Go Back  SoberRecovery : Alcoholism Drug Addiction Help and Information > New to Addiction and Recovery? > Newcomers to Recovery
Reload this Page >

Can anyone help me with a schedule for tapering off of oxycontin?



Notices

Can anyone help me with a schedule for tapering off of oxycontin?

Old 07-04-2013, 05:01 PM
  # 1 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
Question Can anyone help me with a schedule for tapering off of oxycontin?

Hello everyone,

I am brand new to the site and am hoping someone will be able to help me set up a schedule to taper off of Oxycontin. Where to begin? Well I am a tall and thin male who in my earlier years was quite active in athletics. I used to eat, sleep, breath and basically live basketball in high school. That is when I first remember experiencing any sort of significant back pain. I would run till I was ready to drop, sweat like nobody's business and then if any cool air hit my back, my lumbar paraspinal muscles would go into spasm.

Back then I was used to being in pain everyday from training and thought nothing of it. As the years went by, I changed to triathlon and the pain continued off and on. When I finished university I finished with sports pretty much altogether but the pain continued off and on. Severe cases had me unable to put on socks and shoes and it was here where I reached out for medical "help." My doctor gave me Vicoden, muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories. I would have flair-ups once or twice a year, which increased to two or three times and then once every couple of months.

This went on for years. I thought it was just normal. Then about a year and a half ago (?) the pain just never went away. I moved up from Vicoden to Oxycontin 20 mg, 40 and then even 80 mg tablets with that doctor. Before I knew what was even happening, I was taking 240 mgs per day and had tried every treatment under the sun. Chiropractic, Physiotherapy, massage therapy, accupuncture, acupressure, traction, as well as combinations and bits and pieces of each to try to find something that worked for me.

In the interest of keeping this short lets just say I put in a great deal of time and spent a small fortune at this, all the while becoming severely physically and psychologically addicted to my pain medications. I tried to stop taking them and got gravely ill. Three days into cold turkey I was taken into an emergency room and immediately hooked up to an IV. I had cold sweats, a bad fever I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten or hydrated. I had diarrhea and a migraine that had tears streaming down my cheeks at the slightest sound or bright light.

The doctor asked me what dosage I had been taking and for how long and he said he didn't want to mess around or take any chances, he put me on a morphine drip and said people who just suddenly stop after being on such high doses for so long have been known to have seizures. He recommended I taper down and get off of Oxy ASAP.

At that point I thought I only had a herniated disk with nerve root indentation, bulging of another disk and compressed disks. Later I was to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia and here I am today still on the same dosage and wanting desperately to get this horrible monkey off of my back. It has ruined my life. My family, my career, jobs, friends, my health all that is near and dear to me has fallen to the wayside because of this horrid drug (or my lack of compatibility with it/control over it.)

Whichever way you choose to look at it, I need to get off of the stuff and now!!! I will need a lot of support and a schedule to accomplish my goal. I am an expatriate living abroad with not much for a support group around me. If you have made it this far, thanks for sticking it out with me. Talk soon I hope.

One
Dubwon is offline  
Old 07-04-2013, 05:06 PM
  # 2 (permalink)  
~sb
 
sugarbear1's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: MD
Posts: 15,951
Welcome to SR!

We can't give medical advice, so maybe see a doctor or specialist for a proper taper?

Glad you are here!
sugarbear1 is offline  
Old 07-04-2013, 05:09 PM
  # 3 (permalink)  
Administrator
 
Anna's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Dancing in the Light
Posts: 61,325
We are definitely here to support you, but you need to talk to a dr about tapering off the drug. I'm glad you posted and that you want to change your life.
Anna is offline  
Old 07-04-2013, 05:10 PM
  # 4 (permalink)  
Administrator
 
Dee74's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,040
Hi Dubwon - as others have said we can't give medical advice here.
things like that really need an individual approach and a Dr's input, I think.

as for support tho? Tons of it here - welcome !

D
Dee74 is offline  
Old 07-05-2013, 08:35 PM
  # 5 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
Ok, thanks you guys. Sorry, I didn't know. I should have read more before asking. Kind regards.
Dubwon is offline  
Old 07-05-2013, 08:58 PM
  # 6 (permalink)  
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 3,777
Hello. Welcome to SR. I hope that you stick with us as you get off those meds. Seeing the doctor is the best option. A professional can taper you off effectively. I am sorry to hear of your situation, and we do understand. Read and post around the site. Once again, welcome to SR!
Mizzuno is offline  
Old 07-05-2013, 09:09 PM
  # 7 (permalink)  
Night owl
 
Lyoness's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Orion spur of the Milky Way galaxy
Posts: 2,050
Hi One and welcome! I can really relate to your story because I have lifelong pain issues, Fibromyalgia, migraines, etc. And I too wound up with a huge oxy addiction taking about double the amount you mentioned, snorting and injecting it. So I know where you are coming from.

