NormalLifeWante

The summer of 2007 my husband was a registered nurse in an ICU that had many gastric by-pass patients. An 800+ pd man tried to stand and coded. My husband was the only person in the room and without even thinking he tried to catch him. His back hurt but he didn't think too much about it as he was in excellent physical shape. Then it began......
July 2008 lower back surgery - rods and pins and pain management. It started with nerve ablations and loratab. He left his job at the ICU and became a hospice nurse, but the pain was still too much, and he went to telephone nursing for insurance companies (hated it) but then was fired from that job for attendance. He went to different neurosurgeons to see if there would be a second surgery but they said his back was "structurally fine" and he had nerve damage and what they referred to as "failed back syndrome". By the time he was fired in January 2011 he was being prescribed and taking PER DAY 180mg of oxycontin, 240mg of oxycodone, 60mg of methadone, 1100mg of soma, 4mg of ativan. Things got worse at home as I picked up a second job to pay for his cobra and I disassociated myself not only from him but our now 13yr old son. His behavior over the past couple years has not been typical (we have been married 17 yrs and the first 13 were wonderful) - he has taken the credit cards (now cut up) and purchased stereo equipment and drove down the interstate with our son in the car going over 100 miles an hour (got a $250 ticket and reckless driving). When I confronted him on the speed he was going with our kid in the car (I was at my second job when he did this) he said the most ridiculous things to justify it, specifically, "I drove over 100 all the time growing up in Montana". This is the same man who tried to keep our son in a booster seat for safety until he was 10! Every conversation we had I felt like I was talking to/arguing with a teenager, not a 40 yr old man and I knew I had to protect myself and my child from his reckless behavior.

At this point our communication was already completely broken down and I had started visualizing my life without him (how do you communicate with someone who is in an altered state 24/7). I said I would try couples therapy, but really I was going to learn how to give myself permission to leave and how to help my son transition through a divorce and having a father that had become a drug addict.

That was a little over 8 weeks ago. In the first counseling session my husband told me he was getting ready to quit taking all of his meds..... that he no longer knew where his pain was coming from (apparently taking such heavy doses of narcotics can open up new pain receptors in the brain). I really didn’t believe it could happen. He still had the pain that never did get under control. For a couple weeks we argued in therapy about inpatient detox vs him doing it himself. I continued to create a back-up plan for leaving, and he created a weaning plan and I agreed to therapy for 3 months before making a decision. I felt (and still do at times) like a horrible person for my anger towards him, as he did not intentionally set out to do this to himself.

The last week of February he began “his plan” to taper off the narcotics. I was skeptical but kept myself busy between 2 jobs, our son, and therapy. On Monday March 12, 2012 he texted me at work and said he was sick of tapering and he was quitting everything (except the benzo) cold turkey the next day. Tuesday morning he took the last of everything and by Wednesday he was feeling pretty crappy. I contacted someone and sent my son to stay with a friend for the weekend.

I am seeing a glimmer of the man I knew. He looks and feels horrible, and we have read many different things on how long the detox symptoms should last. I am cautiously optimistic. I went to an Ala-non meeting yesterday. Hubby didn’t sleep from Thursday until last night when he finally got 5 hours of sleep.

I know there have to be others out there in my situation. How long does the physical detox last from such a high quantity of meds?