Hi! I feel like I know a few of you quite well now after spending the last few hours reading these threads. I started by reading about Squeaky's back surgery and moved over to this thread to read much more from Poke, Shroomy, and others. It's all been very helpful, comforting and inspiring. I have quite a story to tell and could use some encouragement getting off these very addictive drugs.
It's been about 8 years of my opioid love/hate relationship. 8 years ago when my mother-in-law moved in with my husband and young kids and me, she was battling leukemia and had so many bottles of pain pills that it was just too tempting not to take a few whenever they were refilled. My tolerance built up quickly so I'd make myself wait a week or two before taking more. I didn't know much back then about dosing or potentiation ... but I fell in love with the high. The relief from the everyday stresses of life as a mom, and a wife, and a daughter-in-law of an elderly dying woman. But once she passed, (may she Rest In Peace), it wasn't like I was out searching for Percocet prescriptions. I would abuse alcohol instead, although my husband had me pegged when we were dating that I couldn't control my alcohol consumption and I agreed I wouldn't drink. So after child number two, I would only drink with my mommy friends and I would hide it from him.
Of course, that caused many fights and disagreements over the years, but I craved a release from the everyday rat race. We decided to have our 3rd child 5 years ago and I was great throughout my pregnancy (no drinking or drugs, etc) ... but actually looking forward to childbirth just so I could be prescribed some Percocet after the fact! How sick and twisted is that? In fact, after having #3, my back was tight and in pain from hardly sleeping and breastfeeding in all sorts of contorting positions, so I got even more Percocet. So that was 4 years ago. About a year passed with no meds and then I got these shooting pains in one specific spot on my back that woke me up at night. Went to many doctors that day who determined it must be the shingles without any rash. Just the severe nerve pain. Stress induced, of course because I was a working mother of 3 kids and my husband was unemployed (for many, many years). #3 was now just over a year but I was still nursing, just at night before bed. So my doctor couldn't prescribe the typical treatment of Lyrica, only Percocet for the pain. Lucky me. Not so lucky reallly. I wish I'd never received those. Because he ended up writing me a few scripts. Sometimes for 60 pills of the 10/325. I'd finish the bottle within less than 2 weeks.
Those bottles of Percocet only increased my cravings, so I started looking online. Where else is a working mother going to get Rx drugs? I believe it's nearly impossible to find real Oxycodone online. But it was easy to find other crappy substitutes, such as Tramadol and Tapentadol. So for 2 years, I've been ordering mostly Tramadol ... so different from Oxy. I was so naive when I took my first ones. Took them like Oxy and vomited a lot, then couldn't sleep all night. Finally found this site and learned how to dose them gradually. They were nice because they weren't as addictive as Oxy and the high lasted most of the day. I would save it and just use once on the weekend. I'd let myself run out and say I wasn't ordering more, but then I would again. This lasted almost a year and then my husband found out. I'd set up a different email address just for these orders and my now 2year old happened to be playing on my phone and hit the Yahoo email app which my husband saw. Totally thought I was cheating on him, but I came clean and admitted everything. Much easier pill for him to swallow (pun intended). I was relieved and wanted to be clean and free of secrets! But I couldn't do it. I couldn't keep myself from ordering more.
So now it's been just over a year of more secret drug use. I could keep the Tramadol under control but then I'd order Tapentadol (Nucynta), and that stuff is just trippy. You know how you can take a bunch of Oxy and still function normally? Still talk to people, still do your job at work, and no one knows. Like Nurse Jackie (did anyone watch and love that HBO series? I could so relate to her). Anyway, you cannot function like a normal human being on Nucynta. I've tried, and I've failed miserably.
I decided to order a rather large order of this crap (Tapentadol/Nucynta) at the beginning of December. Hoping for an early Christmas present. Of course, the package never arrived until after Christmas. I took a few doses during the days surrounding New Years when I was being lazy, watching movies with the kids, etc. but my tolerance was increasing at a phenomenal rate. Two 100mlg pills would give me a loopy high and then they weren't. This stuff takes a full hour to kick in, by the way, so if I took 2, and no real result, I could take a 50mlg or another 100mlg pill but it would be another hour for a result and then my "high" was maybe only an hour and a half from then. Max "high" was about 2.5 hours.
Well my New Year started out like shit, to be quite honest. Everyone but me in my house was sick with colds, keeping me up all night coughing, with fevers, etc. So I was feeling sorry for myself and taking this crap daily to cope. But I was starting to take 3 pills ... then 3.5 ... then 4 (400mlg)! Major brain zaps started occurring. I'd just zone out and completely forget what I was doing. I'd start mumbling complete rubbish about random things and my older kids started getting concerned. I'd start talking and fall asleep mid-sentence. They'd shake me, "Mom, you're falling asleep." Not sure how my husband didn't notice any of this, but then the vicious Stomach Bug took over my household. Took out every single one of us, one by one - even me, who never gets sick. Everyone else violently threw up - I only got a case of diarrhea. What does an opiod addict do to cure diarrhea? Take a constipating med like Tapentadol! Worked like a charm.
So, I only took off 1 day of work for this stomach bug because I couldn't stand being home with puking kids anymore and I went back to work (let my husband deal with it all). I barely got through the day and around 4, took a few of those crazy pills. I had errands to run and I cannot believe I was stupid enough to do them, high as a kite and off in la-la land. Worst part is that I was out driving around, at the time when these pills made me zone out and basically nod off.
