Familyhelper151

You need to get back on methadone. That is so dangerous some of these doctors today are awful. It's suppose to be 2015, you know?

Lyoness

Thanks! I could use some good vibes! I find I'm getting more and more nervous as time wears on, it's my anxiety but I'm also getting close to the end of my methadone. I think lowering my dose is increasing the anxiety, too. I'm scared, too, because I've read several accounts of people getting depressed after going off methadone regularly, if I do end up c/t, I am really afraid of what will happen to me. So thank you for the positive thoughts, I really believe they help!

Lyoness

Thank you for saying that! It really helps to have someone just acknowledge how unethical, how truly awful my ex-doctor is. I am already sick from the c/t withdrawal of my anti-anxiety med, what will this do to me?

I'm going to call some more doctors today, see if I can find someone who will for sure help me.

You're so right about it's being 2015, too, it feels like we're going backward in time not forward. I often wish I lived in a progressive country that treats addicts and addiction seriously, respectfully and carefully. Not like we're criminals just because we exist and that we can be thrown in the sewer any time they feel like throwing us out!

Lyoness

Bad day today. I spent a long time on the phone trying to find a doctor or clinic to help me but no one will go near methadone and even the anti-anxiety medication is difficult to find. I have tried so many antidepressants, so many supplements and alternative meds, tried "breathing techniques" but nothing has helped my anxiety the way that that one medication has. I WISH something else worked, then I wouldn't be in this mess...

One clinic said they would switch me back to suboxone but since that caused a severe bout of depression I really don't want to have to go back on it. Plus it does not help my chronic pain issues at all. It was a roaring failure. The clinic said I could try subutex, that they've found people who have problems with the suboxone can sometimes do the subutex. But they won't be able to help me get onto to it for months. If at all.

I struck out so many times I was bawling by the time I was through. I feel like I am being punished. And tortured. Because what my ex-"doctor" is doing is sadistic. She knows how bad my panic is, she knows I am a literal torture survivor, and she is willing to purposely put me through all of this because she doesn't like me anymore. Well, obviously she HATES me. How can it be legal for a doctor to punish her patients?

I don't know what I am going to do! I've already lost ten pounds due to infection, anxiety, and the heatwave we've had. So I don't have any energy and I am supposed to be finding a new place to live and packing. There's nothing affordable here. I live in NOWHERE USA and I'm seeing studios, tiny 250 sq. ft. studios, renting for $1000 per month! That's way more than my monthly income! They must have solid gold toilets or be on seriously nasty mind-altering substances. This is one of the ten poorest counties in the nation and people are asking for rents like that.

I'm really losing it. I feel utterly hopeless. I don't know how I am supposed to survive all of this, I really don't.

Thanks for letting me have a place to say all this. It helps just to write it down.

Lyoness

I have a ray of hope! Someone at one of the big medical places felt sorry for me and went out of her way to help me! She got me an appt. with someone tomorrow and even though they normally have you go to their pain clinic for meds, it sounds like this NP will help me get my meds tomorrow since I am almost out. I can't believe it. I am so grateful. I am crossing my fingers, hoping, praying it really is true!

It would take such a HUGE stress off my life! Because I didn't know how I was going to be able to look for housing, let alone pack, if I was down and seriously sick with withdrawals. Now it looks like I will be able to have my correct meds and start to be more functional again. Hopefully stop the anxiety attacks too, because they are very disabling.

Thank you all for you kind thoughts and good vibes and hopes, please keep them coming so that this is really, really true! Thank you!

Twofish

Dear Lyoness,
Remember that we love and support you. We care! Good thoughts are coming your way, Lyoness, from your family here. Listen to Marcus, he has helped me with my daughters and and helped me understand this disease! (Yep, you have helped me too! )
Wishing you a good Dr visit girlfriend!
TF

Lyoness

Thank you Twofish! It really has helped knowing that people here were pulling for me. I have felt so utterly alone and desolate and the panic and anxiety just feed those feelings and vice versa. Knowing someone cares, it makes a difference.

Hope you are doing well Twofish, please PM when you can!