Like the others have said, we can't give medical advice and seeing a doctor or an addiction specialist would be your best bet for tapering. I chose to use suboxone to help me get off of the opiates and that might be something you want to consider.

I chose to go with the suboxone for several reasons. First, every time I tried to use less I wound up using more. Also, like you, I could not do cold turkey. And I believe that because I was using it for so long and at the end at such high doses, that a long slow taper with the suboxone would be the safest and gentlest on my body. Also, it would give me time to work on my recovery in other ways including counseling, being here on SR, reading, journaling, etc.

Some people also find that with long term opiate use they develop a condition called hyperalgesia. You can look up more about it but it is basically a syndrome where the opiates begin to cause us more pain rather than relieve it.

You've definitely come to the right place for information, support and wisdom. You might want to also post in the Substance Abuse section to find others who understand about opiate addiction specifically.

Take care.
Lyoness is offline  
Old 07-05-2013, 10:15 PM
  # 8 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
Thank you very much Lyoness! It's really helpful to know others have gone through the same / similar experiences. I listed my dosage but I failed to mention that I almost never stick to the amount that my doctor prescribes. I am past the full blown addiction phase and am trying to hold it together long enough to get into some sort of recovery program, whilst everything around me is systematically falling apart one thing after the other.

As I mentioned in my post, I am an expat living overseas at the moment and over here I have not been able to find any support groups / meetings to attend, let alone any in English. I did not mention that I have been through recovery before. In my last year of high school I had a very cliche crisis. I blew my knee out after just attending a camp filled with NCAA coaches who were scouting players for their division 2 and 3 schools. For a small town Canadian kid, that was pretty good. But on with the cliche, I mean, story.

Same old song, kid with stars in his eyes to play professional sports, has potential and just as things are about to turn the corner for him, an injury sidelines him and goodbye future, goodbye identity, and goodbye my hopes and dreams. My entire existence revolved around basketball.

Enter painkillers, subsequent angst and new found taste for altering my state of consciousness and enter a teenage kid onto the Toronto rave scene in the mid 90's. Designer drugs and DJ'ing and happy happy happy; until one day nine months down the road, not so happy.

I won't elaborate, I will leave it at that. I spent 3 years working my ass of climbing out of the hole I dug, but I made it out. I worked for the family business, went back to school, went to university, trained for and competed in Olympic distance triathlons, I even kept DJ'ing all the while staying sober. I stayed sober for 3 years and then just lost track of my sobriety. I started drinking again, nothing too crazy, but suffice to say I had months where I drank every day for about a week or so and I had months where I didn't drink at all.

Eventually it lead me here. I should point out, if it isn't painfully obvious, that I do not frequent chat rooms or blogs or anything like that. If I am going off too much on tangents, just talking about myself, plz let me know. I am not familiar with chat room etiquette or more specifically, how things work on this site.

I thought if I explained my experiences it would be helpful for people to get to know me. I gather that we can not debate ways of staying sober? Something like that, but other than that, I don't really know what that deal is. Please let me know if I am doing something(s) wrong.

Wow, I really did not intend to go off on this tangent. I was responding to Lyoness. Right, with regard to hyperalgesia, I am aware of it and I think that I am hyperalgesiac. But with the other thing, the other medication, I am not familiar with it. I will look it up, thank you. I know that with oxycontin, the temptation to abuse it, namely to crush it and ingest it all at once via the blood brain barrier, it is too much for me. I can't resist taking it all at once.

I have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, if you guys are in North America, that's your Monday, and I will ask about the other medications then. How about patches? They have trans-dermal patches here in Korea just like for niccotine.

Anyways, sorry for the novel, I was just going to write a quick reply and then realized that I forgot to mention I am not new to recovery. That was the shortest explanation I could write.

I hope all is well with you and everyone else as well. Thanks again for sharing, it really helps knowing that I am not alone.
Dubwon is offline  
Old 07-05-2013, 10:35 PM
  # 9 (permalink)  
Night owl
 
Lyoness's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Orion spur of the Milky Way galaxy
Posts: 2,050
Hey One, no apologies necessary! That's what we are all here for! And that's what makes this place such a great site. As far as debating recovery methods, it's okay to discuss different types the idea is just not to get into putting down anyone's recovery method or say only one way is the way or one is better than another, etc. I don't think you need to worry about it.

