Tianeptine is weird. I mean it works (THANKS FOR THE RECOMMENDATION DOGLOVER). It takes away the majority of my WD symptoms, but only for a couple hours....then I'm stuck waiting a few more hours to redose since I don't want to be taking it all day everyday. I'm still def getting a taste of the WDs, but minor. Lately I have been managing to sleep for a full 7-8 hours at least too, last time I was waking up with mass restless limbs and sometimes had to redose twice a night in smaller amounts...the phenibut may have been to blame or perhaps the lope WDs were stronger then since lately I had not been taking it consistently every day. Dunno.
Ya, I really shouldn't be on it too long or I'll have a new dependence (probably already do). The short half life will give way to short lived WDs, but with the whole rebound anxiety and depression that could be crushing on top of opi WDs. I'll start cutting back after my next 5 days of work and then the Lyrica should come in another week after that (fingers crossed) and I only have enough of that for a week or so...I can extend it if I do as I plan and begin to dose smaller and smaller. I don't want to take that stuff over more than 14 days to be frank.
I can't recall what amount I was taking last time to come off methadone....I wanna say 300-400mg slightly spread out. I know it wasn't super high and it actually could have been half that amount. I DO recall smaller was better when dealing with WDs and the side effect profile coupled with Lyrica's rapid tolerance. The first time I tried it when I was getting off methadone I took well over a gram and it literally made me feel like hell. Going to have to experiment with it and go as low as I can...the stuff has weird side effects at the higher end of the dosing spectrum. Plus, it does take a couple hours to even kick in. I may see if I can go a day without it and dose every two days...we'll see.
When I moved to the Virgin Islands and got off heroin my girlfriend did have a fatty 6 month script for gabapentin which helped well initially. Lyrica is gabapentin's big bad brother, however. Dosages are much lower and effects are way more pronounced. My girl and I eventually popped all those gabapentin like candy and the entire six month's supply was gone in about 6 or 7 weeks...we used it not only for the heroin WDs, but for the cocaine comedowns we had on a daily basis...plus, simply to take the edge off while we were in the midst of doing lines and smoking crack.
Looking back at my credit card statements I was literally cash advancing $200 a day and spending it initially on coke (aka "soft" in U.S.V.I. terms) and then crack (dubbed hard, naturally). It was 3 times easier to obtain the hard rather than the soft and my connections eventually seemed to start cutting the soft with God-only-knows-what, hard was usually a safe bet and extremely impulsive multi-day purchase. The street dealer there can literally be found in numbers on just about every street corner off of the main drags. They are eager to front drugs too from some reason, but if you don't pay up you're literally in for a world of hurt. They all knew where I worked and living in a predominantly black region I stuck out like a sore thumb (>10% of residents are caucasian, and a lot DO NOT like the white man). I left owing a couple dealers $$, but I knew I'd never see them again once I had it set up to fly out to Cali for treatment.
While I was living there it was actually quite frightening at times. Take, for example, the murder rate per capita in comparison to the whole of the U.S.A. In the U.S. it's 4.7 per 100,000 people...St. Thomas: a staggering 56 per 100,000!!! So much crime of all sorts and the cops are related to everyone there so people get off the hook ALL the time. White folks not so much and I'd dare not even dream of a visit to the local penitentiary. A lot of folks didn't take kindly to white peeps, but a lot of them were actually super nice too...hit or miss...more so on the kind when you're purchasing hundreds in product every day. Man, and I had my fiance with me at all times due to the fact that a pretty small white girl is explicitly told to NOT be out alone, period. A $20 here, a $40 there, and a $10 in between when I told myself that that was it, no more for the day. However, I have never experienced any such sort of desperation and impulsivity as I have when coming down on "hard." There was no way of restraining myself when I wanted, NEEDED, more.