Here's where the story goes from bad to worse. I remember my lengthy drive home that night (5th of Jan). I kept falling asleep at the wheel. I'd wake up, freak out, open the windows, and kept telling myself I should pull over. But I didn't. The next thing I remember was waking up as my car went over a curb, crashed through some brush, and right into a tree. Thankfully, this was a new car we leased one year earlier, the minute my husband finally got a job. I couldn't have been in a safer car. The airbags went off, my seatbelt was on, and I was okay. Totaled my new car, but I was okay. But man, the anxiety that hit me was fierce. I was a wreck to the two kind Good Samaritans who stopped to see if I was okay. I cried hysterically because I didn't know what to do! Were the police going to come drug test me and take me away? What would my husband say?? He was mad at me for going back to work and only taking one day off when the stomach bug kept my kids home from school for 3 days. I finally realized there was no way to drive my car home so I had to call him. I was hysterical. I told him I fell asleep at the wheel and he came to the accident site, about 10 minutes from my home. The police and ambulance had already arrived. The police knew I hadn't been drinking and by now the drug was wearing off so I was able to hide it. But I was so upset with myself that I let my blood pressure get up to 190/120!! Because of that, they all (including my husband) insisted that I go to the hospital to get checked out. I was resisting the whole way - I figured they would surely do some type of blood test to test for drugs. They only took a smal urine sample to do a pregnancy test so that could perform x-rays. I had a CT scan, chest x-rays, etc. My husband was amazingly supportive, believing the story I gave everyone, that I'd just survived prep for Christmas (I bought and wrapped every single gift for my 3 kids), then took care of sick kids with colds, then we'd all had the stomach bug ... I'd spent two nights in a row on my bathroom floor with two different kids - I was just totally exhausted and sleep deprived. Everyone bought my story. Which was all true - with one major omission.
One would think that such an eye-opening event would push a mother of 3 kids back into reality pretty damn quickly, right??? Non-addicts would think so. But not this addict. Again, feeling sorry for myself, I took more of those pills during the weekend that followed. I worked Monday (fell asleep at my desk most of the day due to withdrawals), then took them Monday night. On Tuesday, I was so depressed about it all. I resisted them all day at work, then took them just before leaving (knowing they'd kick in once safely home). Once home, I tried to cook dinner for my kids. But I'd completely forget what I was doing at every turn ... then I'd just zone out and stand there for several minutes, out in space. I badly burned my arm on the pan, not even realizing. Then one of my kids got frustrated I was falling asleep while talking and went to tell my husband. I said I was fine, and he kept telling me to go to bed if I was so tired. Then he watched me for about 10 minutes, while I spaced out trying to complete tasks around my kitchen, then I mumbled to him like I was talking to someone at work. He then got concerned and walked me to bed and took my phone. I thought, shit, he's figured it out and I'm totally busted!! I remember feeling panicked and then I was out cold. He woke me up abruptly at midnight and drilled me with questions. What's my name, what's his name, what are our kids names? Etc. He had called my doctor (who knew about the accident), and told him my behavior. He said it could be a concussion from the accident. Accident was a Thursday night, it was now Tuesday night. He called my coworker who was also worrried about me since I'd been falling asleep those 2 days since the accident. My husband and doctor made me an emergency appointment with a neurologist that next day, who demanded I take the rest of the week off to rest, without any screen time on electronics. It was all normal behavior for a concussion after an accident.
So of course I didn't take any meds on Wednesday and only had enough left for one last high. My husband went to work on Thursday so I got the kids off to school, and took my last dose of 4 Tapentadol. I laid in my bed, safely alone, and tried to enjoy spacing off and nodding off. I swore to myself that it would be my last one for at least the month of January.
I survived Friday and Saturday. ... tomorrow is Sunday and will be Day 3. I'm feeling okay because I have some Kratom to help with the withdrawal symptoms, as well as lyrica. I've only taken a few grams of kratom in the mornings and then 75 mlg of lyrica at night. Using prescribed klonopin to help me sleep too.
So here I am, telling strangers my secret because no one else on this planet knows the truth ... and I thought that writing it down might make me feel more accountable. God knows that someone needs to punch me in the face for the foolish choices I've made. I know God was watching over me and protected me in my accident. What if I'd died or been seriously injured? My 3 kids need their mother!!! Or what if I'd hurt (or killed) someone else??!!! It's hard to even think about ... yet I have since taken these horrific drugs! It breaks my heart. I don't want to be an addict. But I know I am. And yet I know I'm not strong enough, or ready to flush a ton of pills down the toilet that are safely stashed at my office right now. About a year ago, I looked into one of those time lockers, but couldn't find one that would seem to work. Maybe I could find one now. I have promised myself I will not order ever again. I want to keep that promise. But I know I'll take the pills I recently received (and spent good money on). I just want to do it responsibly, safely, no more than once a week so I'm not dependent.
So that's my story. If you've read it all, thank you for reading and allowing me to share. I'm here for support, as you all are. I know we are all battling different addictions and we all have our reasons and our rationalizations. I'm trying to be honest and hopefully move forward. I want to be clean from Jan 12- Jan. 31st. That's 20 days. It may sound like too short a goal, but it's a big one for me. The longest I've gone is 5 or 6 days. Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you!!