I can relate about prior struggles with addiction. I was what would now be called a binge drinker in my late teens and early twenties (80s) and then developed a marijuana addiction in my twenties. I got through both but thought the substances were the problem, not me, you know? So, once the substance were gone, no problem. Didn't even occur to me *I* was the problem or that I was an addict. Even though my adoptive father was an alcoholic that totally affected my life.

I don't have your experiences with being an athlete but I can definitely relate with losing your sense of self, of life's purpose, of not knowing what to do. My life in no way turned out how I had fantasized but I have gianed a lot, too. At 49 I'm at a crossroads of where do I go from here? I did finally figure out that being in a constant drugged out haze wasn't going to bring me happiness. Though, like any addict, I still have a big part of me that thinks blanking out with oxy will make things better. Sigh....

Suboxone is a maintenance medication, like methadone, though it acts differently in the body. If you look it up online you can find a lot of information and there's also a suboxone subforum in the substance abuse section. I don't know if it's available in South Korea but I think it is becoming more world wide.

I know there are a lot of opinions on maintenance meds but for myself it has been a lifesaver. I honestly do not think I would have even one day of clean time without it. So you might want to check it or methadone out. I know methadone can help a lot with pain but of course it has its own issues too.

The main thing I can say about using maintenance meds, from my own experience so far and reading other's stories, it is good to go in with the intent of not staying on it long term. Knowing it is to help taper can help you not get stuck on it. The other thing is to use it as one tool in recovery not the only tool.

Well, speaking of going on and on!
Lyoness is offline  
Old 07-05-2013, 11:40 PM
  # 10 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
Wow, OK cool. I remember hearing people talk about "marijuana maintenance" back in, when was it...I went into treatment in December '97. There was a huge divide amongst our community over it. Some people were using it and still coming to meetings saying they were clean, yadda yadda yadda, I was in the actual treatment center at the time so I wasn't told any of the specifics.

I think the most important thing is that you are on track and that your support system is in place. If the suboxone is working for you and it is like you said just one of a set of tools or systems or medications you have in place to help you, than that sounds great.

I am grateful for you and for this site today! My whole world came crashing down on me yesterday, and it's not like back home where at least SOME people understand addiction, here people haven't got the slightest clue what I am going through and everyone keeps dumping more and more negativity on me. Yesterday I was locked out of my own home, with no money and no subway card, no food, nothing! Since last week when a judgmental nurse took it upon herself to make sure I did not get my meds, I got withdrawal sickness, and on and on and on and on. For six days in a row people dumped on me, most of it was my fault and a result of me shucking my responsibilities lately, but the amount of things that went wrong in a row and the way that I was treated had me even contemplating suicide it got so bad.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm not going to kill myself, but it has been a really difficult week and ah yes, this site, and you have really helped me to vent a lot of the negative energy that was shoved onto my plate. I feel scattered, its hard to explain everything. There is SO MUCH to explain and in the interests of saving time and saving your eyes from reading too much, I am editing a lot out, but the result it a bit of a scattered explanation and feeling.

I know what you mean about how sometimes we feel like being in a daze would be just the ticket, actually I am reading a very interesting book, that touches on addiction and that exact notion. It's called: "Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking." It's brilliant! I love it! If you want I can send you a PDF file, but it was transcribed by someone in Malaysia and there are tonnes of typos. I am editing it as I read it, and am about half way through it. When I finish reading it, I am going to open it in Photoshop and fix all of the typos, like hundreds then fire the file out to all of my friends. I can send you anytime if you want.

Anyways, I can see now how just having conversations with people on here can keep one focused on staying clean and sober and keeping out of trouble. I think I'm still pretty scattered and losing track of things I was going to write about, but for the most part, I think I am conveying most of what I set out to convey.

Ciao for now. Hope you are well.
Dubwon is offline  
Old 07-05-2013, 11:55 PM
  # 11 (permalink)  
Night owl
 
Lyoness's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Orion spur of the Milky Way galaxy
Posts: 2,050
Hey, that's rough and I'm glad you're able to write about it. It's okay to write more on here or feel free to PM me, too.

There's still so much stigma around addiction. I firmly believe it is a disease but so many people don't, here in the U.S. or anywhere in the world. I wish I could say I can't believe you were denied medicine but unfortunately I can. It is amazing though since you went through horrid withdrawals and then they just put you right back into it.

I have a friend, non-addict and nonjudgmental that always reminds me that going cold turkey into withdrawals is NOT good for me. I know lots of people feel it's best and I think we each have to do what is best for us. But I know how hard withdrawals have been on my body and my psyche and it's just barbaric to force someone into it. I hope you are okay now.

