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Recovery A new me.

Opiates unfortunately never stopped me from drinking too much. I couldn't wait to leave the shithole city I grew up in so the summer before college I got accepted to a summer program at The University of the South. Everybody thinks University of Tennessee is the big party school. They are rank amateurs next to those rich Sewanee kids. Plus, what else are you going to do on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere? So my pattern of binge drinking started pretty early on. Later on after a fall, I was prescribed opiates, then figured out how easy it was at the time to keep getting them in insane quantities in Florida at the time (I've already talked about that elsewhere on this thread), I just got sloppy drunk AND took pills. But once I got off the pills, I just never craved them in the same way that I continue to crave alcohol. And it's not really that I crave being drunk, it's just that was my go to for anxiety control for so long (over a decade), it takes a long time to unlearn that. Relative to the amount of time I've been drinking, the amount of time I took opiates were a drop in the bucket.

I go to trivia on Thursdays, but it's mostly people I met in AA so I don't have to worry about being tempted to drink. Oddly enough, when I'm going through alcohol detox, I've gone through it enough that I find the dry heaving oddly comforting. It's the profuse sweating, but freezing at the same time, that's the worst for me.
 
I've had a few friends go to the UoftheSouth. Beautiful up there, but jesus yeah they like to party.

Alcohol began as a social anxiety thing. When I was younger, I cared A LOT about what others thought of me and, as a result, I would freeze up in social situations and be completely silent out of fear that, if i said anything, it would sound stupid and no one would like me. I've stopped caring what others think, and it's decreased my "need" to drink in social situations.

I was a bartender for over a decade and pretty much all of my friends drink in some manor. Some are full on drunks but most are social, moderate drinkers at this point in their lives. Social situations always include alcohol in some way, shape or form. I don't know what a bridal shower, birthday party, shit even BABY SHOWER looks like without booze. Alcohol is def NOT my doc and I don't think that I am an alcoholic...I can go many days without a drink, or just have one and stop often, without really trying and I don't sit and think "man i wish i could have a drink right now" really ever, it just happens...but sometimes, I've had trouble stopping once I've started. I've gotten a lot better at that, mainly bc of hangovers and having to get up early for work everyday, but it still happens sometimes.
 
Florida's pill mills were crazy, btw. My only friend that is also an ope-head got hooked on the opioids after living in ft. lauderdale for a few years. Those are now gone and replaced by a million rehabs. right?
 
Sewanee is where I learned to mix "jump off juice:" 100 proof vodka, banana red mad dog 20/20 and ginger ale. Jump off a cliff, maybe? :\

Yeah, the pill mills were crazy. The one I went to was in Kissimmee and that doc may have ended up doing prison time. Basically you went in and paid cash for a bogus MRI, and walk out with 180 oxy 30s and there was no database back then so there was nothing holding anyone back from going to as many of these places as you possibly could in a day.

And yeah, the rehab scam has replaced the pill mill scam. These places are almost never as nice as their websites make them out to be. Probably the best one I went to was the one connected to the UF Teaching Hospital in Gainesville, which I would characterize as functional but uninspiring. Most of them are complete shitholes. If anyone needs any proof, read the rehab review sticky. Families get strong-armed into flying their loved one (usually to South Florida, but we have a few of 'em here too, cough, Recovery Village, cough cough) from out of state, then all lines of communication are cut and their loved one ends up in a complete hellhole until insurance cuts them off, at which point they're shit out of luck.
 
Thanks bro. Yeah it's nothing short of amazing that I only got the one DUI in about 25 years of drunk driving. And the only property damage I ever did were to my own vehicles. I don't want to be one of those guys (or gals, but mostly guys) from AA that have a gazillion DUIs but gamed the system by pleading out; instead of having 5 DUIs, they got one DUI 5 times, if you catch my drift.
 
