Hey ya'll,
First, I just want to say how grateful I am that a forum like this exists. After reading what seems like the same 10 bullet points listed on advertisements for rehabs and governmental websites, stumbling onto this forum feels a little like stumbling onto the only well in a long and dry desert. Thank you all for that.
I'm hoping for any/all advice anyone can offer on the below situation. I ran a bunch of searches on this before posting, which did help slightly. These searches didn't bring up info all that context-specific, though. If I'm wrong, and there's a LOT of information already on this, please don't hesitate to tell me, Mods -- that kind of thing can be just as helpful.
A little while ago I took a family member to a different state to help her relocate. Up until this time, my only real memory of her was during her methadone years when she'd nod off into a plate of sliced oranges or into a bowl of cereal in the mornings. I later learned she'd been in a serious bicycle accident, which damaged vertebrae in her spine/neck, along with a slew of other injuries. This meant opiates and lots of booze when she'd run out and eventually a physical and neurological dependency, all colored by the very real pain brought on by her accident. Pretty standard.
Fast forward dozens of years: She'd burned every other familial bridge via her opiate addiction and supplemental drinking. She was about to be on the street, so I agreed to help get her situated. No one in my family would talk to me about her, where she was mentally/physically/emotionally, with her addiction(s), so I was flying blind up until very recently.
We are staying together in an extremely small, one-room rental until some gov assistance comes through, meaning I'm seeing a lot more of her than I, or anyone really, has before. I'm also now doling out her medication, at her request. It's a little hairy to say the least.
She's currently on 40 mgs / day of oxycodone (four tens a day), which is a HUGE drop from the 90s or from the 00s where she was on at least 100 -120 mgs. I don't have that exact info in front of me. What seems important to me here is that she's been on some kind of opiate daily -- MS Contin, Methadone, Oxy -- non-stop, for 30 years. If she's taken a break, it's because she's out and doesn't have the physical ability to score on the street (thankfully). In the past, this is when she drinks.
Alongside this there are a few hours each day, generally into the third and fourth hours of her pill, where she becomes apocalyptically sad, hopeless, almost catatonic in her movements. Her speech becomes slower, slurry, and she expresses her inability to say what she means to say. 45 minutes into her next dose, she finds her footing again in a renewed world. She's social and articulate and rational (!). She's totally functional in a way that one hour before I wouldn't have believed.
I'm assuming this is (at least partially) withdrawal?
What sometimes occurs is what's concerning me more: She appears to be having delusions for small amounts of the day, or she's only comfortable articulating them to me for small amounts of the day.
At first, she was absolutely CERTAIN I was only helping her to spy on her and eventually have her committed. Next it was that the local authorities had been watching her because she thought she did something wrong (she hadn't). Later, she could feel the presence of an extremely abusive ex-boyfriend literally all around her. While she told me this, her eyes shifted to my left, widening as if she were seeing something. I started walking away before she realized she'd done it in front of me. She seemed embarrassed and instantly tried to explain that she just had a lot going on in her head.
I didn't make a big deal about it with her, and I won't. I'm trying to show her that whatever it is, I won't buck. But I'm also at a loss here. I can't make her talk about these things to gauge how seriously she means them. I'm worried about undoing the trust we've built up by breaking all of this down with her doctor(s). I'm also worried about rationalizing it to the point that I'll ignore more potential warning signs. There's really no one to bounce ideas off of except for her, which won't work for obvious reasons. Based on her organizational issues and her speech patterns, I'd like to say she might have had some undiagnosed head trauma, but I have no idea.
She's also on an anti-depressant and adderall, and up until pretty recently she was taking Lyrca.
In the back of my head there's a kind of gnawing feeling that the more attention I give her, the more I'm giving her to potentially manipulate. I'm not necessarily new to addiction -- my brother and a lot of my close friends fell out from dope, and I've struggled in the past with alcohol -- but none of that has really prepared me for dealing with this part of it.
To make it even hairier, we're on a sort of "countdown to withdrawal" because she doubled up earlier on. We'll be bone dry for almost a week, so I'm worried shit will hit the fan, and I won't be prepared.
9/10s of the day she is totally okay. It's the 1/10 that's frightening.
Thank you all so much in advance. Any/all advice would be so very helpful.
