pizzarolla
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2014
- Messages
- 3
Hi, all, my name is Pizzarolla, or, if you'd prefer, you can call me Mike. Mike is not my real name, but it's a name I'd feel comfortable using on this site. I mean this to be a detailed introduction, and it will be long, so I advise you only start it if you have a few minutes to kick back and read it all. I'm posting this, as a new member, because I'm currently trying to get and stay clean, and I'm getting my ass kicked by some fairly severe (in my opinion) withdrawals, and I really need some support. You may be wondering why I can't ask for help from friends or family, but I'll get to that. For now, I think it's best if I start at the beginning.
I'm a 27 year old white male, and I live in the United States. Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable being any more specific than that. I'm a really smart guy, and I do mean really smart. I was evaluated as part of a psychiatry session when I was about 8 years old. At that time, I had the reading level of a college student. Throughout all of my schooling, all of my teachers expected me to cure cancer or find an alternate energy source or something along those lines. I'm that guy who would see a math problem demonstrated just one time, and not only understand why the problem needed to be worked out that way, but also being able to perfectly remember the process and solve the same sort of problem with any combination of numbers. In terms of reading comprehension... well, I read as easily as breathing. It's because of these smarts that I keep asking myself why I've been so damned stupid.
I've always been a chronic under achiever and rather lazy. When I was younger, and all the way up through high school, I used video games to escape reality. I didn't have my first job until I turned 19 and had been out of high school for well over two years. I had been working there for about seven months when I feel into a bad group of friends. These guys were constantly smoking pot and popping pills, stuff like that. Up until this time, I'd never puffed so much as a cigarette, nor had so much as a sip of alcohol. I was a virgin to that kind of stuff, and just like a virgin, I was eager to get off. Within the first month, I'd already bought my first bag of weed, done Lortabs for the first time, tried Salvia, and gotten black out drunk on 99 bananas.
These things severely effected my work performance, and at 11 months, just four months after I fell in with this group of friends, I lost my job do to neglecting my duties. A month later, I got arrested and sentenced to fifty hours of community service. I came clean to my dad, who told me that he'd already known something along those lines was going on, and he forbid me to see any of my friends or stay out past nine at night. Well, after a couple months he began to let up, and it wasn't long after that I started back up again. Eventually I found myself robotripping while dropping LSD. It's almost like I had a desire to try anything and everything.
So, time went on, and my life seemed to sit at a stand still. I was twenty four, still living with my dad, had just lost my fourth job, had lost all of my friends and picked up with a new group. Constantly contemplating suicide to just end it all, then getting high on whatever was around and forgetting about it all. At the time, synthetic weed was my master, and man was I smoking a bunch of it. Eventually, that same year, my dad kicked me out over something unrelated, and I moved in with my friends. At the time, I hadn't had a job in at least six months. My friend was working at a company where he frequently had to go out of state for a week or two at a time, but his wife and kids (yes, I did just say wife and kids) were home in the evenings after work and school. So what did I do in the mean time? Well, I'd sleep late, watch T.V., search for drugs in the house. At one point, when I didn't have any money, I broke his glass pipe and scraped resin out and smoked that to get high. I went a few steps further. There's one thing I've been ashamed of for a very long time, and I've never told another soul, so the person who reads this first will be the first to know. I broke open the kids' piggy bank and stole money out of it so I could buy synthetic weed. That's right; I stole money... From kids! How fucking sick is that?!
