Mama – thanks for asking.
Things have been improving as far as usage goes, but it isn’t a fun ride right now. Coming off the amphetamines was a lot worse than I was expecting. It spun me into a deep depression and also triggered a real feeling of ‘craziness’. I cut the amps down to 1 pill per day, which is an improvement from 6 to 10 pills. Part of the problem has been that I am a newbie at coming off the amps and the uncertainty isn’t helping.
I cut the booze down to about a 6 pack yesterday, which was a solid improvement. The booze was really contributing to the depression / psychosis I think, because I am feeling more ‘stable’ today. I cut the Xanax down to 2mg, which was also an improvement. The Xanax is the one thing that seems to help the most with the mental instability, which frightens me. I still feel like garbage, but it isn’t unbearable or anything.
I stopped the Wellbutrin this morning. It was screwing up my sleep I believe, and I think it was also throwing me into a pseudo nicotine withdrawal. Quitting smoking doesn’t even make the top ten priority list at this point. There will be no way to know for sure, and it’s not like I am a doctor. In fact, the thought of me being an MD reminds me of one of those Holiday Inn commercials except my line would be that I stayed in a Holiday Inn parking lot dumpster last night. That sums up my qualifications.
LostinHK – you are absolutely correct about the benzos and booze – if anything I should choose one and let the other one go. I wrote a note to the family the other night in case things didn’t work out. It wasn’t like I was doing it intentionally, but risk of overdose is one of those things that comes with the territory.
As far as next steps go I am waiting to get to a point of a semblance of mental stability before venturing out in public to a meeting. I have isolated myself at the moment out of concern for harming someone else around me. If I ran over somebody on the way to a meeting then I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
It is amazing how I did a 180 almost overnight. One thing that was bothering me since I quit the H in February was that I never went through a “grieving period”. I thought I had already been through it enough to be beyond that. Damn – it has nailed me over the past couple days. When I think back on my life there were very few times that I was truly ‘happy’. In the beginning with the opis was honestly the happiest time of my life. I feel ****** admitting that, but it is true. There were a few events in my life that compared (first time in love / sex, etc.), but those natural events were transient. The opis let me live life the way that I always dreamed it could be. It wasn’t like I went around drooling on myself all the time. I could go to work and kick ass. It allowed me to be the person I always wanted to be – happy, impervious to stress, and with an optimistic, can-do attitude no matter what life threw at me.
I thought that none of this mattered at this point in my life. It really comes down to whether I can find some life that has a semblance of meaning – one that is livable. The desire for that ‘bliss’ I once had would have to be reserved for hopes in an afterlife.
I first quit in February 2012 and more things got ****** up in my life then the 30 years prior to it. This go around was still be an downhill slide, but less steep than the last go around. The way I would sum things up was that my pre-20s sucked, 20s were awesome, and 30s have sucked so hard I don’t even have words for it. It just seems like I hit a peak and it is all downhill from here.
Sorry to be such a Debbie downer. I expected to need to eat a **** sandwich every once in a while, but if it is going to be a **** sandwich every ******* day for the rest of my life I am starting to not see the point of all this ****. Maybe they are just an acquired taste…