FT

Hi RJ,
Glad to hear back from ya. Congrats on your days clean, too.

Personally, I think your anger is a good thing. It keeps you from being f--ked over. Ha! In me, I just call it sarcasm. And cynicism. Yeah!

I had a similar experience to your cardiac thing while I was still on opiates last year, but I talked my way out of going to the hospital. I was riding my bike to work and had to heft it up onto a commuter bus for the 30 mile ride back to my city, where I would take it off the bus and ride it the rest of the way home. It was 5 pm and the bus was packed.

After I got on the bus, I got a burning, crushing pain in my right chest that radiated down my arm to my fingertips. It came on quickly after I got on the bus and went away after about 20 minutes. By the time we got to my town, the pain was gone but my arm was sore, but I managed to heft my bike back off the bus and rode the 20 minutes up and down hills it took to get home.

A few hours after I got home, I told my husband, and he about freaked out. He wanted to take me to ER right then, but I refused. Instead, I went to the doctor the next morning, and they too freaked out. What a waste. I spent an entire morning having an EKG, x-rays, blood tests, and everything looked normal. They insisted on a Thallium Stress Test, but I refused. My diagnosis was just like yours -- "could be" this, or that, or this, including acid reflux, which I don't have. They let me leave and told me I could take NO ibuprofen, which meant the only option I had for my pain was oxycodone. This happened to be during one of my failed tapers where I was taking very few, and this episode gave me a real good excuse to escalate my dose up once again to ridiculous amounts of drug.

In any event, I'm not sure why I'm writing this, because you sound like you already know about the things I am saying. I just wanted to share the cardiac experience. I am an almost-60-year-old lady, and if anything I get feistier and more cynical by the year. I also have a medical background, and damn if being a patient is CRAPPY. I had no idea how badly patients are treated (unintentionally due to understaffing, I think) until I was helpless in bed after knee surgery and had to drag myself over to the commode to go pee, missed, and hit the floor. No nurse anywhere to be seen. I had pressed the call button 20 minutes earlier and I couldn't wait.

Gives you a new view on patient care, just like getting addicted gives you a new view on addicts. Geez!

Last thing, you've been through enough, and I am thinking your pain is going to improve. Your attitude tells me you've got it in you, enough fight and verve to push through it. I've told you my experience that oxycodone actually ended up making my pain worse. I don't know if I have reactive pain disorder as has been surmised, or not. It doesn't really matter. Labels don't count much for me anymore. I just do what I gotta do, and I'm gonna do it walking, and off opiates.

By the way, my cardiac thing was probably a pulled pectoral muscle from hefting my bike up on the bus. The rack was stuck that day and I had to pull extra hard on it, and it was 20 degrees outside.

Peace bro.

JustRJ

I don't know if I posted this, but after my incident with the rehab facility, I filed a complaint. Since then, I've heard from the CEO. I offered my input and suggestions. He refunded my money except for one day. That was due to the fact that the initial contact told me it would be 40.00 and not 40 per day! So we got that back. One of the staff was let go. Oh well. Treat people right. She was nasty with the wrong person. He (the CEO) is in the process of re-educating his staff on being HUMAN.
They say that medical people are the worst patients. Could be because they ask more questions, or question questionable practices. I don't know. All I can say is that I hate hospitals, regardless of how nice they treat me. The guy next to me was an older gentleman. He was constantly coughing up a lung. I really felt bad for the man, but it was GROSS! He was crotchety, like me. He didn't like his diet, and he let the doc know...I loved that guy!
I had added some stuff, but the window to edit was closed. I typed a bunch of stuff, but it was deleted. Now I can't remember what I wrote!!!
It's all good.
I'll drop in from time to time, give you all my progress.
Thanks for the cardiac story. I've read about a few instances, but mostly, "...opiate withdrawal isn't fatal, but users will feel like they have the flu." Nonsense!
Thanks again to all.