Lyoness

Well, to use a British phrase, the guy was a total tosser. Not only did he not want to rx any of my meds, but he wanted me to go cold turkey and saw nothing wrong with my losing another 10-20lbs--which I cannot afford to lose. My clothes are already bagging and falling off me. I also explained I will be homeless soon unless I could find housing and can't take 2-4 weeks to be sick, again he was totally fine with that. Why do I keep calling sadistic or at least utterly heartless people to me?

He totally refused to help. He wanted to start me on a "new" program which probably means taking Tylenol and learning how to live with and love my pain. Sorry, been there and done that. I've lived 51 years in pain and I'm not willing to be in uncontrolled pain anymore.

So I am still without a doctor, still panicked.

On the miracle side of things, I figured I would just try to fill that methadone prescription I had leftover from my doctor. I just wanted to get it out of the way, find out if she was going to block it or say it was fake and have me arrested or what (both possible options). Well, either she didn't get to the blockade fast enough or she does have enough ethics and morals to not make me severely/fatally ill. This one actually filled. So thankfully I have a one month breathing space. I will take less than prescribed and try to get down but at least I don't have to go cold turkey this month. I am utterly shocked!

I feel utterly battered at this point. Totally assaulted, annihilated, crazed. So upset by that guy today who was so heartless and arrogant. And then shocked in the other direction that the prescription actually went through. I am grateful, confused, upset, angry, everything. I just feel like I am being tortured and it's really doing a number on me.

I just have to hope and pray that I can find an ethical, moral, compassionate, caring practitioner(s) to help me out. I have been given a bit of breathing space, please send out good thoughts for me that I can find the person or persons who will truly help me.

I cannot stand living in this much turmoil! Thank you all for your kindness and support while I endure this chaos.

Dee74

I'm glad you have breathing space again lyoness . I hope you can work out something more permanent now

D

Lyoness

Thank you Dee. I really like your quote, always read it when I see it. I always wonder if it's true if you have a 1,000 cracks which is how I feel. Anyway, it gives me a moment of hope.

Dee74

I was pretty cracked and busted up myself lyoness.
If I can do this...

D

Lyoness

I hope I can Dee. I don't think I've ever had so many intense stressors piled up on me at once. Limited time to find a home or homelessness. Have to pack everything up though I've been feeling weak and so sick with anxiety. Trying to keep my mind from shattering. This is the worst anxiety I've ever had, it's relentless. I just spent the last three days, days I should have been DOING something, anything, doing absolutely nothing. Just cowering in terror. Today I am going to try to get stuff done. It's scary being like this and being all alone. I have two people to who reach out to help but it's on a very, very limited basis. Mostly it's me, alone with my crazy, and it's hard. So very hard. Living in a constant state of fear and terror is not conducive to get anything accomplished.

Please keep holding those good thoughts for me, hope for sanity and functionality and stability for me. Thank you.

Dee74

I certainly will.

I was very nearly homeless last year. I put every iron I had into every fire I could think of, and something - a really great place - came through at the 11th hour.

I'm really hoping things work out for you the same way they worked out for me Lyoness

Lyoness

Thank you Dee! I need every good, positive thought I can get! I truly hope it works out for me, too!

I find moving one of the most stressful and triggering and anxiety-provoking and terrifying things there is! So I get really paralyzed and that doesn't help much. I've also lived in the same place for 13 years and am totally out of practice in how to even figure out what I need to do. Plus the fear and mental chaos and it is just totally overwhelming.

I have been looking though there's not a lot of places available in my area, especially for a single person. Lots of two+ bedrooms but not lots of smaller. And the rents and the deposits are outrages. The deposits are $1000+ and I don't know who they think has that kind of money?

Plus I get nervous when talking to potential landlords and really fumble it up so that doesn't help. I just got a HUD voucher which is a US program to help people pay their rent but I don't know how to talk about it so I mess that up too.

I really need that 11th hour miracle you're talking about because it's about 10pm right now.....

Lyoness

On the really positive, miracle coming through side though--I found a new practitioner! I am SO grateful, I can't even believe it! And I really, really thank everyone here for sending out prayers and positive thoughts for me, I really believe they help and make a difference.

