New to the forums, not to detox =\

[stonewall]

I first posted this in the welcome section, seems everyone directed me to this sub forum. Anyways, here it is.


I'm a young one, turn 21 next month. At the age of 15 I was in a severe car accident, broke my pelvis in 2 places, nerve damage to both legs, and sever chronic back and leg pain. I always had pain since the accident, but at about age 18, it -really- started hurting and getting worse. After jumping through numerous hoops, obviously because of my age (when doctors see an 18 year old kid saying he's in pain and wanting painkillers, all they look at you as is a drug seeker and an addict), but and taking about every medication used for pain other than narcotics, I was given Vicodin. Mostly because my mother was a retired nurse from the office I was getting treated at, and thanks to her I was finally given something for pain.

Anyways, after being on Vicodin for about a year and a half my dosages just kept getting bumped up and my pill count bumped up as well. Now for most addicts this would just be a wonderful thing, but I kept telling my doctor that the vicodin just wasn't cutting it. I was taking 5 of the 10-650's a day and I was tired of it. I knew I was addicted, and I kept begging him to put me on something I could take 2x daily at the most. And all he kept telling me was "we don't want to put you on those kind of drugs, as they are very addicting." And I'm sitting there thinking, wtf, and Vicodin 5 times a day at the maximum dosage isn't addicting? Anyways, after dealing with this doctor I finally tried to find another doctor. I did, and he told me it may be a couple of my ribs were knocked out of place during the wreck and were never set and treated. And that he could try to put them back in, but told me there was no garuntee that they would stay that way, as it had been so long since the wreck, my body grew thinking thats the way it was supposed to be.

Anyways to make a much longer story short, he continued me on the vicodin, then put me on Methadone, i was on it for about 3 months, and it screwed up my bowels so much it wasn't funny. I went 2 weeks without a bowl movement. And when I did have one it was so damn painful it wasn't funny. So he took me off them and put me back on vicodin, anyways I no longer see this doctor either, and currently have no Primary care provider, and no insurance.

Now to the detox. After my final script of the vicodin ran out, I had been on Vicodin for about 2 years at a dose of about 5-6 10-650's a day. And I won't lie, I did abuse them. I took more than I was suppose to. But for the most part no more than 10 a day at the worse parts. Anyways, the last 2 weeks I tried tapering myself off, from 4 a day, to 3, to 2, to starting 1 and a half, then breaking them up in small pieces. This still didn't help the withdrawals, and 3 days into it I knew I needed help. The main reason because I still do live at home, and both my parents are in their 60's and on painkillers themselves. So I was detoxing, and knowing there was MScontin, Percocets, and Vicodin in the house. As an added note, it also pains me that I stole medications from my parents, including 60mgs of MSContin and 10-650's of Percocets. When taking the morphine it was only 1-2 a day, the percocets at about the same pace as the Vicodin. However about a year ago it was awful bad, I was crushing the morphine and snorting it, and taking so many different combinations of muscle relaxers, painkillers, and benzo's that I'm surprised I'm still here to talk to you. So I knew I needed out of the house to get help. I went to a 7-10 day detox program during the middle of September this year, and they're they gave me Vistaril for the first 3 days, on top of Clonodine as needed 3 times a day for the entire 8 days I stayed there. Now as I said I was 3 days clean before going to detox, and I remember that on day 7, the day before I came home, my legs hurt me so damn bad I just wanted to cut them off with a chainsaw. Now remember, I have chronic pain on top of the pain from withdrawal. So I was never sure if this was withdrawl pain on top of the normal pain I always experience, or if the withdrawl pain was just so massive it was masking everything else. Everyday we saw the doctor, and I was tossed around on so many different anti-depressent meds and trazadone to help me sleep. The trazadone helped me to get to sleep, but it only lasted about 4 hours and I was back up tossing and turning, my legs aching so bad, and I was unable to get back to sleep again. I have high blood pressure as well, and the entire time I was there my BP ran around 170+/100+ And I was never given anything to calm me down or to lower my BP. Now I swear if I had been 50 I'd of been in the back of an ambulance on my way to the ER with vitals like that. But I was treated like, oh well, you'll live.