FT

I would have liked that old guy, too. I LOVE old people that yell, don't take sh-t, and tell everybody to go to HELL. RIGHT on. Love it. That's me in 20 years. (maybe now)

JustRJ

Apart from spitting up a lung...He didn't tell them to go to hell, but he sure did speak his mind. Old Navy guy, probably WWII. Not too many of them left.
There is a time and place to be assertive. I hold my tongue pretty well, just don't like to get jerked around. Nobody does, especially when they don't feel well.
Question to anyone who reads this. What has been your spouse's response to your addiction? If not married, bf/gf?
No particular reason, just curious how other couples deal with this crap.
Thanks-
RJ

FT

Hi RJ,

I have been married to the same man for 40 years this year, and we beat alcohol together, and survived the near death from illness of our youngest son 10 years ago that caused me to fall into a brief addiction to injectable narcotics, and now he is standing by me through my recovery from oxycodone addiction. Even though the current addiction was unintentional and began with severe osteoarthritis, torn knee cartilage, and then two total knee replacements back to back in 2009 -- I still allowed myself to become addicted, and then stopped pretty much cold turkey in December 2010 -- it was addiction just the same.

However, I totally lied to my husband and told him I was tapering off the oxys. He had been with me to some pain clinic visits, and heard me asking the doctor to do that. But, what he didn't know was that I was getting the drug from different doctors and dentists and not telling him I was increasing my dose to alarming levels by the end of my run. At the end, every trial of tapering led to such high doses I could not maintain it any longer without either dying or hitting the streets for my supply, or both. I won't go into the whole story because it is elsewhere on this forum.

When I stopped oxys in December, my husband thought it was because I had ended a long, slow taper, and that I would be "just fine." I thought I was going to get away with my lying and just stop, but I did not anticipate how sick I was going to be. A couple of days into withdrawal, and I came to this forum to get help, and SquareHead was the one who told me I should fess up to my husband. He needed to know why I was so sick, but he also needed the truth out of me.

So I told my husband what I had been doing.

Good Lord in Heaven, did the WRATH of GOD come raining down upon my poor little addict head. Nothing physical, mind you, but he was SO PISSED OFF that I had almost ruined our lives again like I had ten years ago with the injectable sh-t. Another story.

I understood his anger, and I just kept on being sick day and night and could not function at all. Gradually, my husband and I began talking and I taught him about addiction. This withdrawal stuff and addictive medicine was not something I had in my medical training, and so over the months before I quit, I had learned a LOT about opiates, how they work, what was going to happen to me if I kept going, what was going to happen to me when I stopped. But nothing really teaches you like when it happens to YOU.

My husband no longer trusts me with drugs, and has no reason to. But that is good, because I have to earn his trust back by staying clean. He has become my biggest advocate now, and I can even tell him funny stories that weren't really so funny about what I had experienced during my addiction. He has a new understanding about the process and knows that I am not ever going to be "finished" with recovery. Recovery is something you live.

So, end of story, my husband thought I would be "just fine" in 3 or 4 days of no opiates. It took more like a month before I started feeling some energy return, and now at over 2 months clean, I almost feel like my old self.

Still married. Same guy. God bless him. (I am not religious, but that's the sentiment I have about why he is still here.)