About six months after I moved in with my friends, I finally got another job, and it wasn't bad. I was getting paid good, and it was physical, so I was actually in really good shape for once. I was also riding my bike just about everywhere because I didn't have a car at the time, so this was the first time in my life that I could look in a mirror and feel good about myself. I actually began to feel somewhat confident. About three months after getting that job, I was watching the kids one morning while their parents were away. I took a hit of some potent mix for synthetic weed and had a very startling hallucination, far beyond anything else I'd ever had, even when on LSD and Robitussin at the same time. It's very hard to describe it, but it felt like I'd just seen God. I saw myself in a new light during that trip, saw how disgusting I was (and still am) and the realization nearly tore me apart. I was bawling like a baby. I only told my friends, and I told the two of them to keep it quiet, as I didn't want everyone to know that I believed I had actually seen God. It had the potential to be a positive experience because I decided to quit smoking cigarettes and doing drugs, right then and there. Though I faltered a bit over the next few days, I still cut back a lot. But it wasn't enough... Tragedy was on the way.
About a week later, during the first few hours of my work schedule, I left my work area and headed to the men's bathroom with a box cutter. It was a single person bathroom, and I locked the door on the way in. Once I got in there, I worked up the bit of courage I could, and made a short but deep incision along both of my wrists. Looking back, those cuts probably would have taken hours to kill me. The manager ended up coming in after about 20 minutes when I wouldn't respond to her knocking, called an ambulance, and that was the beginning of a week's stay in a mental health hospital. Now, I should have taken that chance right there to get off the drugs, but as soon as I was out, I started using again. Of course, I never went back to work for that company. The embarrassment was just too much. Eventually, my friends kicked me out for not having a job, or even looking for one, and my dad agreed to let me stay with him again. It would be almost another eight months before I got another job.
Well, I used drugs during all that time, mostly that synthetic cannabis crap, all through my job search, and after I found a job, worked there for three months, before finding a better paying job, and working there for six months. Unfortunately, the drugs were making me a bit unstable. I've never been an even tempered fellow, and the drugs seemed to shorten my fuse considerably. I got fired after threatening to beat another employee within an inch of his life. That was the third time I'd had an anger explosion on the job, and I really couldn't blame them for firing me. A few weeks later, I confessed to my dad about the drugs I was still doing. We had a sit down, and he helped me get away from the shit. Two weeks later, I was finally feeling normal again. Thank god!
I got a job at an IT company about 4 months after that (did I mention that I really love computers?), and worked there for a year and a month, the longest I've ever held a job in my life. During that time, I still did some drugs here and there. This next part is shocking, even to me. See, during that time, the year, 2012, all forms of synthetic cannabis became completely banned, a blanket ban, in the state I live in. So, I used to go in my room with a bright flashlight, get down on my hands and knees, and pick little fragments of the shit out of the carpet to smoke. I'd do that for a few days, and stop for a month, then do it again for a few days, then stop for a month. That cycle went on the whole time I was working with that IT company. I tore open a backpack, pockets, jackets, trashed my room, moved furniture, anything and everything I could to get just a bit more. When I was looking to get high, nothing would stop me. Eventually, I lost that job because of my deteriorating attitude, attendance, and performance.
Now, I'd saved up a lot of money, and being that I was now 26 years old, and still loving with my dad, when he asked me for a few thousand dollars, I readily agreed to give it to him. His plan was to purchase an RV, park it on my grandparent's lawn, and help them out, because they are not in very good shape. Now, I also had no job, so I moved into the RV with him. That was in January of 2014. It's now August of 2014. I'm 27 years old, and I haven't had a job in ten months. Here's where the nightmare starts...
My grandparents, being elderly and not in good shape, have more prescriptions than I can count. Two of these prescriptions in particular have caught my eye. The first was the hydrocodone. I started out taking two or so a day. Then my tolerance grew and I found myself taking eight a day. Before I knew it, I'd go in there and snatch 12 out of the bottle. I'd take them right out of my grandmother's weekly pill organizer. My grandfather may suspect it was me, or he may not. I'm really not sure. However, he's always said that he believes my grandmother was taking more than she's supposed to, and even if she denies it, he can hardly believe it, as a good deal of her mental faculties are gone. So he started hiding the things. He'd leave the house, I'd go in and search for them. I'd find them and take almost half the damned bottle. He'd hide them in a different spot, I'd do it again. Eventually he just started keeping them on him full time, and that mostly put an end to that. I could still get my hands on them from time to time, but not often at all. Well, I'd been doing this for a good four months, and my god, the withdrawals. I never suspected it would be anything like that. I started searching for a way to combat the symptoms, and that's when I ran across the Tramadol. A quick google search told me all I needed to know about it. "Opioid check, will get me high check, will alleviate symptoms check." God, I'm such a fucking dumbass!