But eventually I was taking to the ER, but not because of my BP, I beleive it was day 5 or 6 I had blood in my stool for about 6 hours until the RN on call decided to call an ambulance for me. I was taken to the ER, and that was a horrible experience. Going to the hospital coming from a detox center. They made me feel like I had just walked into a mall and shot 50 people and they just had to treat me or something. It was a horrible experience. Basically nothing was done, I laid in that bed for 8 hours and they just gave me a script for some anti-biotics and sent me back to detox. The blood in my stool stopped after they took me off some medication they had me on for depression, but the diahrea continued. Now on day 8 its like someone just flipped a switch, I still had my chest pains, my legs ached on and off, and I still had mild diareha but nothing like the past few days. I drove home, back to my house and tried to calm down and just forget about the past few days. And I can tell you this, going TO detox, I swear I was to the point of robbing a drug store just to get some medication, but after leaving, I swore I'd never touch another damn pill. I stayed clean for a month, and having the drugs here at the house with my parents just got to me, and I slipped back into stealing drugs from my parents. And around the middle of October is when I relapsed.

Here is where I'm confused. I'm 8 days into my detox this time around. I was only using for approx. 3 months this time, although 2 weeks ago I took about 80 percocets within about a week, on top of some MScontin. Just taking everything oral. I'm just sitting here thinking, I'm still so fatigued, I don't even feel like moving, I've got diarhea so bad that when I get the urge to make a bowel movement nothing comes out. My legs are hurting so bad it's not even funny, and compared to my stay at detox, minus the anxiety of being in a strange place going through that crap for the first time, it seems like things are worse this time around. And compared to what I was doing before I went to detox the 1st time, the amount of drugs and duration is nothing compared to last time.

Also, I have been on Benzodiazapines for about a year and a half, started out with Klonopin, then the moved me to ativan 4x daily. I take the Ativan because I have severe anxiety/paranoia and panic attacks/agoraphobia. Anyways I used up my supply of ativan to help with my withdrawls, so its like I'm detoxing from Benzo's and opiates at the same time. And from what I hear detoxing from Benzo's is almost if not worse than detoxing from Opiates.

So my question is, is it detoxing worse the more times you relapse, or is it just because I'm doing it cold turkey without the added medications to help the symptoms that I had at detox, or what. I just feel like giving up, last time around about 10-11 days into it I was back to feeling about 65-70% of normal. But I'm on day 8 now and I feel horrid. I'm doing the baths as hot as I can possibly stand it, and trying to sleep when I can, and keeping myself busy as much as I can, but with the fatigue and whatnot, I feel like I have the worse case of the flu ever. It seems the only relief I can get is the hot baths, and it will calm my legs down a bit for maybe an hour or two, then it comes right back. I've also been covering myself in Iceyhot and using heating pads and electric blankets to keep myself as warm as possible, but that is hard as well because I'm breaking out into cold sweats, and having hot and cold flashes more times than I can count.

My biggest concern is, I'm starting college the 10th of January, and if I'm still feeling like this by then, there is no way I'll be able to start. And the money I've already spent, and the preperation will of been for nothing. I feel so disgusted with myself its not even funny. So the problem of getting out of the house with the medications in it will be taken care of, but if I'm not at least back to somewhat normal by the 10th of next month I'm just **** outa luck.

And going to the ER is out of the question for me, I already have bills racked up from being out of work and having no insurance. I'm currently an EMT, and I'm going to college for my BSN, and the last thing I need to do is walk into an area hospital where I planned on working saying I'm detoxing from opiates. That'd look good later down the road when I'm asking that hospital for a job.

I just feel like breaking down and crying myself to sleep. I'm just so upset with myself that I'd let myself slip and go through this again. And it just seems to be so much worse this time around.


**Edit from first post**

Its day 9 now, I slept a bit better than last night. Still wasn't able to stay asleep for more than a few hours at a time. Went to bed about 8 PM, woke up at 11, fell back asleep some time around 12, woke back up around 2, fell back asleep around 3. And woke up again at 6 AM, and this time I was just up for good.

Had my first solid bowl movement this morning, which is surprising. My appatite has gone almost completely, for the past week I've been limited to Saltine crackers and giner ale for fluids. I've managed to stomach a little solid food, but nothing compared to a "proper" meal. I've started taking multi-vitamins as of yesterday, seems to help a bit. And for a few days until I ran out was taking Immodium, that helped with the diarhea for the first few days.
I'm hoping that this is starting to get better, and I'm on the downhill stretch of the worst part of the withdrawls.

[Stereosteveo]

What a story Stonewall. I can easily see how your addiction started, rather innocently if I might add. Thanks for sharing.

I really don't have any experience in your particular situation. I did take Vicoden for about 6 months. But not for physical pain, just because they were there really and they helped me relax. Of all things I've withdrawn from I can tell you the anxiety was to worst.