This adventure in the U.S.V.I. (St. Thomas - Charolette Amalie) is an entire "cray cray" story in itself, but when I ran out of cash and I found myself impatiently waiting for my weekly under the table cash payment I went to some extreme lengths. Basically, my fiance and I ended up trading the majority of our nice electronics and jewelry, etc. My girl eventually started going psychotic. I had a job as an assistant manager at the hotel where we lived...free HUGE manager room, satellite big screen TV, free wifi, no rent to be paid, no bills like electricity (which is outrageously higher than the rest of U.S.), free food and drinks/alcohol (which is also super expensive there since everything is shipped in from the mainland...besides booze and smokes. Those are the dirt cheapest prices I have ever seen, all duty free and a fraction of what it on the mainland. I wasn't SUPPOSED to drink their alcohol or take food without paying, but they seemed not to mind too much), & free basic supplies like cleaners, shampoo, toilet paper, the works. Anyway, my girl was looking for work at first and stopped when I was offered the job. Back to her going crazy...while I worked I found out down the road that she was stealing my money and taking my card to pull out cash and then visiting the dope man...ALONE, BAD IDEA, BIG SEX UNDERGROUND SEX TRADE THERE TOO. Towards the end, while I would force myself to stop using to get a few limited hours of sleep, she'd remain awake ALL night doing drugs and GOD KNOWS WHAT as she'd sneak out to purchase more. She conned my boss into giving her nearly $1,000 dollars that I paid back out of my pay by saying that her purse got jacked and all this BS. So, I noticed her becoming more and more dissociated and paranoid. It all came to one giant end when, at 2 or 3 am, she put on her bikini and attempted to go hit the streets to find more drugs. My hotel had a main locked and gated fence as well as a huge locked metal enclosure around two entrances that my room was contained behind with the kitchen, bar, and office. I took my key along with hers and hid them so she had NO way of leaving since we were up on a balcony. Long story short she went psycho and started setting off the alarm system a few times and breaking everything in the kitchen and bar. She grabbed a broken piece of plate and clutched it to her side, the look of the devil himself in her eyes...there was no doubt in my mind that she would stab me if need be. There was no talking her down, but I wasn't going to let her hit the crime ridden streets alone in only a bikini in the wee hours scouring for drugs. Somehow my manager who lived upstairs slept through the WHOLE thing. I finally got her in the room and attempted to calm her down as she tore through all 12 of our suitcases containing our sole possessions and strewn things about. She was under the impression that I was out to get her and she wouldn't drop that sharp ass broken piece of a plate she had as a weapon since I, in her mind, was the bad guy taking her hostage. After she threw our clothes everywhere she began ripping off the labels that were sewn in and inspecting them, followed by tearing open all our cigarettes and random other shit...insisting that I stole our cocaine and hid it in these items. Funny thing was that I caught her the night before, as I woke up from a sleep, stealing MY weed, coke, and $. She had turned things around on me out of pure paranoia and a quasi-demonic possession.
That girl was a horn dog so I stripped naked and thought perhaps I could get her into bed by enticing her with sexual pleasures. It actually worked, but she did so very cautiously as she inspected my body and the rings I had on my fingers for whatever she was looking for. Let it be known the girl was on her period and viciously tore out her bloody tampon the chucked it into the wall where it skidded across the ground. After the deed was done I thought I had her calmed down and I was so tired dealing with this for hours and not having done any coke in a long while.
I dozed off cuddling her, and she held tight to her broken plate which was covered in period blood that was all over her hands.
I briefly woke up as the morning sun rose to see her out of bed and digging through the trash for what I now know was the keys I had hidden. I let it go and passed out again.
Once more I awoke to the sound of what I thought was the bathroom door closing....it took me a couple minutes to finally open my eyes and, to my despair, note that the bathroom door was wide open. OH, SHIT!!! I then knew that it was the door to my room and noticed she had found the keys. I scan the room...PERIOD BLOOD EVERYWHERE!!! It looked like something from a murder scene. Most disturbing of all was as I look at the wall to the left of my bed there was a GIGANTIC MURAL OF A FIRE BREATHING DRAGON PAINTED IN PERIOD BLOOD...I SHIT YOU NOT, I COULD NOT MAKE THIS UP!
I dash to the security monitor in my room and turn it on to see if I could catch her leaving the hotel. Low and behold she was completely naked on the screen, with just a towel over her, covered in PERIOD BLOOD, TALKING TO MY BOSS WHILE ON THE PHONE.
She called 911, the paramedics took her away and questioned me along with the local law enforcement. I have no idea to this day what her story was or what she said (My boss later said that she knocked on the door, told him she was bleeding and needed the phone, and called 911), but I had to lie and said I thought she had a mental breakdown. If I had told the truth I would have lost my job with NO MONEY and NOWHERE to go, 4,000 miles from home on an island where I was a vast minority.
I never saw my fiance again. She left everything behind besides her passport and, without telling me, had her Dad fly her home.
I called the ER and they said she was released and went home...which I assumed was our room. That night a monsoon hit and I stayed awake, high as fuck, thinking that she was still on the island wandering around in a cocaine induced psychotic delusion fucking black guys to get high. I had called her Dad even and he lied to me and stated that he hadn't heard from her and that I needed to call the cops. 24 hours later she called me and told me some BS story about leaving...said that the police and doctors thought she was about to be sex trafficed and told her to leave without saying a word to anyone.
I stole cash from my work, when the cash ran out I stole hundreds in quarters.
Later I was robbed at gunpoint at 3am while wandering around looking for drugs.
It all came crashing down...I hid in my room for a full day and didn't answer my phone or the door. My coworkers confronted me when they finally saw me and said they thought I was dead. They told me and guy who lived in my room and had my job a couple years back disappeared and was found a few blocks away dead in the gutter from a gunshot wound.
I came clean about stealing to my employer.
I came clean about my drug use to my parents.
This is how I got back to the mainland for treatment in Cali.
I have no idea how I got on this path, but I hope you enjoyed the tale.
I WILL CORRECT GRAMMATICAL/SPELLING ERRORS LATER. Too tired to go back over this novel of a post.