If I thought hydrocodone withdrawals were bad, I was in for a monster of a surprise when my grand dad started keeping his Tramadol in his pocket. In my life, I've had my head split open on a fire place, more burns than I can count, teeth chipped during a boxing match, a bike accident that required 20 stitches, and many other aches and hurts beside. I would have gladly traded all of those things happening at the same time if only to get rid of the Tramadol withdrawals. It was hell on earth. I began scouring the internet, searching for a way to ease the withdrawals. I ran across a name, Kratom. I researched it, found out a good deal about it. Went into it with the understanding that it had the potential to be addicting. "Well, I'll just use it to help with some withdrawal symptoms, then I'll get off of it. No big deal. I got this shit." That was about four months ago. At the time, I was driving my dad's car to do some computer work around town and bring in a little bit of money at least. I found out that the closest head shop was about 45 minutes from where I live, and that they carry Kratom. I tried it out, and it worked! I felt good again. Hell, this stuff was legal, and it felt like I'd done 40mg of hydrocodone. I was impressed! The only real downfall was the uncontrollable and severe constipation. The few times I tried to go without Kratom, I felt something I'd never felt before; restless leg syndrome. And good god, did I hate it...
So, around the beginning of August, my dad found an overdraft notice from my bank that I'd accidentally left in his car. He searched my living space and found some of the leftovers from my many forays to the head shop. He confronted me about it, and was understandably pissed. Since the beginning of the year, I'd spent a little over 4,000 dollars on drugs. He also found two of my grand dad's Tramadol in a pack of my cigarettes I'd left sitting around, so he also knows that I was at least stealing those pills from my grand parents. He asked me if I need to go to rehab. I told him I do not. This was about two weeks ago. Maybe I should have said yes...
I continued taking whatever hydrocodone and Tramadol I could get my hands on, with the ultimate plan of tapering off. Yeah, that didn't fucking work at all. I kept using in large amounts until I simply ran out. Then, yesterday, the withdrawals started. I can deal with most of it. The headaches, the stomach aches and constant poops, the overall feeling of general weirdness. But the one thing I can't fucking stand is the RLS. Dear god I hate it. I just can't stop tossing and turning and hating my damned legs, wishing I could cut them off. The worst thing is that I could go and get some Kratom, it would last me about three days, the bit I could get with the money I have. But then it would start up all over again. To top it off, I got a call from an employer yesterday, and this has the potential to be the best, highest paying job that I've ever had. I mean, if I get this job, I'm a fucking made man!
So right now I'm taking Clonodine and Loperamide together in an attempt to alleviate some of the symptoms. My gut feels fine, my head feels... loopy, but my legs, my damned legs, they just won't stop. I'm considering going to the store and getting a RLS formula with Quinine in it, as I've heard that it can help alot. But I have two main concerns. First off, I can't go into a face to face interview on these withdrawals. Second, I can't keep doing these damned drugs! It's just going to be a never ending cycle, and I'm always going to come out feeling miserable sooner or later. I have done some terrible, horrible things. Things I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forgive myself for. I think about killing myself every day, multiple times per day. How easy it would be. Hell, I even spent a few hours researching the best place to shoot myself in the head for the highest chance of an immediate and assured death. As of now, I've never actually put a gun to my head, but part of me is afraid I'll talk myself into it, while part of me hopes I'll talk myself into it.