Here are some random probably useless questions/thoughts that come to mind that you may or may not have considered:

-Will more physical therapy help? Like if you could strengthen your body more, or keep it looser through excercise somehow, would that help ease the pain, and help you sleep better?
-Have you ever tried taking fiber? Like a teaspoon a day? It works wonders for me. Also water is the miracle liquid for me. A gallon a day works wonders in so many ways.
-I'm of the mindset that you have to be real careful with doctors only because many are tied in with the drug companies. But it sounds like you need 1 doctor that understands the balance between your actual ongoing real physical pain and the addiction. Maybe you can find a doctor in NA?

Like I say, just some thoughts. Godspeed to you.

[krissypissy]

hi and welcome to SR-i understand where youre at and as your avatar states 'one day at a time' sometimes just doesnt cut it...one hour, minute, second may be all you can do for right now...sometimes breaking down and crying does help; sometimes you just gotta let that **** go. start living for right now, not what you did/didnt do, etc. because nothing is gonna change what you did with your parents meds/your meds/whatever. it can be a real downer on recovery when you have MORE mental stuff to deal with.

you dont have to do it all now, get thru your withdrawals/detox and when you are emotionally in a better place, you can tackle other issues. school is first priority i take it, so start preparing mentally for that challenge. remember nothing worthwhile ever comes easy so keep working at it. i cant comment on physical/mental symptoms/length of time they stay because everyone is so different--as for now, what is your recovery plan? meetings, therapy, etc? im pullin for you so hang in there-take care

[stonewall]

Thanks for the response Stereo.

Well there in lies the problem. The problem in my back is right around my T-11and T-12. My basic problem is I have NO position of comfort. I am unable to sit or stand for more than 5-10 minutes at a time. If I'm sitting for 5 minutes, I have to get up, and vice versa. I also have restless leg on top of everything, so on top of nerve damage to both my legs, chronic pain in both legs and back, I have that on top of the withdrawl pain.

When I was late 16 turning 17 I was very avid into working out. I was in the gym litterally 7 days a week. It did help my pain, and I got those natural "runners high", I felt wonderful. On the weekends I was at a friend's who was professionally sponsored and was a participant in the World's strongest man Comp, and during the week I was at the gym with my good friend and weightlifting partner for at least 3 hours, or more. I never felt better in my life. I would love to be able to get back into that, but with the pain in my legs and back, I doubt I'd be able to do any kind of weight-training, or even resistance training without throwing my back out and laying myself up in serve pain for days on end.

Then as I stated in a earlier post, I got stuck in a whole first love crush, and thats when my working out started to crumble down. I started drinking and doing pot, but never became addicted, and finally just got tired of the crap and never touched it since, and never had an urge to.

I've found that stretching my legs a bit during withdrawls seems to help the pain for a few minutes sometimes not even a minute, then the pain comes right back I'm back to stretching. But I have limited mobility in how I can bend, move, stretch, etc.

Also, I've tried to drink a lot more water the past few days, but the first few days of detox I couldn't put anything into my mouth without my stomach turning and me feeling like up-chuking it. And that was before I even swallowed, just food touching my lips brought on the urge to throw up, and as much as my stomach has been tossing and turning, and as nausious as I've been, both times of detox I've been fortunate enough to not been hanging over the toilet throwing my guts up. Just the diahrea has got me stuck to the toilet. So I'm afraid to take in too much fiber aside from what I'm getting from the multi-vitamin, as I'm already having bowel movements like crazy, and I'm afraid fiber will just make me dehydrated even faster by speeding up my gastrointestal system.

And yea, I know all too well about doctors and they're ties with drug companies. I'm in the medical field myself, and I know all too well that they love prescribing those meds to patients that don't need them just to get that extra pocket change from the drug companies.

And yea, I had an appointment with my therapist that I was handed over to after detox, as well as a psychiatrist, and after seeing her I went to the local walmart to pick up some multi-vitamins and some iceyhot, and standing in line for like 5 minutes I swore I was going to break down and just lay in the fetal position. But I have severe problems with anxiety anyways. And I was so afraid to tell her to let the doctor know I had relapsed as what may happen. I just told her I was having a lot of trouble sleeping, which is documented anyways, and asked if she would have the nurse talk to the doctor when he came off vacation for something to help me sleep. Which seems to be one of my biggest things. I feel that if I could just get a good 8-10 hours of sleep it would help tremendiously, and laying awake in bed tossing and turning and waking up every 3 hours is just more time that I'm in pain.

And yea I wish I could find a doctor that had a SA problem, someone who knew where I was coming from and knew what it was like, instead of 90% of these doctors look at you like you're the scum of the earth and hardly give you any sort of help aside from go to rehab.

[stonewall]

Thanks Krissy.

Today is really the first day I've thought about breaking down and going, christ if I just took a pill this would stop. But then I think, stop for how long. 4 hours tops, until it wears off and I want another? In terms of W/Ds today has been somewhat better, but for some reason today I've just found it hard to get my mind off, just take the pill, it'll go away.

