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Coming Down the Mountain (PST Taper and W/D)

Not an issue about our different definitions of chipping...it's slang and probably has different meanings in different places.

And hey, if NA isn't your thing, that's perfectly cool. I guess the thing I still find compelling about it is that NA really helped me understand what it meant to need help from others and how to accept help. Personally, I entered NA as a resolute atheist. And I only started stepwork after a couple years in the program (and then only made it through the first one before deciding it wasn't for me, at least not then). For me it was all about two things:
* Finding a group of people struggling just like me...watching and listening to people as they struggled so that I could learn more about how to handle my own struggles.
* Opening myself up to things I didn't necessarily feel comfortable with or feel like I wanted to deal with. The 'higher power' thing is a good example. I still don't believe in God in any supernatural or even spiritual sense. But over time, I came to realize that there are things in the world that are more important than I am alone--my family is one of them; so are my friendships. Realizing that I was part of these larger things gave me a stronger motive for quitting than I had when it was simply a matter of my own welfare.

But this was just my own experience. And really, that it happened in NA is accidental...I could have reached these conclusions in other ways, probably. Everyone's path is different. You're already on yours :)
 
Great job man! Enjoy your time with your family!

Edit : The higher power puts most people of me included even when they say it doesn't have to be G-d. I express is as one have two powers within oneself (express it as an ego founded in the id and superego) and it's about giving yourself from one to the other depending on which is the addictive mindset and the other sober.
 
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Update: It's been 7 days now since I had even a fraction of a PST dose, and 14 days since I started my rapid taper. It's also been several days since I took any loperamide. All physical symptoms of use or withdrawal are gone *except* the horrible insomnia. I've always had insomnia issues but this is like my body has forgotten how to sleep. I'll have to pick up some melatonin and Benadryl today, I guess, but they don't really seem to help all that much, either. Ambien is a miracle drug for me but I'm away from home and without a doctor so no hope of Rx. I've even cut out all alcohol the past few days, because I know it wakes me up later if I drink myself to sleep, but I *still* find myself wide awake by 1 or 2 AM, with no chance of falling back asleep.

Any ideas on how long this will last? Advice on getting a good night's sleep in a world without opiates? Even exercise isn't helping much. I'll live, but I miss sleeping.

tacodude and simco -- Interesting takes on the higher power stuff. I can work with that. I'll look into meetings when I get home...
 
Unfortunately, insomnia due to opioid use cessation can last quite a while. But what is likely happen is that your sleep will gradually get better over the next few weeks. The good news is that you'll probably feel somewhat better quite soon. The not-so-good news is that it's likely that it will be a while longer before your sleep is fully restorative.
 
Yeah, I looked around and it sounds like there aren't any easy ways out, and nothing I haven't seen already. Melatonin. Diphenhydramine. Chamomile tea. Exercise. Hot shower. Time.
 
Watch out taking antihistamines for sleep. Diphenhydramine can exacerbate RLS symptoms if that is an issue for you. If it isn't, doxylamine is far superior to diphenhydramine to treat insomnia.

Also, can you get any Tiger Balm to massage into the undersides of your legs and leg/arm muscles or whoever you have symptoms of RLS? It really works miracles, especially following a hot bath or shower.

You're doing so well MP, thank you for keeping us up to date. Keep up the great work!
 
I'll look out for doxylamine... Benadryl isn't all that great anyway, and really makes me groggy the next morning. Thanks. I don't have any RLS symptoms. I don't actually know what that's *supposed* to feel like, or whether I ever had them. The best way I can describe the feeling in my arms and legs is that they felt foreign on my body, like I wanted them off. Uncomfortable in my own skin. This manifested in tons of crazy asleep/awake dream thoughts that also mingled with work thoughts to make night time really awful, but I wouldn't say I was ever *restless* in the sense I've always known the word, like when I bounce my legs up and down when I'm really grooving on work or something.

But I haven't felt that in days now. I really think the withdrawal is over, except for a bit more sniffling and sneezing than I am used to, which is fine, and horrible insomnia, which is horrible.
 