Well, for now, that's all I have to say. I know it's a lot, and I hardly expect more than one in ten people to actually take the time to read it. There's even a few things I've left out, but this will have to do for now. The main thing is that I just had to get all of this off my chest. I'm hoping that it will at least make this whole experience more bearable, mentally, and maybe this time I'll find the strength to kick this shit and stay off it for good.
I'm a 27 year old white male, and I live in the United States. Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable being any more specific than that. I'm a really smart guy, and I do mean really smart. I was evaluated as part of a psychiatry session when I was about 8 years old. At that time, I had the reading level of a college student. Throughout all of my schooling, all of my teachers expected me to cure cancer or find an alternate energy source or something along those lines. I'm that guy who would see a math problem demonstrated just one time, and not only understand why the problem needed to be worked out that way, but also being able to perfectly remember the process and solve the same sort of problem with any combination of numbers. In terms of reading comprehension... well, I read as easily as breathing. It's because of these smarts that I keep asking myself why I've been so damned stupid.
I've always been a chronic under achiever and rather lazy. When I was younger, and all the way up through high school, I used video games to escape reality. I didn't have my first job until I turned 19 and had been out of high school for well over two years. I had been working there for about seven months when I feel into a bad group of friends. These guys were constantly smoking pot and popping pills, stuff like that. Up until this time, I'd never puffed so much as a cigarette, nor had so much as a sip of alcohol. I was a virgin to that kind of stuff, and just like a virgin, I was eager to get off. Within the first month, I'd already bought my first bag of weed, done Lortabs for the first time, tried Salvia, and gotten black out drunk on 99 bananas.
These things severely effected my work performance, and at 11 months, just four months after I fell in with this group of friends, I lost my job do to neglecting my duties. A month later, I got arrested and sentenced to fifty hours of community service. I came clean to my dad, who told me that he'd already known something along those lines was going on, and he forbid me to see any of my friends or stay out past nine at night. Well, after a couple months he began to let up, and it wasn't long after that I started back up again. Eventually I found myself robotripping while dropping LSD. It's almost like I had a desire to try anything and everything.
So, time went on, and my life seemed to sit at a stand still. I was twenty four, still living with my dad, had just lost my fourth job, had lost all of my friends and picked up with a new group. Constantly contemplating suicide to just end it all, then getting high on whatever was around and forgetting about it all. At the time, synthetic weed was my master, and man was I smoking a bunch of it. Eventually, that same year, my dad kicked me out over something unrelated, and I moved in with my friends. At the time, I hadn't had a job in at least six months. My friend was working at a company where he frequently had to go out of state for a week or two at a time, but his wife and kids (yes, I did just say wife and kids) were home in the evenings after work and school. So what did I do in the mean time? Well, I'd sleep late, watch T.V., search for drugs in the house. At one point, when I didn't have any money, I broke his glass pipe and scraped resin out and smoked that to get high. I went a few steps further. There's one thing I've been ashamed of for a very long time, and I've never told another soul, so the person who reads this first will be the first to know. I broke open the kids' piggy bank and stole money out of it so I could buy synthetic weed. That's right; I stole money... From kids! How fucking sick is that?!
About six months after I moved in with my friends, I finally got another job, and it wasn't bad. I was getting paid good, and it was physical, so I was actually in really good shape for once. I was also riding my bike just about everywhere because I didn't have a car at the time, so this was the first time in my life that I could look in a mirror and feel good about myself. I actually began to feel somewhat confident. About three months after getting that job, I was watching the kids one morning while their parents were away. I took a hit of some potent mix for synthetic weed and had a very startling hallucination, far beyond anything else I'd ever had, even when on LSD and Robitussin at the same time. It's very hard to describe it, but it felt like I'd just seen God. I saw myself in a new light during that trip, saw how disgusting I was (and still am) and the realization nearly tore me apart. I was bawling like a baby. I only told my friends, and I told the two of them to keep it quiet, as I didn't want everyone to know that I believed I had actually seen God. It had the potential to be a positive experience because I decided to quit smoking cigarettes and doing drugs, right then and there. Though I faltered a bit over the next few days, I still cut back a lot. But it wasn't enough... Tragedy was on the way.