My suboxone doctor said withdrawals are a lot like PTSD on the body and as I have both it really, really helped me to understand a lot when he told me that. I think it's going to take a long time for the rest of the world to catch up with that kind of thinking though. I think I am beginning to ramble, I guess I just feel angry on your behalf. Yes we are addicts but we are still human beings deserving of compassion and safe medical care.

I don't know what resources are available in South Korea but I'm glad you find SR and hope you will keep reaching out for support. I haven't read Allen Carr's stuff but have come across it. If you look in the stickies here in the Newcomer's section there are a ton of resources and links. Check them out, I know there are international resources too. Hang in there. You can and will make it!
Lyoness is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 05:34 AM
  # 12 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
Woah, you are super duper cool! I bet u haven't heard that term in a very long time. I teach kindergarten, well I used to, and I have a lot of silly expressions that slip out from time to time. In the process of reading your response I remembered what I wanted to respond to you about a few messages back, namely that when you took away your alcohol and marijuana abuse back in the 80's was it (?) that you still didn't address the problem. We take away the substances that we abuse but we don't realize or know enough to fix the problem that lead us down that road in the first place. I think that was the jyst of it no?

I tried to address my problems that lead me to substance abuse back in the 90's, but I think in the treatment centre and the subsequent safe and recovery houses, I did not quite get it nor did I solve the problem.

There are things that happened that I want to write about, but I am going to save it for tomorrow and focus on the present and what happened over the course of the past six days, because it is relevant to how I am feeling, it is most of the reason I feel the way I do right now and it will also provide me with a means to reply to your thoughtful response.

I am super glad to have someone in my corner. I was at the hospital 2 days earlier than I was supposed to be, in order to get my prescription filled and meet with my doctor, only he was out of the country at a medical conference in Germany. The head nurse for some reason took it upon herself to try to teach me a lesson, namely that opioids are dangerously addictive and that I was at the point where I was addicted and I needed to decrease my dose.

She called a doctor to come in to see me and told him that I was an addict and not to give me my prescription. I was listening to her talking on the phone to him in Korean. When she hung up the phone I tried to keep my cool because if one displays "drug seeking behavior" one will be cut off. So I calmly explained to her that I knew it looked bad on paper, but that every morning I wake up in pain and I work very hard to maintain my core strength and flexibility by doing physiotherapy and traction at home almost every night.

I went on to explain that just as my doctor, a neuro surgeon, told me to do, I was keeping a very detailed diary about my pain, every day, my physio, traction, sleep, how much medication I take etc. I work my butt off to maintain it and the reason I am on such a high dose, (240 mg a day is high even for terminal cancer patients here in Korea...they have serious issues with opiates due to an old emperor who had a son who over dosed on opium or heroin or something and he banished it from the kingdom or something to that effect) is that my doctor can look at any day and what I did to cause a certain injury or what combination of circumstances lead to a sharp increase in pain and immediately advise me on how to change my routine.

I have actually made great strides because of this diary, but that is another story, I didn't have it with me and I think even if I did, she was just one of those old school Korean ladies who does not like foreigners and she thought I was abusing the system and she knew that she could mess with me while my doctor was away. So the other doctor came in. He looked at my file, asked me what I wanted and I said, I just want my prescription filled for one week so I can go to the beach in Busan (South Korea's second largest city, down on the southern tip of the peninsula) and he said, OK.

Then I walked out and waited for the nurses to give me my medication forms, its different here...doctor doesn't write prescription and hand it to you, also all opiates are in a National Government Computer Database and are monitored by "police." So if a patient gets meds from a doctor in one city they can't get in another city or hospital, and they can't get more meds until their prescription runs out on the data base. Doctors can re-fill, but they don't like to do it. My doctor understands and does it for me all of the time because I can show him when, where and how I got the pain, and he can see how far I have come with my traction, and the yoga / meditation he suggested (he is a super cool Buddhist guy) and physio, but the nurse doesn't see any of that. She just sees a "bad foreigner" who is "addicted" who needs to be reigned in.

So she went in and told the doctor not to give me the script and I had to sit at home sick for 2 days, for absolutely NO REASON AT ALL!!!!! Unfortunately that is when "the feces hit the rotary oscillators" as they say (the **** hit the fan hahaha) and I had a string of bad luck, mostly my fault but some of it was just people kicking me while I was down. I mean, really badly hurtfully kicking me while I was down. I swear it was like someone wanted to see me hit bottom and off myself or something.

Well, as you can see from above and my little haha, I am feeling better. It certainly helps to get it out in the open. It took me a while to figure out what PM meant, but I got it now...I am a little slow on the uptake when it comes to the blogosphere and message boards / forums / basically anything technology related at all...hahahaha....it's sad.