I'd recommend looking into Ayurvedic, Chinese medicine, and general herbal sleep aids
 
With doxylamine you can take less to achieve the same sedation as diphenhydramine, however at higher dosages it will cause even more antihistamine "hangover" the following day. See what happens.

You'd definitely know it if you had RLS. The keyword is restless ;) 8)
 
Update: I'm 11 days out now from any kind of PST use, so my 3-day and 7-day averages are obviously zero. My 30-day use is still at 57.5 doses despite 11 of those days being zero; a testament to just how far I let things go. 30 days ago yesterday I took 6 doses in a day for the first time ever, or 3/4 lb of seeds. I was taking 5-6 doses/day for a solid week before I started dialing it back, so some big numbers are going to be rolling off my 30-day usage here in the next week. That feels good, but WTF was I thinking? I wasn't thinking. I was making a cup of tea at 6 in the morning, another at 10, another at 2 and another before dinner. Just not thinking about what I was doing.

My 60-day use is at 162.5 doses, down from an all-time high of 203 doses as of 9/5. I've still got lingering WD symptoms that I'm now expecting are just going to gradually fade away alongside these numbers. No mental effects at all, but morning shits, ongoing sniffling and sneezing, very mild GI discomfort and still the insomnia. I expect that by the time my 30-day use is at 0, things will be completely normal, but this is all new ground for me so who knows.

I know I never want to be in this position again. I don't know what that means about using ever again. It's nice to not even have it on the table for these weeks while I'm away, but drinking has crept back into my life again and now I realize that I never dealt with my drinking problem at all; just traded it in for another problem. A friend of mine posted this article from The Atlantic the other day and it got me to wondering if maybe I should find a doctor who will prescribe me naltrexone. Any thoughts on that?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/

^^^No intentions of ragging on AA by posting the above; just looking around at everything right now.
 
Naltrexone was a big part of my cleaning up from my heroin habit. I was on the oral (once-a-day) form for a while, and on vivitrol (once-a-month injection) for a while. All told, I took naltrexone for roughly 8 months.

Personally, it was a huge help. I tried a lot of treatments prior to naltrexone, none with much success.

It's very important to understand what naltrexone does and does not do, as you consider trying it. Naltrexone binds to your opioid receptors very tightly, making it impossible to get an effect from opioids (for the most part). I'm not as familiar with its use for treating alcohol dependency, but from what I understand it also greatly blunts the effects of booze. But outside of these blocking effects, naltrexone does *not* help with issues like cravings, anxiety, post-WD depression, etc.

For me, I really wanted to get clean. But I just kept relapsing over and over. In that situation (and again this is just my own experience) I found that having naltrexone's opioid blockade in place was a very helpful bolster to my own shaky initiative. It basically kept me from making the rash decisions that kept leading me back to relapses. It was seriously unpleasant for a while. But it did force me to strengthen my skills for dealing with cravings...I simply had to figure out a way to make it through the cravings without using.

If you have any questions regarding naltrexone, please let me know!
 
Thanks @Simco! What about this low-dose and ultra-low-dose naltrexone stuff? It sounds like it acts like a totally different drug at those two separate levels. Do you have any experience with that? I even read that, at one time, some pharma marketed an opiate mixed with a tiny dose of naltrexone to paradoxically enhance the effects and also prevent tolerance.

Obviously that's off-topic if I want to try it for my drinking issues, but it's fascinating to me.
 
I've heard about low-dose naltrexone. But I don't know anything about it, I'm afraid. Sorry not to be more helpful.
 
I am pretty down on naltrexone personally because of its inability to help cravings or paws and it's high cost. However you don't sound like a candidate for maintenance because you where able to taper and quit. Your kind of in no man's land as far as pharma treatment is concerned. Would you be open to getting therapy to tackle the underlying issues of why you want to use?
 
@CJ, you're probably right about pharma stuff. I don't think I really *need* anything. I've always been a believer that all of us, or almost all, have everything we need to be happy right inside our own bodies. Drug use, for me, has never been an escape or a support as much as a challenge, something to get away with. Someone told me once they thought I was just bored. I have a great life and I was born on 3rd base. Maybe I just want to make things harder, I dunno.

