Hello, Bluelighters.
I haven't posted here in a while. It's been almost a decade actually, and long since I kicked my opioid habit...
But I have a story to tell. Hopefully someone will benefit from it, if the information I'm about to present isn't already widely known by now.
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This is how I finally managed to kick opiates. I figured it out all by myself, and I did it all by myself. No rehab or anything. This was many years ago, back in 2007, so maybe some folks are more widely aware of it by now. I hope so.
Anyway.
My opioid habit started in 2000, for no other reason than a relentless, agonizing toothache which just would not go away! I was 29 at the time, and had never had any problems with substance abuse.
My grandmother, suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, was practically awash with painkillers that she would save up. I'm talking drug dealer amounts! I didn't go to her seeking drugs, but when I complained about my toothache to her, well. My grandmother did what grandmothers are wont to do for their suffering grandchildren:
"Here honey," she said, handing me a large zip-lock baggie absolutely crammed with at least a hundred of those purple, 10 mg hydrocodones. "Take a couple of these when it hurts."
Ok, thought I. I took two right then and there, and went home. It only took thirty minutes within taking my first opioid to fall head over heels in love with opiates.
This continued until 2004. At that time, grandmother was giving me hydrocodone, tramadol, morphine sulphate, darvons, oxycontin, oxycodone, codeine cough syrup - anything she had that she'd either give to me, or stashes of hidden pills I'd manage to discover for myself when she wasn't aware of it.
I had become an addict, and the problem was becoming obvious. Slowly, over the course of a few months, grandmother began to cut me off from her pills until, finally, I didn't have a drug dealer anymore.
So I got creative.
I ordered poppy pods regularly from eBay. Back then they were readily available. I began buying poppy seeds in bulk wherever I could, and through trial and error, perfected the process of making poppy seed tea. My drug dealers had become eBay, grocery stores like Central Market and Fiesta, arts and craft stores like Joann's and Michaels, and online bulk suppliers of poppy seeds.
I continued this way for three more years, until it began to become apparent to the proprietors of these sources that I, and possibly a few others, were obtaining ridiculous quantities of practically pure morphine, and perfectly legally.
In July of 2007, my legal sources were starting to catch on and began to dry up. You couldn't order poppy pods on eBay anymore. Bulk suppliers of poppy seeds were shipping seeds which had been 'washed', with no morphine. Arts and crafts stores dried up. Grocery stores dried up.
EVERYBODY dried up. I had never made an illegal drug purchase on the streets, and didn't know how. I didn't have any experience with it.
Sometimes, very rarely, I'd be able to get my hands on some good poppy seeds by driving from Dallas, where I lived, to Austin, where their stores remained relatively untouched by the rare bird such as myself.
I couldn't afford, nor did I have the time, to do that regularly, however. I began to experience withdrawals more and more frequently, in between the rare fix I was able to locate once in a while, by locating grocery stores online within a reasonable radius of where I lived in Dallas, which I hadn't plundered yet.
During this time of habitual opioid abuse, I ran across an interesting tidbit of info online - that loperamide, commercially known as Imodium, is an opioid.
I also learned, by doing some more research, that loperamide was originally developed decades ago as a powerful pain management tool. However, when they realized that loperamide didn't cross the blood-brain barrier, and had no effect on pain whatsoever, they marketed it instead as an anti-diarrheal, to which it proved to be extremely effective, with a practically non-existent potential for abuse. It doesn't get you high.
One day while I was experiencing one of those full-blown opiate withdrawal episodes, I remembered this fact about loperamide - that it was originally developed for pain management, and that it was, in fact, an opioid.
My reasoning went like this...
"Loperamide. That rings a bell for some reason. Shit. I'm in full blown withdrawal mode. This sucks! But loperamide... didn't I read somewhere that loperamide was originally developed as a painkiller? That it is, in fact, a bonafide opioid? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere. What the hell, I'm ready to try anything! Maybe, just maybe, if I take enough loperamide, gradually and carefully, it might at least help to curb these godawful withdrawals."
I drove to the grocery store. Oh my God! Imodium was expensive! $12 for 24 2mg pills! I looked around some more and discovered a generic brand. $3 for one bottle of generic Imodium, containing 48 2mg loperamide pills. Wow! Much cheaper. I spent $6 and purchased two bottles.