Thanks for the suggestions, I am a bit swamped trying to find work to climb out of a debt crisis at the moment so I don't have a ton of time, not really a crisis, but it has been made into a crisis. Why all of these new crises arose suddenly after the nurse messed with my well being is beyond me, but I will have a look around in the stickies as soon as I can get a chance...I can't see them though...I guess I have to actually look in the newcomers section like you said. Well thanks again, I feel much better. Talk with you soon on a PM. Ciao for now Lyoness, always a pleasure. I would like to know more about maintenance, maybe we can chat about that next time. My eyes are getting tired. I had better go. Bye bye.
Dubwon is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 05:39 AM
  # 13 (permalink)  
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Canada. About as far south as you can get
Posts: 4,768
Originally Posted by Dubwon View Post
Wow, OK cool. I remember hearing people talk about "marijuana maintenance" back in, when was it...I went into treatment in December '97.
What program did you attend in '97? My recovery began in Brentwood (Windsor, On) in '89. Have you attended NA ?

Sounds like you are finding it hard, over the years, to surrender.


All the best.

Bob R
2granddaughters is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 06:21 AM
  # 14 (permalink)  
Member
 
wpainterw's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 3,550
Dubwon: When I first saw the title to your thread, "Can anyone help me with a schedule..." I thought that the "easy" answer to that was "Sure, your doctor can". This is particularly so since we're not allowed to give medical advice on this website. But then I realized that, according to your account, it has been the doctors, prescribing increasing doses of all kinds of pain killers, who seem to have nourished your addiction. I hope that others, more knowledgeable than I, can help you on this website. I also hope that you can find a responsible doctor, familiar with addiction, but also skilled in pain relief and spinal ailments, who can help you out of this situation. Good luck.

W.
wpainterw is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 10:34 AM
  # 15 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
I attended Crossroads in Kelowna B.C. I think it was '97, I remember being in over Christmas. That was my fault though, my family had initially put me in earlier in the fall and I came to the conclusion that I didn't need help, more like that wasn't the place for me. I was coming from a new world of sorts, I had become a party kid, going to "raves" and that was a world unto itself. At the time I was living in Caimbridge Ontario and going into Toronto with my friends who were attending the universities in the area. I would stay up for days, wore crazy clothes, listened to electronic dance music, was all about peace and love and when I went back home to where my family lived to go into treatment, I got lumped into a small town center with a bunch of 40 something drunks and coke heads who used to go to bars to "pick up chicks" and get into fights. It was totally not a vibe I fit into.

But my poor family had to deal with me, talking a mile a minute and watching me fumble around due to my neurons not firing properly from excessive substance abuse and sleep deprivation. Luckily the next round, December, had some people from Vancouver who's stories I could better relate to and I felt more comfortable talking and sharing with, unfortunately that put me in treatment through Christmas and New Years Eve.

In answer to your query, yes, I have attended NA. I worked pretty hard at going to meetings every day because it was absolutely imperative for me to do so. Upon coming out of treatment I relapsed a few times while in a "safe house" waiting for a slot to open up in a "recovery house" (?) I can't remember what they are called but before I got into my first one, I relapsed a few times and I was so scared. I realized though that if I went to meetings every day, I didn't relapse.

I worked the steps, but I never completed them, not truly anyways. When you said: Sounds like you are finding it hard, over the years, to surrender

it really hit home for me. I don't think I have ever really finished the work I started back in '97. I did really well for a lot of years and then I started to slide and it has been a madd roller coaster for the past...six or seven years. Man I could really use a meeting right now, or just a group. I'm on a very thin wire right now. I'm just barely holding it together and tomorrow night I am expected to have all of my plans together for how I am going to fix all of my problems at home, someone at home has no idea about recovery and what the addict needs to do when trying to get sober.

I was told that it is not a good time for me to get off of my meds, I need to get the bills paid, I need to go back to work, I need to move out and get my own place...all of this stress which is just life, I get it, but I'm breaking down and I tried to communicate this, I even said she was pushing me toward suicide and it just falls on def ears. She knows about oxycontin and withdrawal sickness and she knows about my spine problems and fibromyalgia. She is so stressed about our 5 grand debt, that needs to be paid back in January that she is freaking out. Just yesterday she cut up my cards, changed the locks and I was out on the street in this condition, in a foreign country with no food, no money, no way to get around or contact anyone. I am living with the least compassionate person in the world and the thing is, she just doesn't care.

So I not only have the substance issues, but my home is not even a stable environment. I just don't know what to do anymore. Things have to get better, then again, after the nurse messed my life up last Tuesday I said the same thing. So like I was saying before I went on this rant, I REALLY could use a meeting right now. This site is the new meetings for me now I guess huh?

