Just went from being a several-year lurker of this site to an active poster. I feel like I might be able to help those in this thread looking for some help/hope getting through opiate withdrawal.
First, a bit of history:
I started using opiates regularly (more than once in a while) about 3 years ago. I was 18 at the time. My sister was with this boy who smoked oxycodone and he got her into it. She brought it home and I was more than eager to try it. Needless to say I fell in love immediately. Her and I were a tag-team of mischief, stealing money from our mother, selling/pawning everything we could in order to score. I quickly geared my mind toward being economical and abandoned smoking them immediately in favor of more efficient ROA's. Depending on how much I had I would snort or plug them (and if I had plenty, both at once).
This went on for a several months, but I never actually had access to it enough to be able to develop a tolerance or a physical dependance.
I moved in with a girl I met when I was 19. Her house was pretty much the epitome of a crack house. No power, no hot water, a huge hole in the roof covered by tarp. Her grandmother was a hoarder, her uncle smoked/sold crack and got several prescriptions for narcotics (which he also sold, this is in FL btw). Her mother was unemployed, lazy, and unbeknownst to everyone but me, was buying pills from her brother.
Anyway. At this time I had been on more of a hiatus than usual from opiates, as my previous connect had gone to prison. I was heavy into RC's. Deep into a spice addiction (back then I think it was AM-2201 or something). Taking 2c-e/2c-i on average about every other day when I had it. I hadn't thought about opiates for a while.
I'm gonna pick up the pace on this because I feel I'm being unnecessarily detailed, but I feel like the more I say, the better an idea you have of how thoroughly this shit fucked my life up. Plus I'm on adderall at the moment, and I'm sure you all know how it affects verbosity on the internet.
SO
It wasn't a 3 months before I was using the money I was making in the RC business to buy dilaudid whenever I could. It was way more available to me than before but still not ALL the time. He ran out fairly quickly. Still had never experienced w/d at this point.
Christmas 2011, the day I find out my girlfriend is pregnant. I was on vacation in NJ at the time when she called with the news. The week I was up there was the longest I'd gone without any drugs (including cigarettes) in years. I felt absolutely great (while it lasted).
Fell right back into the routine after I got back to my girl's house. Same old shit. Started dealing with shadier people and getting deeper into opiates. Gaining a bit of a tolerance. Now I needed 12mg of dilaudid to get me where 8 usually did.
In April of 2012, I was robbed/jumped. Won't go into too much detail but after I had been choked out by surprise I woke up on the ground with a broken nose, my eyebrow gashed open (hit the pavement i guess) and one of my front teeth missing. Covered in blood, I stumbled back to the house and sat in the bathroom for 15 minutes trying to think of how I would go upstairs and confront my girl about what had just happened. Ended up just going up there and saying "try not to freak out, but..."
She started crying, we went to the hospital. I got stitches on my head and a prescription for oxycodone 5/325 because the tooth had broken at the root with the nerve exposed (painful as FUCK).
Now I have to say, I was pretty pumped on adrenaline from immediately after it happened until we had arrived at the hospital. It could have been shock, adrenaline, or my tendency to dissociate from traumatic or painful experiences and treat everything with levity, but my girl remarked that I was being extremely cool about the whole thing in a weird way.
Indeed I was, and looking back I think it is because I knew I would be prescribed painkillers at the hospital. I even remember not 5 minutes after I had regained consciousness and noticed my tooth missing that "damn i'm definitely going to get some painkillers for this".
Between the script they gave me in the ER, and the probably 5 or 6 scripts I got before/after dental surgery to get the root removed, and attempt to put in an implant (which failed), I was consistently opiated for at least 1 months. Between refills is when I got the first hints of withdrawal. I didn't like it one bit. I knew my scripts were going to run out soon and had no idea what I would do when that time came, but I didn't think about it consciously because I was occupied trying to not feel sick.
Alas, eventually they ran out and I had to resort back to buying from her uncle. This time I wasn't fucking around. I had a hunger for it like I had never known before. I was willing to go to any lengths to achieve the nihilistic nods and empty thoughts that I loved so much. I think you can guess where this is going. For the last month that I used Dilaudid, I adopted the IV route.
It was the only way I could afford to get as high as I "needed" to get. Pill prices were through the roof, and at $20-25 for 8mg I simply had no choice. I wasn't good at IVing. I shook way too much and could never keep the needle in a vein. Half of the time I had her uncle do it for me.
Mind you, my girl had no idea I was shooting. It was extremely difficult to hide, thus why that didn't last for long. One time she, 7 months pregnant, walked in on him injecting me. I did my whole bullshit about how it was stupid and I'd never do it again. The usual pillhead lies. I didn't mean it. I'd go back and do it again an hour later if I could.