mropiate

ive been addicted to opiates on and off for the last 4 years since i was 18.. i just turned 22 last month.. and i have been very heavily using perc 30s, and if i couldn't get a hold of those.. anything else would do, and i would take between 90-250mg a day.. i know some people may have more worries than that.. but this is after the fact that i kicked a very bad habit a year and half ago.. i used oxy 80s everyday for about a year straight.. and started with a little piece of one, to a whole pill, to 2 or 3 a day.. i kicked it cold turkey when i was at rock bottom and it was the hardest thing ive ever had to do.. went nearly 9 months sober and then one day randomly thought id try them agian.. ad thought if i sell them and do them i wont waste the money, so its okay... forgetting the real reason i quit.. i went months of preaching to people why not to do them and helped people get off of them or not get involved with them because it is a damn diease and nightmare.. i never would wish the pains ive had on my worst enemy, i never want to see anyone struggle the way i have.. and the hardest thing is no one in my family knows my problem.. i only have my best friend and pill buddies to talk to about it.. thankfully i talked my best friend into quitting with me and turning our lifes around for good.. because when you make ten thousand dollars in 4 months and have nothing to show, thats pretty damn pathetic.. i dont mean to ramble on, i know some people reading this may feel like me and not have the patients to read... but the best thing you can do is talk about your problem and share it with people that can relate to you.. i was at the point here i couldn't quit again, wanted to seek help and go to detox and rehab clinic.. but then though if i need help quitting im not really sincerely doing this for me, so i may relapse if i didnt do it on my own.. except i once quit this black hole crappy life i have before on my own and was doing soo good.. all it took was one thought that got me right back in it.. im pretty sure i have been on the verge of od'ing in my living room, and lying on the floor ready to kill myself after doing very large amount of pills.. i lied to my best friends, family, and even myself.. the opiates started to control my life agian, and i dont remember what it feels like to be sober.. however when i was sober 6 months ago, for almost 9 months.. that was the best time eeeever!!! it just confuses me as to why i was so stuck on not doing them and did them agian.. i dont want to go 2 years and then relapse again.. i think of all the reasons i decided to quit again, btu then that little guy in my head tries to rationalize wiht me that one pill would be okay.. i just keep telling myself this voice will go away soon, because it will, and right now its tough.. i am now 3 full days sober again, cold turkey.. i know its not that long.. but i am on the successful road to recovery and want to enjoy life without having to do an extreme amount of pills to enjoy things.. i spent numerous days alone in my house, just getting rocked off the pills and accepting that.. i just cant wait to be a month+ sober, and look back to the day where i almost checked into rehab and let everyone i love know i am an addict.. it is extremely hard to hide this from people and not be able to tell the ones i love what my problem is.. people can tell i am not myself.. but think it may just be stress and i cover it up with an excuse/lie.. right now i cant say ill never do one again, because i did say that once ago and broke my streak/life goal.. but i promised myself that i dont want to.. and i need to just do this for me.. if i dont i wont be successful.. manny things remind of good times i had while messed up, but as hard as it is to be reminded of those times.. that helps get through the bull**** as hard as it sounds.. filling my mind with other thoughts and keeping myself occupied, working, music, friends, family.. gets me through these very tough couple of days...
i wish everyone to a safe and successful recovery who is struggling with pill addiction.. everyone must help themselves to recover if you dont do it for you, you may not succeed.. i hate who i am as of now.. and want to love myself again!! i had more fun sober than not.. and still dont know why i went back.. im happy i caught myself before i got to rock bottom again! thanks for listening!!!
~KING
if you have total control over your mind you can never be hurt! fight the urge and stay strong

tdbettr

Mropiate, 3 days is great in my opinion congratulations hang in there! I too am on my 2nd ride of the OXY. Its day 19 and it does get better. Trust when I say OXY changes you, your thought. You truly become a host for a being that only wnts that next pill.

I too can not say I'm done because its an everyday event that you have to say no I will not go back. At 34 playing the roles of father, husband, son, brother and friend. Take your time to recover.

3days is great, only you can make that stand not to use.

come here and keep us updated

Lenetrk

It's been almost two years and I still once in a while get cravings. The important thing is what you do about it when you get them.I know for myself any drugs or alcohol are no where near me. Even the cup that I drank from daily I got rid of.Any reminders of your past routines have to go! It's just to much of a temptation.I know it's not easy but you really have to make a conscience affort to rid yourself of all things negative. Because we are all so fragile initially we don't need to make it harder on ourselves.But you will prevale. You took a big step posting here!

JustRJ

If I may. If any have taken the time to read my earlier posts, then you have an idea of where I'm at. Only those with similiar circumstances can relate. I am now 39 days post-detox, after 10 years of use. My pain has returned to an unrelenting annoyance. Sleep is extremely difficult to get. Every day is a struggle, which is frustrating, because I thought I would be much further along at this point. Despite all the pain and feeling like crap, there is no way I would put another pill in my mouth or up my nose! My body has started to work normally again. I feel somewhat normal, except for a fight with high blood pressure and pulse rate. Plus the fact that my sleep is broken, I feel exhausted nearly every day.
There are plenty of reasons to not use again. Just think of how good it feels to not wake up with cravings! If your body is like mine, your intestines don't work right, you can't pee, and sex is out the window. Once those functions start working again, who would want to go back to them NOT working again?
This is a difficult road we travel, either using or getting off of them. It's no fun either way. But I am convinced that the life I was living using was not living at all.
I wish the best for you all. Think of how good you feel WITHOUT them. That will help you get by when you think you need them.