Wpainterw, I have a whole story to write about my experience with Doctors here in Korea and how I have ended up on such a high dosage when I actually went in to the last doctor's office to get on a taper down schedule. I will explain later but I ended up going home on a higher dose and with more problems than when I had walked in. It has been a madd crazy adventure my life here in Korea. To start it was a fairy tale beautiful, amazing, wonderful, and fun place where I made a lot of money teaching kindergarten and absolutely loving life. Now I feel like hell would be club med compared to where I am and what my life entails these days.

"What a difference a day makes," what a difference a few hours make. I'm gonna watch some comedy or something...suddenly, outlook feels pretty bleak.
Dubwon is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 10:44 AM
  # 16 (permalink)  
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 453
Your story is deeply moving. I hope and pray that you find the recovery and strength that you need. Wishing you only the best. Keep posting.

In the meantime I would try and go to one of these meetings, I am sure you may meet people who can Offer you advice and strength at this time.

AA in Korea: Meeting Start

also check out: [-] Narcotics Anonymous (NA) Group: The only English speaking NA meeting in Korea is from 5:00pm to 6:00pm on Saturdays at the USO. Directions are listed below. There are also Skype meetings on Tuesday and Thursday nights at 9:00 am Skype name: "NASouthKorea". NA Point of Contact is jftkorea******.com
SeekSobriety is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 10:47 AM
  # 17 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
Oh wow!!! Thank you so much!!!
Dubwon is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 11:18 AM
  # 18 (permalink)  
Member
 
BabyJane's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: San Diego
Posts: 611
Hi Dub,

Just wanted to welcome you to SR and chime in on what I have read this far : it sounds like you've been through a lot lately. I'm so sorry you're in this place. I've been there and it just sucks. There's no two ways about it. I was there myself about 8 months ago... My addiction started out with the Vicodin and Oxy and eventually led to Street Heroin. I had surgery, so I needed the pills for a very short time, but I didnt consider that with my past history of alcoholism I was at risk for developing an opiate addiction. I remember getting to that point where I couldn't get clean but I couldn't keep going the way I was... I tried to detox on my own at home a few times, which was hell. It never lasted. I couldn't seem to get past that first week because I was SO sick. Yea I have been right where you are.

Tapering isn't a bad idea, in my opinion. I should say, to be safe, that going to a doctor who specializes in addiction IS a great idea but given that you're living overseas I can understand how you might have challenges. I found this great website called "Howtoquitheroin.com" (yes, I know, Oxy is not heroin but opiates are opiates and its a great website for people hooked on any opiates wanting to get sober. The guy who runs the website was amazingly supportive. He has been clean for many years and he really does take the time to reply to e-mails and help with motivation. He has a "warm turkey" method, as he calls it, for people who don't want to do "cold turkey" - I ended up doing that and it helped me. I had no insurance so a doctor was not something I had regular access to although it would have been good! Just keeping it real. I also do AA / NA and ended up finding a great therapist and psychiatrist once I got back on my feet a bit and could afford it. All helpful. I exercise a lot too, which is awesome for those of us who need to get well, and even though I'm also no longer the athlete I once was, I still make it a point to do whatever I can. Even walks or short hikes.

You probably know most of this already. I don't want to drone on and on. Just wish I could do more. I HATE what these drugs do to good people!!! Why doctors are just writing scrips without greater considerations of the potential for these issues is beyond me. So many people are getting trapped in addiction and its because they were taking the advice they were given by professionals... Sad.

I just hope things get better for you. You CAN get your life back. You will. Just gear up mentally because as you know, there's no painless way to do this. Discomfort is enevitable. It is worth the fight though. I look back now and I'm so glad to be free of those chains. I'm not where I want to be in life, I have wreckage to clean up, but its getting better. I'm hoping you can be doing even BETTER than me in 8 months! Hang in there.
BabyJane is offline  
Old 07-06-2013, 06:26 PM
  # 19 (permalink)  
Night owl
 
Lyoness's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Orion spur of the Milky Way galaxy
Posts: 2,050
Originally Posted by Dubwon View Post
Woah, you are super duper cool! I bet u haven't heard that term in a very long time. I teach kindergarten, well I used to, and I have a lot of silly expressions that slip out from time to time. In the process of reading your response I remembered what I wanted to respond to you about a few messages back, namely that when you took away your alcohol and marijuana abuse back in the 80's was it (?) that you still didn't address the problem. We take away the substances that we abuse but we don't realize or know enough to fix the problem that lead us down that road in the first place. I think that was the jyst of it no?

