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Greetings from Australia

DAVITRON REX

Greenlighter
Joined
Aug 14, 2016
Messages
9
Location
The back of beyond
Hi,I'm an addict of about 22 yrs and have managed to give up cigarettes,alcohol,methadone,heroin and managed to get myself down to 2 mg of subutex taken religiously daily for the last 2 years and have decided to kick that too and have some lyrica and OxyContin to help with the withdrawals I also suffer from severe depression :( which makes things harder,anyway any advice would be greatly appreciated,thankyou :).
 
Hey welcome Davitron, I'm really glad you managed to kick all that stuff, that's no little achievement!
It's super impressive actually, and quitting buprenorphine especially at a low dose like that should be relatively easy.
I'm actually very very impressed that you managed to quit all that stuff.
Congratulations, I mean it. <3

Are you on antidepressants? SSRIs specifically? I don't really condone the use of SSRIs to treat depression as they are reportedly not very effective (one study in particular found them to be slightly less effective than a placebo) and can have pretty nasty side effects, but they also do seem to work for some people, so there's that I suppose.
There's also the usual stuff that's recommended to fight depression: a good and healthy diet and physical exercise. You've probably heard this lots of times but that's because they work.
Of course this alone won't completely erase your depression, especially if it's severe, but it does help, and maybe you already do follow an exercise regimen and eat healthy.

Another thing I want to add as an activity to help with your depression is meditation.
If you're not familiar with meditation, you may be thinking it's some kind of new-age bullshit that consist of gazing at your navel and spacing out.
Well, actual meditation has absolutely nothing to do with new-age stuff, it's an effective practice that has been used for thousands of years because it works, its effectiveness has been time and time again confirmed both by people who actually meditate and by scientific research.

Meditation will help your depression, it may even make it disappear completely (it has happened to some people) or make it a lot less severe in the long term! I want to stress that we're talking about long term, it's not a quick fix like medication usually is and it's a serious practice that you need to do everyday for the rest of your life.
It does get some time to get it right and to ingrain as an habit, but you will be so glad that you started a few years down the line.
I mean, you will feel some benefits during the first months and maybe even in the first weeks but the serious stuff comes after years, and it's absolutely worth it.

Here is an interesting article about the benefits of meditation (most of them are backed with links to researches and studies), and a lot of them are related to depression! :)
Also, here is a thread where I wrote a post about meditation and how to get started, read it if you're interested! Be aware that it's very long.
I'm certainly no meditation expert or whatever but i do have some knowledge and some experience, and I also list a few books from people that are way, way more qualified than me.

Another interesting and relatively new treatment for depression is Ketamine Therapy.
It seems to work pretty well and it looks promising, and unlike SSRIs that usually take weeks to take effect if ever, ketamine provides instant relief.
Note that the doses used are very small, so it doesn't make you high.

Here is a good article about therapeutic use of ketamine to treat depression.

In my opinion though the best "treatment" of these is meditation (possibly coupled with yoga and of course healthy diet and exercise) because while drugs temporarily hide the depression, meditation goes a lot deeper and can eradicate depression and anxiety layer after layer.
It takes time and effort, but is an invaluable tool not only for depressed and anxious people but for, well, everyone.

Hope this helped and have a fantastic day/evening/night!!
 
Thankyou for your awesome reply,it really helped.As for antidepressants I've been on Prozac for about 22 yrs and it helped at first and took away my daily panic attacks from smoking too much weed at once (which I quit 25 yrs ago).I also just finished my hep c treatment and it worked a treat but knocked me around quite a bit and left me temporarily anaemic so I'm still feeling the after effects of the treatment so at the ripe old age of 40 the withdrawals seem a bit worse than when I was a kid, (I used too use naltrexone at home to precipitate withdrawals and just get it over with in one night,I don't recommend it though) I also do exercise daily which helps with my depression like you said,it's just when I withdrawal it gets intense and the dark door opens so to speak,anyway thank you for you advice I will definitely look into ketamine therapy and yoga as well thankyou.
 
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Thankyou for your awesome reply,it really helped.As for antidepressants I've been on Prozac for about 22 yrs and it helped at first and took away my daily panic attacks from smoking too much weed at once (which I quit 25 yrs ago).I also just finished my hep c treatment and it worked a treat but knocked me around quite a bit and left me temporarily anaemic so I'm still feeling the after effects of the treatment so at the ripe old age of 40 the withdrawals seem a bit worse than when I was a kid, (I used too use naltrexone at home to precipitate withdrawals and just get it over with in one night,I don't recommend it though) I also do exercise daily which helps with my depression like you said,it's just when I withdrawal it gets intense and the dark door opens so to speak,anyway thank you for you advice I will definitely look into ketamine therapy and yoga as well thankyou.

Hey, really glad I could help you.

What did they give you for the hep?
I'm happy to hear that you managed to beat it. Hope it didn't do too much damage in the meantime.
Also hope I got you to try meditation and yoga, or at least look a bit into them! They are really powerful tools for improving our lives.

Good luck, much love.
 
The Australian government put billions of dollars toward Hep C treatment to try and eradicate it about 5 months ago.The treatment lasts 3 months ( depending on your genotype) and only involves tablets,Sovaldi and Ribavirin.They make you anaemic so iron tablets are a must and it's just 3 tablets a day and is 95% effective which is amazing and the best thing about it is it's FREE!!! Thank god our government saw sense and put up the money otherwise it costs $80,000 so I feel very lucky for that,as for damage I was surprised to be told that there was very little damage to my liver also because my tolerance goes up really quick so I really went hard for years and drank as well,anyway I couldn't recommend the treatment enough,it does make you sick but not as much as the old treatment and takes about 6 months to fully recover depending on the individual.thanks again for replying it really helps to talk to someone :)
 
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