First, I just want to say how grateful I am that a forum like this exists. After reading what seems like the same 10 bullet points listed on advertisements for rehabs and governmental websites, stumbling onto this forum feels a little like stumbling onto the only well in a long and dry desert. Thank you all for that.
I'm hoping for any/all advice anyone can offer on the below situation. I ran a bunch of searches on this before posting, which did help slightly. These searches didn't bring up info all that context-specific, though. If I'm wrong, and there's a LOT of information already on this, please don't hesitate to tell me, Mods -- that kind of thing can be just as helpful.
A little while ago I took a family member to a different state to help her relocate. Up until this time, my only real memory of her was during her methadone years when she'd nod off into a plate of sliced oranges or into a bowl of cereal in the mornings. I later learned she'd been in a serious bicycle accident, which damaged vertebrae in her spine/neck, along with a slew of other injuries. This meant opiates and lots of booze when she'd run out and eventually a physical and neurological dependency, all colored by the very real pain brought on by her accident. Pretty standard.
Fast forward dozens of years: She'd burned every other familial bridge via her opiate addiction and supplemental drinking. She was about to be on the street, so I agreed to help get her situated. No one in my family would talk to me about her, where she was mentally/physically/emotionally, with her addiction(s), so I was flying blind up until very recently.
We are staying together in an extremely small, one-room rental until some gov assistance comes through, meaning I'm seeing a lot more of her than I, or anyone really, has before. I'm also now doling out her medication, at her request. It's a little hairy to say the least.
She's currently on 40 mgs / day of oxycodone (four tens a day), which is a HUGE drop from the 90s or from the 00s where she was on at least 100 -120 mgs. I don't have that exact info in front of me. What seems important to me here is that she's been on some kind of opiate daily -- MS Contin, Methadone, Oxy -- non-stop, for 30 years. If she's taken a break, it's because she's out and doesn't have the physical ability to score on the street (thankfully). In the past, this is when she drinks.
Alongside this there are a few hours each day, generally into the third and fourth hours of her pill, where she becomes apocalyptically sad, hopeless, almost catatonic in her movements. Her speech becomes slower, slurry, and she expresses her inability to say what she means to say. 45 minutes into her next dose, she finds her footing again in a renewed world. She's social and articulate and rational (!). She's totally functional in a way that one hour before I wouldn't have believed.
I'm assuming this is (at least partially) withdrawal?
What sometimes occurs is what's concerning me more: She appears to be having delusions for small amounts of the day, or she's only comfortable articulating them to me for small amounts of the day.
At first, she was absolutely CERTAIN I was only helping her to spy on her and eventually have her committed. Next it was that the local authorities had been watching her because she thought she did something wrong (she hadn't). Later, she could feel the presence of an extremely abusive ex-boyfriend literally all around her. While she told me this, her eyes shifted to my left, widening as if she were seeing something. I started walking away before she realized she'd done it in front of me. She seemed embarrassed and instantly tried to explain that she just had a lot going on in her head.
I didn't make a big deal about it with her, and I won't. I'm trying to show her that whatever it is, I won't buck. But I'm also at a loss here. I can't make her talk about these things to gauge how seriously she means them. I'm worried about undoing the trust we've built up by breaking all of this down with her doctor(s). I'm also worried about rationalizing it to the point that I'll ignore more potential warning signs. There's really no one to bounce ideas off of except for her, which won't work for obvious reasons. Based on her organizational issues and her speech patterns, I'd like to say she might have had some undiagnosed head trauma, but I have no idea.
She's also on an anti-depressant and adderall, and up until pretty recently she was taking Lyrca.
In the back of my head there's a kind of gnawing feeling that the more attention I give her, the more I'm giving her to potentially manipulate. I'm not necessarily new to addiction -- my brother and a lot of my close friends fell out from dope, and I've struggled in the past with alcohol -- but none of that has really prepared me for dealing with this part of it.
To make it even hairier, we're on a sort of "countdown to withdrawal" because she doubled up earlier on. We'll be bone dry for almost a week, so I'm worried shit will hit the fan, and I won't be prepared.
9/10s of the day she is totally okay. It's the 1/10 that's frightening.
Thank you all so much in advance. Any/all advice would be so very helpful.
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