StuckinOrlando

So Ive been reading thru these forums and I want to and need to stop my addiction.
My wife and I have a addiction to oxycodone I've been taking it for 2 years. It started as a little maybe 10mg a day and has peaked in the past month to 300mg a day.

The problem is, is that my wife is addicted too. She takes much less maybe 100mg a day but it is still a costly addiction. Our supply has stopped and I want to stop, we need to stop our lives together depend on it. How do I get us there?

Im stuck, and lost and starting to WD

JustRJ

Sorry to hear of your troubles, and you do have troubles. Quitting is going to be a problem no matter the way you go about it. I would suggest an inhouse facility if at all possible. You haven't been using too long so it may be somewhat painless. If you can't do an inhouse, you can try the methods posted in these forums. It's going to be trial and error. The first five days will be your worst. Time will seem to have stopped. I don't suggest buying any online products...I've tried the two biggest sellers and they don't work. Nothing takes the place of opiates but other opiates. You could go to your doctor and tell he/she you need assistance and get tapered off, but tapers don't work too well either. It's a bumpy road, but you can do it. Not having any around will help. Message me if you need to talk.

FT

Hi, and welcome.

I, too, crawled the threads back in December when I was a couple of days into withdrawal and SICK. SCARED. I started with the "Oxycodone withdrawal help..." and then the "I'm going cold turkey..." threads. They are long, but there are LOTS of people on those threads who have done EXACTLY what you are doing, feeling EXACTLY what you are feeling. If you haven't checked them out, maybe you will find some kindred spirits there, and the threads are more specific to your current situation.

I'm 3 months clean on Tuesday, and I now feel better than I have in YEARS.

You and your wife are BOTH going to be sick with detoxing. I did it without help at the end, too. Hence, my name on this forum.

Hang in there.

FT

likehappiness

I am an opiate addict as well and detoxed myself cold turkey in January. I am also a nurse so I knew to some degree what was coming. I DID NOT want to take a pill to cure a "pill" problem however, I had severe insomnia and finally had to take some ambien to help me sleep and only had to take 3 days of it. I too had crazy blood pressure and probably should have gotten a script for clonidine however....I chose not to and spent quite a bit of time laying in a HOT bath several times a day doing relaxation. Sometimes I just PACED the floor. The diarreha problem is not going to go away for weeks. Drink lots and lots and lots of water, gatorade and more water...hot tea....and try to eat some fiber. I didn't eat well for several days. If you do this by yourself have someone stay with you for about 5 to 7 days to help you out. It's also nice just to know someone is there to help or to talk to. Ibuprofen is your friend while detoxing. It is the best substance for muscle aches and pains as you can get. Most people take at least 30 days to detox and will continue to have symptoms off and on for sometimes years.

StuckinOrlando

Thanks for the knd words 24 hours no meds

JustRJ

Hang in there. It will get worse before it gets better. Just remember-five days. Shoot for that. Actually, shoot for an hour at a time. Do NOT take clonodine for changes in your blood pressure! That's not what they prescribe it for. It is prescribed to help with w/d symptoms. It is also very dangerous and can lower b/p to critical levels. If you take it too long, you have to ween off of it. Do the best you can without changing the chemistry of your body! It's hell to get off pain meds, only to have to fight benzo addiction or a b/p that's in the dirt! If you stop the clonodine too quickly, you get rebound high blood pressure! Bad stuff! You and your wife are able to beat this...just lean on each other. Stay away from anything that can be potentially addictive, especially long-term. Patience will be important.

FT

likehappiness is a nurse and knows about clonidine. I don't like it either, but it is one of the most common meds the docs give people to help with the bad jitters, and it is comparatively benign to some of the other stuff people might try.

likehappiness

I do agree with RJ. Try not to take anything else if you can just know that you won't feel "right" for a couple weeks. Your body is trying to readjust to the pills you have been feeding it and needs to get back to normal unfortunately it takes time. If this was easy we all would have done it A LONG time ago. Everyone take care.