LHL, you mentioned having to cool yourself down with a fan. Is that just a hangover thing? During the warmer months (which of course would be 70% of the year here) I have to fall asleep with a fan blowing on me because I feel overheated, then I wake up in the middle of the night freezing to death. I complained about this to the psychiatrist and he ordered a thyroid test which came back normal. The only reason I even bring it up is this is the exact opposite pattern of my ex-wife and the first of the last two girlfriends. They would go to bed cold and wake up overheated. Not a problem with the ex girlfriend but the overbearing ex wife used to get on my case for laying on top of the duvet because "I was getting it dirty and since she bought it in Paris she didn't want to wash it all that often" :\.
 
Honestly, the sweat thing is a methadone/opiate thing mainly, and a hangover thing second I suppose. I def get the sweats when dealing with a bad hangover anyways but methadone makes my sweating just worse in general. It's not absolutely horrible but I used to be a very non-sweaty person (used to always be cold...like most women, as you have noticed a) and now I guess I'm as sweaty as like a normal person now lol. It's actually kind of nice bc I used to always be freezing but methadone keeps my body temp much higher and i can actually sit at my desk without a giant sweater. All the other women I work with are always like "how are you not freezing?"...I usually say "i'm on medications that make me get hot easily" obvs not specifying 'done.

Ugh I'm irritated at the moment because I'm supposed to go camping for my bfs bday out in DNA (damn near alabama) lol aka west west GA from fri night-sun night but it's 2 1/2 hours from my clinic. There's a clinic 20 min away from where we're camping but their pharmacist is out of town so I can't guest dose. The next closest one is about an hour. Still better than 2 1/2 hours, but it's gonna be such a pain to get up and drive an hour there and hour back at like 7am while camping. But i gotta do what i gotta do. There's no way I'm spending a weekend in the woods with my bfs friends without my meds, no way, and i'm def not gonna just buy dope and say fuck it this weekend either. Sometimes doing the right thing is a huge pain in the fucking ass.
 
I'm so glad that A. I already knew and B. my mother lives in South FL (Ft. Meyers) and found out all about the corrupt rehab culture down there and didn't force me into that shit. I've seen it happen so many times. I feel like places like that set people up for failure a lot of times. Sure, being away from bad influences and in "paradise" (lol hardly) will help your recovery, but so many of those places are so poorly run that they don't set their patients up for success when they leave. A lot of times they get set up in "sober living" facilities, which I've heard some of even have fucking dope dealers living in them. A buddy of mine lives in Lake Worth and says the amount of people he's seen OD'd on the sidewalk/on his lawn has steadily been increasing the past 5 years bc of all the sober living facilities near him. One of the reasons I chose outpatient, and close to home, is because there's drugs everywhere...of course I'm gonna not take them if i'm somewhere where i can't find any..but I'll always end up finding some. I needed to learn to be able to say no despite the temptations still being there. Not that I go hang out in flop houses with people shooting up, but my dope dealers are all just a phone call away and they'd love to get my business again. But naw.
 
I know a handful of people from rehab in sober living communities that still continued to cop, so thinking that's some kind of panacea for removing temptation from the picture is joke. I know sober living communities have their place for people in transition who would otherwise be out on the street, but when a particular Central Florida rehab tried to get me to commit to going to a sober living house after discharge I flatly refused, mostly on the grounds that I own my own home and secondarily, my psychological and psychiatric problems go way beyond addiction and I am already under the regular care of a psychologist and psychiatrist outpatient. Then there is the issue that some of my prescribed meds are scheduled and that was a big question mark. That's not to say I might not have benefited in some way from the rules, structure and enforced meeting attendance (I certainly wouldn't like it), but like you said, if want to use, you're going to use. I'd bet that's the reason they sent me to a hospital to detox instead and then refused to admit me after the hospital was done with me.
 
Well, guest dosing this weekend for my camping trip will be a giant pain in the ass, but I got it worked out.