And yes, I've found that one day at a time is sometimes too much. It seems like the clock is moving backwards, it feels like 3 hours should of went by and its been 5 or 10 minutes. That isn't helping either. And I'm unable to get outside or go for a drive or anywhere as the snow storm that hit, and the fact that its about 15 degrees outside. And the last thing I want to do is get sick on top of withdrawls.

As for my plan, it's just to get out of the house and into college. I know there are pills in this house, and it just makes **** so much worse. Imagine being an alchohlic, or addicted to opiates, whatever. And having that bottle of liquor sitting right in front of you, or that pill bottle sitting in the other room, and you know its there, you know you can get to it. It's horrid. And due to my anxiety and agoraphobia, its like I'm looking forward to getting out of the house and moving on with life, but on the other side I'm terrified. Which I think is kinda what led to my relapse in some parts.

Right now I'm just looking at trying to get somewhat better so that I'll be able to attend classes and not be crawling on my hands and knees to the bathroom to draw a hot bath, or sitting on a toilet with diahrea all day, and when I'm not doing those 2 things, I'm under a electric blanket, heating pads, and iceyhot, intil I break out in cold sweats and chills and have to get the heat off me, then I freeze. Its just a horrid cycle, and I'm just comparing this to detox the first time around and I'm just thinking to myself, when the hell is this going to let up?

[Stereosteveo]

I know exactly what you mean by this:

"When I was late 16 turning 17 I was very avid into working out. I was in the gym litterally 7 days a week. It did help my pain, and I got those natural "runners high", I felt wonderful. On the weekends I was at a friend's who was professionally sponsored and was a participant in the World's strongest man Comp, and during the week I was at the gym with my good friend and weightlifting partner for at least 3 hours, or more. I never felt better in my life. I would love to be able to get back into that, but with the pain in my legs and back, I doubt I'd be able to do any kind of weight-training, or even resistance training without throwing my back out and laying myself up in serve pain for days on end."

I'm almost 40. At 36, a year after I got sober, I did the Body-for-Life deal for 1.5yrs.
Weights: Mon/Wed/Fri
Cardio: Tues/Thurs/Sat
Sunday: Rest
Ate 6 small meals/day (1/2 protien:1/2 carbs) (no fat/sugar/salt)
Drank Gallon of water/day
Never felt better in my life. Went from 260 to 210 in 3 months. Tons of energy. Slept 6 hrs./day max, fully rested.

Well I've done it off/on since then. One thing I really try to focus on these days is moderation and balance in all areas of my life. I'm the guy who goes all out then gives up because I overdo it. Then I hesitate on getting started again because my perfectionist ego makes it all into such a big overwhelming deal. This can be with anything in life....

So these days I try not to focus too much on one thing. I try to do a variety of small things each day so I don't get burned out. Such as here's my ideal "1-day at a time"

Wake Up
Drink a Glass of Water
Short Jog
Shower/Shave
Watch News & Weather
Read the Daily Motivator
Calendar/Priority List
Protien Shake
Pray
Deep Breathing / Meditation
Go to a Meeting
Meet with Sponsor / Sponsee
Nap
Lift Weights 45 mins max.
Call Someone
Walk Dogs @ Park
Watch a Movie
Do some Writing
Read @ Beadtime

My list is much longer actually, very detailed. If I don't write all this stuff down I forget, loose focus, and drift along lost for the most part. So yeah, like Krissy said, for me it's more like 1hr at a time. it keeps the drudgery to a minimum.

In early sobriety the gratitude list helped me a lot. Today the "ideal day" list gives me something to look foreword to and focus on. Just keeping it simple. Maybe you could do something similar and it would give you something to center yourself on? Just starting slow and humble, like doing 1 push-up. It's +1 from yesterday right? lol That's the way I have to look at it.

The last 3 years of my drinking/drugging career I hardly left the house. When I started going to the noon meeting everyday it gave me structure. Before I knew it I started doing things before and after the meeting. I haven't quit going.

Lastly if there's anything I've learned in recovery. It's all in the "doing" that makes us feel better. The second I start moving, all the anxiety, fear, and depression, that comes from sittting there "thinking" goes away. My trick is to stay busy, but like in slow motion.

[yankees24]

Hang in there stone wall, sounds like you are going through hell (as am I) but you are working through it. I have the same exact thoughts, If i just go use some heroin i will be able to function again, but you are correct, for what, a few hours? Just no that things will get better and you are not alone. I myself am scared to get clean and just getting there is hard enough. Best of luck, stay in touch.