About a week later, during the first few hours of my work schedule, I left my work area and headed to the men's bathroom with a box cutter. It was a single person bathroom, and I locked the door on the way in. Once I got in there, I worked up the bit of courage I could, and made a short but deep incision along both of my wrists. Looking back, those cuts probably would have taken hours to kill me. The manager ended up coming in after about 20 minutes when I wouldn't respond to her knocking, called an ambulance, and that was the beginning of a week's stay in a mental health hospital. Now, I should have taken that chance right there to get off the drugs, but as soon as I was out, I started using again. Of course, I never went back to work for that company. The embarrassment was just too much. Eventually, my friends kicked me out for not having a job, or even looking for one, and my dad agreed to let me stay with him again. It would be almost another eight months before I got another job.
Well, I used drugs during all that time, mostly that synthetic cannabis crap, all through my job search, and after I found a job, worked there for three months, before finding a better paying job, and working there for six months. Unfortunately, the drugs were making me a bit unstable. I've never been an even tempered fellow, and the drugs seemed to shorten my fuse considerably. I got fired after threatening to beat another employee within an inch of his life. That was the third time I'd had an anger explosion on the job, and I really couldn't blame them for firing me. A few weeks later, I confessed to my dad about the drugs I was still doing. We had a sit down, and he helped me get away from the shit. Two weeks later, I was finally feeling normal again. Thank god!
I got a job at an IT company about 4 months after that (did I mention that I really love computers?), and worked there for a year and a month, the longest I've ever held a job in my life. During that time, I still did some drugs here and there. This next part is shocking, even to me. See, during that time, the year, 2012, all forms of synthetic cannabis became completely banned, a blanket ban, in the state I live in. So, I used to go in my room with a bright flashlight, get down on my hands and knees, and pick little fragments of the shit out of the carpet to smoke. I'd do that for a few days, and stop for a month, then do it again for a few days, then stop for a month. That cycle went on the whole time I was working with that IT company. I tore open a backpack, pockets, jackets, trashed my room, moved furniture, anything and everything I could to get just a bit more. When I was looking to get high, nothing would stop me. Eventually, I lost that job because of my deteriorating attitude, attendance, and performance.
Now, I'd saved up a lot of money, and being that I was now 26 years old, and still loving with my dad, when he asked me for a few thousand dollars, I readily agreed to give it to him. His plan was to purchase an RV, park it on my grandparent's lawn, and help them out, because they are not in very good shape. Now, I also had no job, so I moved into the RV with him. That was in January of 2014. It's now August of 2014. I'm 27 years old, and I haven't had a job in ten months. Here's where the nightmare starts...
My grandparents, being elderly and not in good shape, have more prescriptions than I can count. Two of these prescriptions in particular have caught my eye. The first was the hydrocodone. I started out taking two or so a day. Then my tolerance grew and I found myself taking eight a day. Before I knew it, I'd go in there and snatch 12 out of the bottle. I'd take them right out of my grandmother's weekly pill organizer. My grandfather may suspect it was me, or he may not. I'm really not sure. However, he's always said that he believes my grandmother was taking more than she's supposed to, and even if she denies it, he can hardly believe it, as a good deal of her mental faculties are gone. So he started hiding the things. He'd leave the house, I'd go in and search for them. I'd find them and take almost half the damned bottle. He'd hide them in a different spot, I'd do it again. Eventually he just started keeping them on him full time, and that mostly put an end to that. I could still get my hands on them from time to time, but not often at all. Well, I'd been doing this for a good four months, and my god, the withdrawals. I never suspected it would be anything like that. I started searching for a way to combat the symptoms, and that's when I ran across the Tramadol. A quick google search told me all I needed to know about it. "Opioid check, will get me high check, will alleviate symptoms check." God, I'm such a fucking dumbass!