Basically, the clinic is 50 min from the campsite (but my home clinic is 2.5 hours, so still better than that!) and open 7-9. It's 50 min down a 55mph country road the whole way and I imagine I won't run into too many other cars at 6am, so I'll prob just put on some tunes..maybe even roll a joint or something (I'll be careful, country cops love that city money and a cop will surely be attracted to my car with it's intown county plates if I'm near one) and it'll be fine...driving relaxes me so it may even be enjoyable. I was still up in the air all night last night on whether i wanted to leave after work tonight to, guest dose and make that drive for my sat and sun dose or just stay in town tonight, get my two doses at my home clinic when they open and then head out to the campground after all that. Well, today I found out that my clinic is closed Mon for Columbus day so I would need a guest dose for sat sun and mon and my counselor wasn't sure if the guest dosing clinic would be open or not Monday and if they would honor an extra takehome or try and make me come back and dose there monday (not an option since I'll be back in atlanta by then). I decided that if they would let me get 3 days worth of meds at the guest clinic, I'd go tonight, but if they said no or that i'd have to come and dose there monday, I would just leave tomorrow am with my meds from my own clinic. Well, I called a lilttle while ago (to give both clinics time to get all the paperwork processed) to make sure I was good to go and would get that extra takehome and...they said I could! So, I'm going tonight.


Gah methadone can be such a pain sometimes! I'm contemplating sucking it up a couple of sundays and not dosing and saving my meds for emergencies/situations like this. I don't know if I'm ready for the temptation of having extra methadone around yet, though. I would save extra subs sometimes (and use instead of taking them) and never was tempted to go over my dosage with them (bc more subs doesnt = a better high), but I know methadone is different.
 
But anyways, I hit send on accident when I meant to hit "return".

I'm looking forward to camping this weekend. My bf went to college out near where we're camping and he still has a number of friends still living in the college town they went to school in that we don't see too often (2.5 hours from us, remember) , so I'm looking forward to that. These are friends of his that all love me and are incredibly supportive of my recovery journey and he and I rekindling our relationship and this will be the first time I've seen most of them since starting the recovery process (though they're sent me encouraging fb messages and posts) so Im looking forward to talking about that some with them. This camp out is an annual thing my bf does every year for his bday (and has for nearly a decade now) and is probably the thing he looks forward to the most all year long, so I enjoy seeing him so relaxed and happy when he's out there. He's a camping pro, and so am I, so we tend to kind of be the "mom and dad" of the campsite (the ones gathering up the wood, keeping fire going, cooking for everyone, making sure we have all the supplies we need, etc) and I kinda enjoy the entire thing. Hoping it's not hot as fuck all weekend, but it's GA so who knows.

We have a tradition that, each year, we have to buy a fairly expensive piece of gear to add to the camping supply and this year we got this ridiculous triple layer air mattress. Looking forward to getting some good sleep in the woods for a change! Whats everyone else up to this weekend??
 
I love to camp. Haven't been in over a year - entirely too long. I used to live in the area you're describing, right across the Ala. state line and it's beautiful over there.

I have to work for part of tomorrow, but my neighborhood is having a cleanup at 8:30, so if I'm up (and I probably will be - I was up at 6:45am despite having nothing on the agenda today), I will probably take part. I'm not a "church person," but I used to take the dog to the "Blessing of the Animals" at one of the Episcopal churches (Oct. 4 is St. Francis of Assisi's Feast Day - patron saint of animals) but I haven't been able to go the past few years so I will do that Sunday morning.

Hope everyone else has a sober and enjoyable weekend.
 
lol Methadone and anything with that much sugar is godly for sure. They say methadone ruins your teeth and makes you gain weight but I guarantee its the sugar cravings. I'm usually a straight dark roast black no sugar no nothing kinda gal but I've caught myself buying those litttle sugary starbucks drinks in the mornings now daily. Gotta stop that. I'm 5'8 and 135-140 (we women fluctuate depending on where we are in our cycle by a few lbs) so I don't really want to gain more (or lose more either, i like where i am!). I got way skinny on pills...ya see, I always felt like I "couldn't feel em" if I had anyhing in my stomach, so often I wouldn't eat like all day long, then dose after work at like 5pm, then eat dinner and that was it. I started putting more weight on when I began dope (bc, snorting dope, it didn't matter if I had food in my stomach or not so I could eat normally again) and even more since beginning recovery. Like i've said over and over, need to begin an exercise routine. Next week? I say that so much..but I'm really gonna try.