I tried to address my problems that lead me to substance abuse back in the 90's, but I think in the treatment centre and the subsequent safe and recovery houses, I did not quite get it nor did I solve the problem.

There are things that happened that I want to write about, but I am going to save it for tomorrow and focus on the present and what happened over the course of the past six days, because it is relevant to how I am feeling, it is most of the reason I feel the way I do right now and it will also provide me with a means to reply to your thoughtful response.

I am super glad to have someone in my corner. I was at the hospital 2 days earlier than I was supposed to be, in order to get my prescription filled and meet with my doctor, only he was out of the country at a medical conference in Germany. The head nurse for some reason took it upon herself to try to teach me a lesson, namely that opioids are dangerously addictive and that I was at the point where I was addicted and I needed to decrease my dose.

She called a doctor to come in to see me and told him that I was an addict and not to give me my prescription. I was listening to her talking on the phone to him in Korean. When she hung up the phone I tried to keep my cool because if one displays "drug seeking behavior" one will be cut off. So I calmly explained to her that I knew it looked bad on paper, but that every morning I wake up in pain and I work very hard to maintain my core strength and flexibility by doing physiotherapy and traction at home almost every night.

I went on to explain that just as my doctor, a neuro surgeon, told me to do, I was keeping a very detailed diary about my pain, every day, my physio, traction, sleep, how much medication I take etc. I work my butt off to maintain it and the reason I am on such a high dose, (240 mg a day is high even for terminal cancer patients here in Korea...they have serious issues with opiates due to an old emperor who had a son who over dosed on opium or heroin or something and he banished it from the kingdom or something to that effect) is that my doctor can look at any day and what I did to cause a certain injury or what combination of circumstances lead to a sharp increase in pain and immediately advise me on how to change my routine.

I have actually made great strides because of this diary, but that is another story, I didn't have it with me and I think even if I did, she was just one of those old school Korean ladies who does not like foreigners and she thought I was abusing the system and she knew that she could mess with me while my doctor was away. So the other doctor came in. He looked at my file, asked me what I wanted and I said, I just want my prescription filled for one week so I can go to the beach in Busan (South Korea's second largest city, down on the southern tip of the peninsula) and he said, OK.

Then I walked out and waited for the nurses to give me my medication forms, its different here...doctor doesn't write prescription and hand it to you, also all opiates are in a National Government Computer Database and are monitored by "police." So if a patient gets meds from a doctor in one city they can't get in another city or hospital, and they can't get more meds until their prescription runs out on the data base. Doctors can re-fill, but they don't like to do it. My doctor understands and does it for me all of the time because I can show him when, where and how I got the pain, and he can see how far I have come with my traction, and the yoga / meditation he suggested (he is a super cool Buddhist guy) and physio, but the nurse doesn't see any of that. She just sees a "bad foreigner" who is "addicted" who needs to be reigned in.

So she went in and told the doctor not to give me the script and I had to sit at home sick for 2 days, for absolutely NO REASON AT ALL!!!!! Unfortunately that is when "the feces hit the rotary oscillators" as they say (the **** hit the fan hahaha) and I had a string of bad luck, mostly my fault but some of it was just people kicking me while I was down. I mean, really badly hurtfully kicking me while I was down. I swear it was like someone wanted to see me hit bottom and off myself or something.

Well, as you can see from above and my little haha, I am feeling better. It certainly helps to get it out in the open. It took me a while to figure out what PM meant, but I got it now...I am a little slow on the uptake when it comes to the blogosphere and message boards / forums / basically anything technology related at all...hahahaha....it's sad.

Thanks for the suggestions, I am a bit swamped trying to find work to climb out of a debt crisis at the moment so I don't have a ton of time, not really a crisis, but it has been made into a crisis. Why all of these new crises arose suddenly after the nurse messed with my well being is beyond me, but I will have a look around in the stickies as soon as I can get a chance...I can't see them though...I guess I have to actually look in the newcomers section like you said. Well thanks again, I feel much better. Talk with you soon on a PM. Ciao for now Lyoness, always a pleasure. I would like to know more about maintenance, maybe we can chat about that next time. My eyes are getting tired. I had better go. Bye bye.
You're right, I haven't been called super duper cool, well ever I think! Thanks for the compliment.

How areyou doing today? I'm really glad you decided to write more fully what was going on. Just talking, or writing, about stuff helps so much. Getting it outside of us where we can look at it a little better, and hopefully release at least some of the pain, is incredibly helpful.

I still sit here rather fuming at how you were treated but it's no different from so many people's experiences anywhere, really... It just sucks! My own practitioner dumped me for being an addict after I painfully came clean to her and asked her to still be my doctor and she assured me she would. And she did it in essentially a form letter after seeing me for six years. Socked me where it hurt! Although I did not have to go through the physical nightmare that you did.