JustRJ

You can't make the assumption that because that person is a nurse, he/she knows about the danger/contraindications of any drug. A DOCTOR prescribed it to me for w/d and it put me in the ER! Doc said nothing of weening off. Doctors are not as smart as people believe them to be. I've been through a plethora of them, and I've lost confidence in the medical community! No offense to the nurse. Another doc didn't know how to read a CT scan or the WRITTEN results from the radiologist. My advise is to research everything you can. The internet is invalualble for research. Second thing-no two people are alike. What works for one may not work for another. The nurse was able to C/T. God bless her. Not everyone can do that. For others, the Thomas recipe worked. It didn't work for me. No cookie-cutter solutions to addiction. We all have to see and apply what works for us. If it's a detox center or home-detox, only the affected individual can decide. I'm a former Army Paramedic. My knowledge did nothing to help with my detox. Addiction is a different animal, very temperamental. My prayers go out to all those struggling and hope they find the help they need-whatever it is.

FT

Somewhere on this forum someone recently commented that, well, if opiates and benzos are potentially lethal if taken together, then why do doctors prescribe them together then?

Thank you for making my point.

Doctors are NOT smarter than you are, they just have gone to school longer than a lot of us have.

As a group, most doctors went to medical school because they want to help people. What ends up happening, unfortunately, is they are herded into managed care facilities and given so many patients they cannot possibly "know" any single given patient unless they have known them a long time.

Doctors prescribe opiates and benzos together because they don't think people are going to leave their offices and take MULTIPLES UPON MULTIPLES OF DOSES HIGHER THAN PRESCRIBED. No doctor prescribes the doses of opiates most addicts are taking by the time they hit this forum trying to quit. If they are, they are not paying attention to the havok this drug has wreaked on the life of the addict. And most certainly don't understand addiction.

Yeah, I think clonidine is a cop-out for trying to help people in more therapeutic ways. But, you will find some people who love it and swear it helped them tremendously with their withdrawal symptoms. I think the best it can do is help some people sleep.

JustRJ

Case in point. So now I'm clean over 45 days. My body is nearly back to normal, my life nearly my own again. Two weeks ago I went to see my doctor for my blood pressure and for something to sleep. All he wanted to prescribe me was antidepressants! I argue with this guy for I don't know how long. He gave me nothing to sleep. 2 weeks go by and I have a follow-up. Once again, the same old crap. Another doc in his office put me on a drug called Atenenol (sp). This drug lowers the heart rate. It is a bitch to get off of. If I don't take it, my pulse goes over a hundred. Tried to explain the rebound tachycardia to this numbnuts. No, it isn't possible, according to him. I guess he doesn't read the articles posted on line. Didn't want to give me anything to sleep. Finally I brow-beat him into giving me a 30 day supply of Ambien. His argument is that Ambien is addictive and I was just coming out of rehab. So using his logic, it is better for me to get by on 2-3 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period than to get 6 or 7! What a moron! I got the Rx and have slept the best I have since I got out of detox. I have no desire to "get high" on Ambien! He then tells me I might have congestive heart failure and that's why my pulse goes so high. I checked the symptoms online. I don't have congestive heart failure...it's the damn Atenenol! There are countless stories about how bad this stuff is. Again, I have lost all confidence in the medical community. My previous doctor wanted me off the pain meds as well, but did nothing to help my recovery. The nurse is fortunate that she had someone provide something to sleep. Sleep is what helps the body to heal and recover. Unfortunately we have to see docs to get meds, be it b/p or anything else. If I could write my own scripts, I wouldn't need them. I usually go in with the hair up on my back. I'm not a child, and I don't need a mommy to tell me what to do. Give me what I ask...I'll sign whatever release you want me to, just don't make me suffer needlessly! He complicated my recovery by 2 weeks by being anal-retentive. I know he's just covering his ass, but give me a break. They prescribed me stuff to sleep while I was in detox, along with antianxiety meds! If anyone has a stiff-necked doctor, I say find another, with some knowledge about what we have to go through. Just my 2 cents.