Blessing of the animals sounds amazing, A.
 
LHL, how was your weekend of camping? I took Sonny this morning to "The Blessing of the Animals" for the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. Sonny now has a St. Francis medal to go with his rabies tag. There was a big Rottweiler there who looked like Herschel.

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Well my fun Sat am trip went as well as good be and I got my extra takehome for today as well without any problems. This clinic is actually in the town where my bf lives (which is about 45 min south of me) so it's a good thing I got all set up down there now, because now I can guest dose there a lot easier in the future should I ever need to (which I should ...hopefully bf will be moving out on his own soon and ill be staying down there some in the future). The 6am wakeup and 45 min each way drive wasn't so bad either..as predicted, the roads were empty and it was, pretty much, a straight shot on those dark country roads going about 60mps, I filled my little chillum with some herbs and put on some tunes and enjoyed the time to myself. I was back before anyone had even woken up at the campsite. The rest of the weekend went well..we had a great time! Last year, I kept having to sneak off to snort lines of dope, so this year my bf made a point to point out how nice it was to have me not ducking off to get high on drugs the whole time. Speaking of loperamide, the year before last I was also an ope addict, but hadn't made it to heroin yet and was still using pills. Seeing as I couldn't afford enough pain pills for the whole weekend, I remember I had enough oxycontins to make it the first two days, but had to load up on lope the whole rest of the trip (that year i stayed the full 4 days). It wasn't miserable, but it wasn't fun. So glad I didn't have to do any of that this year.

That pic of Sonny is SO CUTE!!
 
Thanks guys. Obviously Sonny is much cuter than I am.

I was at Costco a few months ago and there was some geezer in the vitamin aisle complaining about how lope is now behind the pharmacy counter and no longer on shelves. What overkill. Speaking of which, I can no longer get a 90 day fill of gabapentin for dirt cheap because Kentucky, and I believe Ohio and West Virginia, too, scheduled it.

I've been so stressed out lately I haven't been watching the news because I couldn't take all the Brett Kavanaugh coverage so I had no idea there is a tropical storm brewing out in the Gulf, which will probably become a hurricane sometime today or tonight. It's not going to affect us since it's going to bypass peninsular Florida and clobber the Panhandle (we had our turn in the barrel last year with Irma), but we're already having squalls from it and it's supposed to pour rain for the next day and a half. No objection from me - it will keep the temperature down. I felt like I lost 10 lbs. in water weight during that outdoor church service yesterday.
 
No judgment here. If I wasn't under the threat of EtG piss testing, I just might be drinking, too. As it is, I'm probably relying on benzos more than I should be ATM, but they can't interfere with that because they're rx'd. You don't need me to tell you though, that it's going to be easier to stop sooner rather than later.

I was just thinking a few minutes ago about how there was a push about ten years ago for the City of St. Petersburg to demolish The Trop (Tropicana Field) and build a new outdoor stadium for The Rays. Some city commissioner made the idiotic argument that they wanted the ballpark to be like the old Candlestick "so home runs will go out over the bay." First of all, I don't know why everyone is so down on The Trop. I have no issues with it. Personally, I like watching games in air conditioned comfort. Second, if they played outside like The Marlins, all the games would have to be night games and you wouldn't see a home run go out over the bay anyway.

Political stuff is one of the reasons I did away with my Facebook page. I was sick of people getting pissed off at me over my political opinions, me getting pissed at other people, and friends who don't even know each other getting into it on my fucking page.

Anyway, hope things turn out better for you than anticipated.
 