If I thought hydrocodone withdrawals were bad, I was in for a monster of a surprise when my grand dad started keeping his Tramadol in his pocket. In my life, I've had my head split open on a fire place, more burns than I can count, teeth chipped during a boxing match, a bike accident that required 20 stitches, and many other aches and hurts beside. I would have gladly traded all of those things happening at the same time if only to get rid of the Tramadol withdrawals. It was hell on earth. I began scouring the internet, searching for a way to ease the withdrawals. I ran across a name, Kratom. I researched it, found out a good deal about it. Went into it with the understanding that it had the potential to be addicting. "Well, I'll just use it to help with some withdrawal symptoms, then I'll get off of it. No big deal. I got this shit." That was about four months ago. At the time, I was driving my dad's car to do some computer work around town and bring in a little bit of money at least. I found out that the closest head shop was about 45 minutes from where I live, and that they carry Kratom. I tried it out, and it worked! I felt good again. Hell, this stuff was legal, and it felt like I'd done 40mg of hydrocodone. I was impressed! The only real downfall was the uncontrollable and severe constipation. The few times I tried to go without Kratom, I felt something I'd never felt before; restless leg syndrome. And good god, did I hate it...
So, around the beginning of August, my dad found an overdraft notice from my bank that I'd accidentally left in his car. He searched my living space and found some of the leftovers from my many forays to the head shop. He confronted me about it, and was understandably pissed. Since the beginning of the year, I'd spent a little over 4,000 dollars on drugs. He also found two of my grand dad's Tramadol in a pack of my cigarettes I'd left sitting around, so he also knows that I was at least stealing those pills from my grand parents. He asked me if I need to go to rehab. I told him I do not. This was about two weeks ago. Maybe I should have said yes...
I continued taking whatever hydrocodone and Tramadol I could get my hands on, with the ultimate plan of tapering off. Yeah, that didn't fucking work at all. I kept using in large amounts until I simply ran out. Then, yesterday, the withdrawals started. I can deal with most of it. The headaches, the stomach aches and constant poops, the overall feeling of general weirdness. But the one thing I can't fucking stand is the RLS. Dear god I hate it. I just can't stop tossing and turning and hating my damned legs, wishing I could cut them off. The worst thing is that I could go and get some Kratom, it would last me about three days, the bit I could get with the money I have. But then it would start up all over again. To top it off, I got a call from an employer yesterday, and this has the potential to be the best, highest paying job that I've ever had. I mean, if I get this job, I'm a fucking made man!
So right now I'm taking Clonodine and Loperamide together in an attempt to alleviate some of the symptoms. My gut feels fine, my head feels... loopy, but my legs, my damned legs, they just won't stop. I'm considering going to the store and getting a RLS formula with Quinine in it, as I've heard that it can help alot. But I have two main concerns. First off, I can't go into a face to face interview on these withdrawals. Second, I can't keep doing these damned drugs! It's just going to be a never ending cycle, and I'm always going to come out feeling miserable sooner or later. I have done some terrible, horrible things. Things I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forgive myself for. I think about killing myself every day, multiple times per day. How easy it would be. Hell, I even spent a few hours researching the best place to shoot myself in the head for the highest chance of an immediate and assured death. As of now, I've never actually put a gun to my head, but part of me is afraid I'll talk myself into it, while part of me hopes I'll talk myself into it.
Well, for now, that's all I have to say. I know it's a lot, and I hardly expect more than one in ten people to actually take the time to read it. There's even a few things I've left out, but this will have to do for now. The main thing is that I just had to get all of this off my chest. I'm hoping that it will at least make this whole experience more bearable, mentally, and maybe this time I'll find the strength to kick this shit and stay off it for good.