I just kept hoping and praying, "let her be the one" about this new Nurse Practitioner I saw yesterday. And she was/is! She was open, really listened to me, was willing to trust me, and is willing to prescribe the methadone and anti-anxiety med! She agreed with my addiction counselor and me that I need stability right now and messing up my meds is NOT going to achieve that.

She seems like she really wants to help and had suggestions and ideas for many things, including finding a mental health practitioner. So that was good, too.

It is just such a huge relief and I am sort of still in shock and so grateful. Now if I can get another miracle for my housing I will be able to stop living in constant anxiety.

I don't know whether to end this thread or keep posting, I might just keep posting for awhile. And I just want to say Thank You again to everyone for reaching out with support. It really, really helped!

Marcus

That is great to hear Lyoness. Like I said before you are a MUCH stronger person than you think. Just keep the faith. Things will work out as they should. Obsessing over stuff never helped me - just made me crazier.

Lyoness

Thanks Marcus! I wish I could stop obsessing, that is one of my biggest challenges. My mind just goes round and round and round and I cannot stop it. That's one of the reasons I got addicted, being high could shut off the noise for awhile. I still haven't found any solid ways to deal with it, I obsess, shut down, eventually am sometimes able to do something about the situation. Then if things work out I can stop obsessing and if they don't I still obsess.

I think I just don't have any faith that things will work out, my life experiences and my parents both taught me to "catastrophize" and that's what I do. I don't know if I'll ever be able to change this but I wish I could. I also don't have faith in myself and I think that is what really destroys me. I can't see that "strength" that you mention, all I see and feel are weakness.

How did you learn to stop doing this, Marcus? Or do you still struggle with it? I bet a lot of us addicts have this problem, the monkey mind that won't stop torturing us.

Lyoness

In so much pain today. It's hit me, deeply, that my doctor, my ex doctor, has treated me like everyone else in my life from the beginning. She threw me out like garbage, reaffirmed that I am a disposable human being, and that the only place I belong is in the sewage. She threw me in the sewer.

It wasn't just about her f*cking with my mind through the medication, it's about another loss to pile up on a lifetime where abandonment, where my disposability, where I am valued less than sewage has happened again. Where I realize that everything she told me in the past two years--including that she would never abandon me--is a lie. A big, fat, ugly LIE.

And the pain of that is whipping through me like a thousand blades cutting me to shreds again. This is the recurrent message of my life--that I am worthless, disposable, garbage, worse than garbage, sewage. And the pain is killing me. This is what keeps me from full recovery. This is what has never healed in over 30 years of trying. This is the wound that will never heal, can never heal. And why I wonder am I bothering with any of this?

There is no cure, no healing, nothing but this emptiness and living with knowing I am worthless and will always be thrown out by everyone everywhere I go. I pick the wrong people, and I am obviously the "wrong" people or I wouldn't keep being told I was garbage/sewage. I don't know how much more I can take honestly.

I still haven't found housing. Mostly because I don't know what to do. And I lose days to anxiety, pain, fear, disability. And time is closing in fast. My voucher is up in a week or less actually.

I think I've tried heroically to survive. But I am honestly tired, worn out. And having nothing to sustain me makes it harder each day.

I don't expect anyone to reply I just needed to write honestly how I felt and pretend like someone gives a damn.....

Gilmer

I am praying for you, Lyoness.

joygirl

Lyoness.... Good thoughts to you and prayers.
You are not worthless. I've just read this entire thread completely and it has been good for me. It's reminded me of the strength I have that I didn't think I had. I was in a very bad place mentally and physically, for a long time.
Here is how I built up belief in myself: I walked to my mailbox and back. Every day a little farther. I walked in light, dark, rain... a little bit more each day. That was 2 years ago. Now I can run a half marathon. Go figure.
The point is not that you need to go walk or run a marathon. The point is, do a little something to show yourself you are strong and capable. Because you are.
It helped me to face things, bigger things. But first I had to do something to prove to myself that I am strong, to build my confidence. Just a small accomplishment goes a long way.
Thinking of you!