing why, just popping them for the numb, never stopping until I felt that I was "finished". I still don't know what determined that point. There would just come a time when I would feel done and I would stop for the day, unless something was upsetting or for whatever other reason, I decided that I wanted to get high.

Eventually, I started snorting. I don't know why the desire struck me. It was more than just wanting to avoid the occasional stomach upset. Then, I discovered crushing them (I didn't like chewing because they stuck in my teeth). I mixed the powder with my favorite juice (though grapefruit juice was best). I like the the way that they hit when taken that way. I never realized until after I quit, how much I was enjoying and was addicted to the subtle rush. Although I seldom took the pills to get high inentionally, had I been shown how to shoot oxys, I don't think that I could have resisted.

In a matter of a little over two months, I went from never taking an opioid, other than when and as prescribed, to taking 110-130mg a day. My addictions doctor later would tell me that I developed a two-year habit in two months. None of it made sense, until the progressive nature of addiction was explained to me. If I were to look back on my life, to the period when I was drinking regularly, my drinking suggested alcoholic drinking (though I have not labeled myself an alcoholic. Accepting that I'm an addict is difficult enough right now). For as long as I can remember, I have shamefully hidden a desire to escape myself and to numb the pain of being me with a needle, somehow knowing that relief would be afforded me and that it would bring to an end an unspecified struggle in me.

Up until November of 2008, I had led a life of responsibility and of dependability. Just shy of forty-six years old, I was married, had three boys (20, 18, and almost 16), and I attended church every Sunday. I always tried to live an exemplary life. I was never a "do as I say, not as I do" type of parent (other than for my smoking, which I quit seven years ago). I always felt that if something wasn't morally good for my children to do, it wasn't good for me either. I was always aware that my example was my primary method of teaching. I never would have imagined that I would become someone whom I would not know.

Around Christmas time, I couldn't deny what was happening in my life anymore. What kind of person lies to doctors to get prescriptions or steals her father's medicine? What kind of person holds onto someone else's prescription and conjures up ways to keep it, such as staging a break in to her car or returning the medicine to her father and staging a break in to his house? What kind of a person would do such things??? I couldn't come up with any other answer than to admit that the kind of person willing to do such things is termed an addict. So, I started attending NA meetings as had been suggested by people on SR.

Although I attended meetings, I continued to use. In February, I had to face a serious situation. My use had skyrocketed. Although I was finally able to obtain a script of #360 for myself (I had obtained a script for my dad when he didn't need one), I did the math and realized that what had seemed like a near endless supply in December would last me only a couple weeks if my use didn't continue to increase. When I had picked up my dad's first bottle of #360, I had thought, "If I could get a bottle like that, I would be set for a long time." I was facing a crisis. I suddenly realized that the amount that I needed was escalating so fast that the only way that I was going to be able to keep up was to buy on the street. I tried to taper the oxys in order to make them last, but couldn't. Even knowing that I would run out, never kept me from taking more than I had. I looked again at the internet options. They were all too risky.

But, I had to do something. I was getting sicker more often. I was becoming less dependable and my father needed me. I recently had been dope sick when I took him to his cancer doctor. He felt so bad for dragging me out. I felt so guilty for him having compassion on me. I was sick because I was taking my dad to the doctor who prescribed the oxycodone. I had misjudged how much I needed to get through the morning because I didn't want to appear to be under the influence in the doctor's office.

The story of why I ended up on the Suboxone, why I even considered a treatment that would keep me addicted to an opioid for again as long as I had been using, is a little complicated. The fact that my family doesn't know about my addiction keeps my father's meds within my reach. I experience horrific anxiety and cravings when in withdrawal. I had doubts that I could quit c/t without caving and taking his pills. Also, I have a disorder of the immune system. It's a complement system deficiency which is triggered by stress. One of the symptoms, laryngeal swelling, is life threatening, as you can imagine. When I was considering the possibility of traveling out of state to my sponsor's house to detox, I posted on an HAE forum and received a response from someone who had been dependent on his pain meds and had to taper very slowly because even the mildest of withdrawal symptoms set off his HAE. I finally resigned myself to going on Suboxone because in addition to the drawbacks of quitting c/t, I knew that I needed time to get my head straight. Even though I knew that I needed to quit and, even though, a part of (maybe even most of me) wanted to quit, I'm still very much addicted. (At one point, I even feared that I was becoming addicted to the Suboxone. However, unlike with the oxys, I've been able to taper.)

As of this blog entry, I'm working on the steps with an online sponsor. I'm struggling with the second and third steps. She is concerned that the Suboxone might be a hinderance, especially to the spiritual component of the program. She has another sponsee who recently quit Methadone and who has confirmed how much clearer she is now that she's not on replacements.

I want to quit the Suboxone and I pray that that I have what I need to quit. My sponsor has indicated that addiction still has a strong hold on me. I won't argue that fact. I have not been able to dispose of the oxys and hydros that I had remaining when I started the Sub program. From the beginning of the program, I have been waiting for my head to get totally with the program so that I would come to a point where I could get rid of the pills. That hasn't happened. I've gone from IOP (which due to the counselor was a waste of time) to a one-on-one counselor. I've only had three sessions with my counselor so far. Therapy takes a long time, I guess. At the moment we're exploring forty-six years of shame, which might be the key to why I'm unable to accept being an addict. In the meantime, though, I continue to stockpile.

I have absolutely no intention of relapsing, though my doctor will argue that I'm keeping the pills because I want to get high. But, he doesn't listen to his patients. He gives them ten-minute appointments. I don't keep the pills because I want to get high (though, I'll admit that there are still times when I do, very much). I keep them because I'm terrified to get rid of them. If recovery doesn't work for me, I can't go right to that souless place of stealing and lying to get what I need.

But, I can't relapse! I have a sponsor who sticks by me when she probably shouldn't. I can't make her feel gullible or feel as though she should be like those who would tell those like me to go back out and finish. I would rather die than do that to her. Keeping my pills and stockpiling simply makes me feel safe.

I'm careful about what I post on the boards of SR. Unfortunately, I've gotten myself into the position where I feel that I need to live up to a certain perception of me. I never wanted that to happen. I really don't need another situation in my life where I mask who I really am. Therefore, I'm starting to share more of my recent struggles. But, I don't think that anyone knows exactly how messed up I still am.

I'll never post about stockpiling but in my blog because the intent of the active threads is to look for advice. There's only one piece of advice for what I'm doing. My sponsor enourages me over and over again. Perhaps if a gun were to be put to my head, something would terrify me more than the thought of getting rid of my pills. I can't dwell on it because to dwell on things such as this merely throws me into a depression and I'll cry for days at any mention of my addiction. If I face the hard, cold facts of what I am and of what I can't bring myself to do, I come to a complete standstill.

Six times a week, I sit in a twelve-step meeting and, at some point during at least three of those meetings, I say, "Hi. My name is Christin and I'm an addict. I know what I am and, since December, I have been able to admit what I am. I thought that those things would open the door of recovery for me. Perhaps they have. Maybe it's just a matter of me not having stepped through the door yet (and stepped out into the light, as I'm certain my sponsor would say). I do want for that to happen. I just can't bring myself to accept that I'm an addict.