I think that we in the States are heading close to that police state you are describing in Korea. My prescriptions show up on a state database for controlled substances and even at my suboxone doctor, his computer shows any rx I get anywhere, without my knowledge or consent. I know we have a huge opiate problem in this country, well the world, but I don't know if this is the way to go either. I still believe people deserve safe and appropriate pain treatment, addict or not. It's the safe and appropriate that is the issue though.

I can sort of understand how Korea came to its position, by reading your mini history. Reading about the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century is a real eye opener. England basically forced China into producing opium, so though I do NOT agree with repressive measures, I can begin to understand them in a historical context. The problem is when real human beings, like you, suffer because of them.

Though you're on a high dose of oxycontin it sounds like your pain doctor is really trying to do the right thing. He just needs to help you start lowering your dose instead of staying the same or increasing. I was using up to 500mgs of oxy a day, snorting or shooting it, obviously NOT with my doctor's knowledge! You definitely do not want to end up there. My doctor would give me three months rx at time so that was part of the problem. (Another part was me, uh, altering the rx's to suit my needs....that's how I got caught, eventually, trying to fill three months rx's in less than a month but that's another story for another time.)

It is so hard having chronic pain and addiction. It really leaves us in a rough place. I definitely had hyperalgesia though when I was using I denied it. How could my beloved oxy cause me more pain? I have migraines, too, and when I'd run out of oxy I always wound up in the ER with severe ones. The doctor there kept telling me it was because of the oxy, but I refused to believe that, too.

After starting the suboxone my fibromyalgia got way worse. So bad it had me contemplating suicide (again) because I just didn't want to go back to a life of constant, untreated pain. Now that I'm eight months into my taper I am finding the hyperalgesia is diminishing a lot. I still get flares but now they are getting a little shorter and I'm not having the disabling pain in between time. I'm thinking the same would be true for you, too. I also read that a lot of people find that once they are completely off the opiates, other types of pain meds and modalities start being a lot more effective.

It takes a long, and yes, painfilled, time for our bodies to start to know how to produce endorphins and treat pain from within again. And believe me, even a few months ago I wouldn't have written any of this. It is only through time and experience and believing people I trust that I am finding all of this to be true. It's NOT easy. It stinks, actually. But it really is beginning to look like there is life after opiates, even for those of us in constant/chronic pain.

Right now, though, you need help with so much more. It's great that SeekSobriety sent you those links. Sounds like NA has worked for you before. And just having some face to face support is lifesaving. I am hoping that maybe there you can find more options to help with your other issues, too. Are you still without a place? Are there hostels, YMCA's or other types of inexpensive housing available there? If it comes to the worst, are there homeless shelters? ('m afraid I"m pretty ignorant about Korea, sorry.)

I'm as non-tech as you, believe me! The stickies are on the main page above the threads when you go to the newcomer's section. And I didn't know what PM was either, the longer your here the more you'll learn all this stuff.

P.S. I love "the feces hit the rotary oscillators"! I love polite euphemisms for more expressive terms. Another favorite I read was about someone needing a "rectal craniotomy"--I'll let you figure that out. And for myself, I often suffer from cerebral flatulence! Just a little levity, hope it helps!
Lyoness is offline  
Old 07-07-2013, 09:27 AM
  # 20 (permalink)  
Member
Thread Starter
 
Dubwon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Seoul South Korea
Posts: 11
Thanks SO MUCH Baby Jane! Super helpful. I will check out the site and although I do know most of that stuff already, it really does help to read it again and again to permanently burn it into my brain. Please feel free to drone on and on as it were, haha. That goes for anyone else out there who wants to jump in to the discourse, does this count as a discourse? Hahaha...I guess its just a thread/discussion, but somehow I really find it helpful to read of others who have had or are going through similar issues. I guess I said it before and people probably say it all of the time, (am I the damn nubie? hahaha) it is just so soothing and relieving to know that I am not alone and that someone out there "gets it."

I have had a super busy day cleaning the house and getting my affairs in order. I seem to have been abandoned until tomorrow at 9:30 pm I will be meeting the person who locked me out of my house at a coffee shop outside of our house. Not at the house, outside of the house. I am a little apprehensive. Anyways, I just hopped on to check my message and reply to this comment. I will read and comment on the next one separately. Thanks again Baby Jane, I'm thinking that warm turkey is sounding pretty good.
Dubwon is offline  

Currently Active Users Viewing this Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are Off




All times are GMT -7. The time now is 04:02 AM.