Re: therapy, I've had a shrink for over 10 years now, and most of our talks revolve around my drinking. I haven't talked to her in months now; it's time to call her again and catch her up on this most recent PST episode. I've never tried group therapy (AA, NA, etc) in any serious way. I'm open to that, but I'm not ready, willing or able to really come clean to my family and friends about my drug and alcohol use. I don't know if I ever will be.
 
I'd strongly recommend findng a good psychiatrist to help you with the meds, getting back into therapy and checking out MBSR. MBSR programs cost a few hundred bucks, but the support and tools you get to help you manage stress is incredibly beneficial, both with early recovery and life generally.

I highly recommend MBSR as an adjunct to professional medical support. I found it far more useful than peer support recovery groups. Options with MBSR do depend on the area you live in though.

One of the reasons I struggle with peer support groups is that they didn't really teach me any tools to help me self regulate outside of going to meetings and making phone calls. There are sooooooo many techniques out there to help regulate the mood without merely relying on drug use though. MBSR is a really great overview of many of them.
 
Hi everybody, just wanted to check in. It's been 26 days now since I took any dose of PST. 30 days ago I was going through taper hell, and I'm just now watching those numbers start to roll off my usage charts. The mental withdrawal effects are long gone and I feel nothing but relief and happiness that I'm out of that nightmare. Physically, I still have... abnormal stool but I've been travelling for 3 weeks and my diet is never as good when I'm away from home. Incidentally, there seem to be a lot of English people on this website. I love your food, guys, but it really does a number on my gut! After a week of fish and chips and bangers and mash, I am ready for a nice big American salad.

I'm also still sneezing and sniffling, I think a bit more than usual but it could easily be seasonal allergies or just baseline stuff now. Also some lingering insomnia but I am also extremely jetlagged -- 8 hours difference from London. So in terms of PST, I can't really claim any bad symptoms at this point. I've been back to normal for a while now.

I was drinking while we were away, more than I should do. I'm expert at sneaking drinks; it's amazing how easy it is for me. A quick shot at the bar while I'm going for another round of beers, another when I go to use the bathroom. 1/5 of vodka in my pocket if I get sent on an errand, it's something my lizard brain sees as a challenge. I am so good at it now.

So, now I'm home. It's soooo nice to be back after a long trip. We got back late night before yesterday and I was wondering how I was going to react to being home WRT the PST. I didn't immediately run out and make some, so that's good. Honestly, I'm feeling so good and grounded now, this past 7 months of using seems like a hazy dream, like I was living someone else's life. I'm afraid to get anywhere near it... and yet. I have a nagging idea in my mind that I can find a way to use it responsibly, if you can ever say that about a drug. But yesterday wasn't the day for me to try that.

Realizing that my PST use simply replaced my alcohol use gave me the notion that I never really reduced my usage of drugs overall during this past year. To track this, I've created a composite measure of the three drugs that I track my usage of: Alcohol, PST and THC. While the PST has trended to 0 over 30 days, the alcohol is back up to almost 3 drinks/day over 30 days, levels I haven't touched in over a year. I ran out of THC edibles during my trip so that was at zero for a while; I had 2 "doses" of that yesterday and did some gardening but no drinks and no PST.

The composite use chart peaked at the end of August, when I was taking 6 doses of PST along with 3-5 doses of THC a day, and having occasional drinks on top of it all. Despite my increase in drinking since I dropped the PST, that chart is trending downwards now -- great news! My real goal is to keep that composite number as low as possible. If making a single dose of PST before I go out with friends stops me from having 8 drinks at the bar (PST totally removes my desire to drink), then maybe it's worth doing in that one situation. The trouble is daily use, and there are no ways around that. Long term, my daily use of all substances needs to decline.

Edit to add: TPG, I'm going to follow up on all of your suggestions. I already called my shrink and am waiting for her call back to set up an appointment. I'm going to check out a SMART meeting in my town, perhaps next week, because it seems like the best fit for me among all the group things. I'd never heard of MBSR, so thanks very much for throwing it out there. I have money to spend on this. I will look into it.

I also have a lot of training to do to get my body back to where I was. Being on the other side of 40 doesn't help with that! But I've been lifting weights for 15 years now and I know what to do.
 
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