Being a landlord seriously sucks and I only ever had to deal with one tenant in a garage apartment. One month he couldn't make rent so he gave me a 14' ocean kayak which wasn't a bad deal since that's one of my hobbies. I have a friend in Knoxville, Tennessee that's a slumlord on the side and someone put a brick through his windshield early one morning. Also the first girlfriend I had after my divorce was a slumlord and one day I had off from work, I had to ride around with her (so I wouldn't be free to drink and get high) while she chased down late rent checks. No thank you. When I rented, I always paid on time, and if I forgot, I just ate shit and paid the late fee. It amazes me what people can get away with.

I'm glad you have a great mother. Mine is an overbearing psycho. I didn't speak to her for a couple of years. I was newly divorced and newly in recovery and was trying to buy a house and I asked her if she'd be willing to help me by cosigning a mortgage. I made it clear to her I didn't need any $$$, just her signature, and she fucking said no.

That's always how it goes down with dealers. I was renting a garage apartment close to downtown Orlando out of rehab and there was a guy selling meth who hung out down the block. He'd basically give it to you until you were hooked and he had you by the balls.
 
Taking take homes is ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS a bad decision. Once I drilled that into my brain, things for me became a lot easier. And I get it..I've told myself that before and still done it, but it's NEVER a good idea. Taking extra never does much, if anything at all for me. If anything, it just makes the negative side effects like sleepiness, sweaty nastiness, and sugar cravings a million times worse with absolutely no increase in euphoria. I've taken extra take homes maybe 3 or 4 times since beginning methadone and each time I really regretted it. Not that missing one day is really all that bad or anything, either. In fact, I usually don't even feel physically bad during one missed day but I find that anxiety leading up to the missed day makes it seem a lot worse. I think a lot of its mental...we're addicts and since we didn't get our drug that morning, our brains automatically try to tell us we're gonna feel like shit, even if our opiate receptors are still actually pretty covered still throughout that entire "missed" day. Most of the time, I just dealt with it and spent the day in bed watching tv to pass the time, but esp in the beginning, I scored dope instead a time or two. Talk about a REAL DUMB IDEA. All the dope would do was mayyyybe make me feel a bit better psychologically, if at all, and then give me the potential to fuck up a future UA. Bad decisions all around. I've found that sticking with my dose each day always works out in the long run. Plus, when you take that much extra done, then none for two days it fucks with the levels in your system which can make your regular dose maybe not feel as strong or work as well for the next few days.

Drew, its nice that you have your mother and she's supportive of your treatment plan. My mother is my best friend and she's also one of the few people who knows that I am in methadone maintenance (people still know I'm in treatment, I just didn't tell them I switched off of the subs). Like your mother, my mom is just happy that I am getting healthy and stable in my life. i hid my addiction from my mother, but she had a feeling something was going on (esp with the amount of money I was borrowing from her). I'm fortunate that she's one of the least judgmental people in this world and her love for me is the definition of unconditional. I'm incredibly lucky to have her. I'm glad your mom pulled through last year...the thought of losing my mother terrifies me.

Anywho, back to work I go.
 
Hey guys, hope you are both having a good day. 209 - it's never a bad idea to have someone else hold your meds. There are times I wish I had that luxury. I never abuse benzos on their own, but if I've been drinking...that's when I wake up with empty prescription bottles next to the empty booze bottles. The shit you do in a blackout...

It looks like this hurricane is going to hammer the eastern Florida Panhandle. Florida State cancelled school until Friday, so really next Monday. It's predicted to make landfall sometime tomorrow morning as a Cat. 3, so they're going to be dealing with some serious shit. I heard on the news this morning that 90mph winds are forecast for Tallahassee (~20 mi. inland) with a storm surge of anywhere from 8-12 feet on the coast. Luckily, most of the coastline in that part of the state is the thickest, most impenetrable swamp imaginable. What the Spanish were thinking when they "discovered" Florida and decided to stay is beyond me. We'll get soaked tonight and tomorrow, but no wind for us.
 
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