I was right smack dab in the middle of full on, merciless opiate withdrawals. They don't get any worse than what I was experiencing. I don't know about IV users, because I've never injected anything... but my own brand of opioid withdrawals were bad enough. I'd been a user for seven years, so I had plenty of experience with withdrawals, enough to recognize when the suffering was at it's peak.
Anyway. I got home, sat down on the couch, switched on the tube for some distraction, and formulated a plan. Before I actually began with what basically amounted to as an experiment on myself, I wanted to structure it. I wanted to be careful. I definitely didn't want to wind up constipated and trying to shit the equivalent of a pinecone through the rough, dry hole of a brick. That would have just been icing on top of the cake of experiencing withdrawals at their worst.
So I proceeded thusly. After I'd gotten home and settled, I opened one of those bottles and took two loperamide pills, the recommended dosage indicated on the bottle. I timed myself... like I said, I wanted to be careful. After exactly 15 minutes, I took two more loperamide pills. I timed myself again. 15 minutes later, I took two more.
I sat on the couch, watching the tube, and continued this carefully timed process of taking two loperamide pills every fifteen minutes. Then, about two hours into the experiment...
To my amazement, I noticed a significant change. My withdrawals were starting to fade! They weren't gone completely, but they were definitely at least cut in half! I thought to myself, excitedly...
"Oh my God. What have I just discovered?"
I continued for another 2 hours, taking two pills, every fifteen minutes. It took four hours, but after that, my withdrawals were completely gone! Again, I thought excitedly:
"What a discovery I've made! Nobody else knows about this! I've never seen it mentioned anywhere on Bluelight! Does anyone else in the entire world know that you can erase opioid withdrawals completely, easily, and cheaply, with an over the counter, generic form of Imodium??"
The only tools I'd ever known about which were used for managing opioid addiction were suboxone and methadone, both of which have the potential for abuse.
However, loperamide doesn't get you high at all, but it definitely erases opiate withdrawals!
I was tremendously excited.
I thought, "Maybe I can make use of this cheap, readily available thing called loperamide to break these shackles of addiction on my own, without the expense of rehab, doctors, therapists, and other far more expensive drugs for treating opioid addiction, and all the while, keeping it completely to myself! It can remain a private problem, one for me and only me to solve, without having to involve anyone else! Nobody will ever even know what I'm doing! Oh my God, I can't believe I've discovered this, and apparently, nobody else knows about it!"
So the next stage of the experiment began. That summer of 2007, I began taking loperamide regularly to keep withdrawals from developing. It continued to work. I spent the next few years utilizing this method of self-treatment, while slowly tapering down my dosage. Every now and then I would taper it too much, and I'd start to experience withdrawals. I'd up my dose for a little while, then continue the tapering process.
Sometimes I would despair that I'd never be able to kick this new habit, of replacing actual drugs with loperamide in order to eventually erase opioids from my life, but I persevered. Like I've mentioned, this was a years long process of self-experimentation.
It took a few years, longer than I'd expected it to take when I began, but eventually I was able to taper myself off of loperamide with absolutely zero withdrawal symptoms.
I was finally free!
Sure, it cost some money to get my loperamide fix every day so I could function, but it was relatively cheap, I could afford it, and damn it, it was worth it! Loperamide works unheard of wonders for opiate withdrawals, and I wish more addicts knew about this. I hope more addicts know about it now, several years after my own experience.
I've been off of opioids now for almost ten years, and I'm pretty proud of myself, if I do say so, for figuring this shit out on my own.
I just wish more people knew about it. I don't know how many people nowadays, more than a decade after figuring it out for myself, are aware of loperamide as a tool for managing withdrawals, but it's my intention here to supply this information - that you can use an easily obtained, cheap, over the counter medication as a powerful and effective self-treatment program to kick the godawful affliction of opioid addiction. No rehab or doctors or withdrawals necessary.
It can probably be accomplished a lot more quickly than the several years it took for me to kick opioids, by tapering with loperamide, but I was forging my way through uncharted territory.
During those years of self-treatment using loperamide, I was functional, able to work, and didn't have to live in constant fear of imminent withdrawals.
And I eventually succeeded.
That's how I kicked opioids, by using an over-the-counter, generic, extremely less expensive form of Imodium.
Loperamide.
I kicked opiates with it, and I haven't looked back since.
I hope this helps some people who may be currently struggling with opioid addiction.