I don't know what caused me to decide to stop shooting/taking pills. I think there still was a shred of aspiration left in me that shone through during a psychedelic trip that made me want to start to get better. I got myself into a methadone clinic in July 2012. That's right, instead of dealing with a week, two weeks of w/d tops, I decided to get on a long-term maintenance program. That's because I didn't really want to quit. I had methadone once before and it got me higher than any other opiate I'd tried.
$14 a day that shit cost me (and by me, i mean my mother). My girl and I moved in with my mother because she was due in August and I was "trying to recover" and there's no way in hell she would let her granddaughter be born and live in that fuck of a house.
Gee, looking back on it I guess I took advantage of my daughter as a way to not get kicked out of my mom's house for bleeding her dry financially. Funny the things you realize with adderall and hindsight.
Anyway, a tad but about the clinic and then I'll fast-forward:
Upon entry, they start you on 30mg your first day. Next day you come in and tell them if you still had w/d symptoms and if so, they raise you 5mg. I did that every day with impunity until I reached 45mg. I didn't need to go above 30. Shit I probably only needed 15 or 20. I was absolutely zonked all day on that shit.
When I reached 45 I started getting out of hand with the sedation. Nodding off basically constantly. Unable to care for my newborn baby unassisted. Still, though, I felt the need to tell the doctor every week that I needed a 10mg increase (to which they obliged without question).
In a matter of months I was up to 140mg. Eventually, as money wore thin, I started having anxiety about what would happen if my mother could not afford my methadone. I had read countless horror stories of methadone withdrawal even WITH a taper. I could not imagine how much worse the methadone w/d would be from 140mg cold turkey. This is when I decided I would start lowering my dose 5mg a week.
So I did. Unfortunately, I had only gotten down to 100mg before we moved to NJ in July 2013. I was planning on setting up a transfer to a clinic up there, but I had procrastinated and was simply unable to do so. This was my stoke of luck. This is the reason I have not touched opiates since July 2013.
A bit of a fast forward, from then till now:
-we get to nj, i am in deep, deep w/d
-i'd drink, steal benzos belonging to my uncle we're staying with, and take DXM to mask the symptoms
-one day i was out of drugs to mask so i rationalized to cut my torso, arms and legs "in order to force out endorphins", (post-dxm binge w/d rationale, eh?)
-after that incident my girlfriend took our daughter and moved out of state to live with her family
-once i am able to walk and function normally i start walking through the woods looking for mushrooms both as a hobby and a way to distract myself. also it was extremely therapeutic and relaxing and I recommend this to anybody that is in w/d. the looking for mushrooms part helped a lot I think because it gave me a goal. a reason to scan my environment carefully and appreciate it all rather than walk around bored and alone.
Mid-late September is when the acute withdrawal subsided. The constant chills/fever, sweats and cramps were behind me. Until November I suffered extreme IBS and the occasional chills/hot flashes. Oh and there was this weird thing where whenever I would start to eat, the under side of my jaw (kind of near my lymph nodes) would light up in sharp stinging pain. it would even happen in anticipation of eating as well.
As of now, I have no recognizable lasting w/d symptoms (9-months later). I am extremely proud of myself for surviving cold-turkey methadone withdrawal and not even giving opiates a second thought. I now associate them with nothing but pain, misery, and death.
Cost me my tooth, my intact nose, i won't even try to calculate how much money (most of it from my mom), my relationship, countless friendships, and most of all my daughter.
I still struggle daily with motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety issues. These were always here before but I feel like they've festered and grown while I was in opiate land. I find it extremely stressful to interact and converse with people.
I'm sorry about this mountain of text, as I'm sure nobody will be THAT interested to read the whole thing, but I feel a lot better after having just typed it out. It's really the first time I've taken the time to sit down, hash it all out and put it into perspective. Plus, perhaps somebody going through withdrawal from classical opiates will read this and realize that 2 weeks of withdrawal is nothing compared to 2-4 months and stick with it rather than getting on methadone.
Really if I can save one person methadone I think my entire life would have had a significant purpose.
Or maybe somebody is on or withdrawing from methadone and could use a reminder that if it's possible to cold turkey from 100mg daily, then it's possible to get off, period.
If anybody has any questions or would just like some support of even a friendly chat, feel free to PM me.
Much love, and good luck,
ArmouredKitten
P.S. if this is too long or inappropriate for this thread, let me know and I will start a new one for Opiate Success Stories or something like that.
