a junkies attempt at legalized buzz off methadone gone nightmare come true
I was on suboxone in 2005, trying to make as short as possible, I enjoyed the almost vicodin like buzz subs gave me, until one day a year later, suddenly I quickly became tolerant to the euophoric effects of sub and all it did was take away wd's and I was craving opiates like crazy.
I decided to try methadone in aug of 2006, I was started on 30mg at a private mmt clinic, one time everyday, with take homes possible in future. $60 a week was not bad. I loved the morphine like buzz I instantly clung to when I first started, however I was lucky to have norco 10/500's on me too, because my chemistry is all F'ed up or strange, because the glow of done would wear off after 4 hours and by 4pm I was in wd's already, minor but I'm sensitive to wd's and ultra sensitive to "poison" naltrexone too.
I thought by getting off subs and going on pure methadone, that I would get my life back, well get my life back I sure did, for a year or so at least. I finally levelled out at 150mg and it would keep me comfortable until I came in next morning and I finally ranoutta watson's too just in time when I stabilized on 150 and didn't need the norco anymore. However my psych doc still had me on 3 10mg valium at the time. I updated him right away when I started mmt and he said, well if you are doing so great"do you still think you need the valium?" I said yea, for fear I'd go through bad wd from benzo's so I stayed on them. They seemed to make mmt work better too.
My doctor at the clinic said"well I'm really glad to know that your psych doc has you on valium", I assumed he was being sarcastic and did not want me on them, so I said, is that bad or ok? he said, well with your case, no colon etc, I dont think it would be a problem staying on them, but most normal cases, we dont allow people to be on any benzo's, especially when just starting on mmt.
I started developing tolerance to methadone and had to get 10mg increases every week for a bit until I reached 240mg once. I was on that dose for a while and felt great. Then one time I started getting this horrible pain in my lower rightleg and it hurt so bad to walk that i was worried I had circulation problems like my dad had when he was older.
RIght before thanksgiving this one year, I just came with my Mom to the clinic to get my dose and take homes(total of 7), my Mom came with me because she wanted us to stop at the hospital on the way home which was right on the way. We did and I was shocked to find myself in the er, they did a ct scan on my leg and found a dvt blood clot there. I wound up in the hospital for like 3 or 4 days and was told I had to be given my methadone at hospital. SO they had to call the clinic and tell what was going on, they verified my dose I take just to be sure.
Since I was getting 2mg Dilaudid shots every 3 hours the 1st day, until they got it all cleared up with my clinic, I was like "darn I thought I'd get buzzed from the dillies", but 2mg is nothing compared to what doseof methadone I was on. They had surprisingly a solution made specially at the pharmacy to inject right into my IV. I noticed a nice buzz from it since I had not taken my dose like usual for 2 days. They also had me on a blood thinner and this lovenox shot I had to give to myself right in the stomach area 2x daily.
I was like ewe, I'm scared of needles as it is, so I had to do it quick and get it over with, lucky I didn't have to find a vein. Man that stuff was expensive. When I got home I had to continue the shots for a week and when they ran out I had to see this special doctor, I forgot what his specialty was called or his name right now. But it took a month for the blood clot to go away, only a week for the pain to go away.
Well when I got home we decided lol to just have thanksgiving at our house, well since I was in the hospital I had extra take homes and duh me, one day when I got up, I took two of my take homes instead of one, totalling 440mg of methadone. I was shocked I didn't get much a buzz off it or OD, so like a dummy I took another take home a few hours before I went to bed.
When I came to the clinic the next monday because my take homes were all gone, I was surprised nobody said anything at first, they were just concerned with how I was doing etc. I paid my due and dosed and left, well next day my counselor who I did not like, "yanked" me just at the right time as I was done dosing at a window and coming back up front and she asked me into her office. Scared shitless, I told her what happened to the 3 or 4 extra take homes I was "supposed to still have", why did I come in on monday etc?
I toldher the honest truth and admitted I did it to try to get high which was dumb. She was shocked too that I didn't od or get sick at all, she then got upset and warned me that if I ever did that again that I wouldbe kicked off the program forever. I was really scared then. Well since we didn't like each other, which was her fault not mine"way too long a story to get into", I think she had anger or revenge problems herself and I know my special senses are always right. Well not long after I did that, the clinic doctor said I had to have an ekg done, he said I had this skip in my heartbeat etc and was worried I'd end up like 7 of his patients who had same condition as me and all died, their heart just stopped beating except for 2 of them who are on pacemakers the restof their life.
I had an ekg done at my mom's cardio specialists office, same results, yet he said, you have no serious problems to worry about, your heart is just fine. THat's when I smelled bullshit. Suddenly my doc at the clinic wanted to drop me 10mg weekly until I was at 150mg and hold me there. When I got down to that dose. I started feeling like shit not long after, I mean I was craving opiates like crazy and my ambition started creeping away from me, I started getting more and more depressed and I didn't suffer bad wd's, but I just felt like all I was doing was just keeping wd's at bay. I feltlike back to square one again like when I was on subs the first time.
The straw that broke the camels back is when I saw my ex subox doctor/family doctor and he did an ekg in his office too, he said"you know the methadone is causing this to happen dont you?" I said holy crap no, but I'm not too surprised, my senses were telling me that all along, because all this health crap is starting to happen suddenly and it sucks because mmt was working for me good until I fucked it up abusing my take homes. I dont know if doing that caused all this to cascade down or what.
After months of this and the ex counselor I hated there at the clinic pulling bs on me. I finally decided to get an appt with the clinic doc himself after paying for a week overdue and my mondays payment so that I was all paid up just in case I did what was about to happen. I saw the doc halfway through the week I last was there, that's when the shit hit the fan for them, I was real pissed when my clinic doctor said he only had the ekg they did at the clinic and a faxed copy from my cardiologist. I said to him about "the bitch I hated" and got pissed and said "try going to the bitches office who is playin me all along and demand to see the file she has onme in her office". I bet you will find it there, because I know the most important ekg faxed in from my family docs office was important for him to see. The "bitch" even admitted to getting it and gave me bs that "it didn't come through clearly and I had to refax it in". I called my family doc that day and told him to refax it in. SO I told my clinic doc how pissed I was and he changed the subject and said "how are you doing on the 150mg"?
I said, I feel like crap, I for one dont even notice I'm even taking it and I'm craving opiates so bad that if I had money I'd go somewhere for "real stuff" and I"m also back to squareone again just like when I came here to get off subs. He then said, "well I'll see what I can do about upping your dose a bit and get back to you". I left his office pissed and already made up my mind that I'm dumping off 150mg ct, crazy as it sounds, I didn't care what the risks were, I'm strong willed and when I'm determined to do something or have something my way, nothing stops me.
So I finished dosing there until sat when I left with my sunday take home because they were closed. I took my last take home on sunday at 930am and when my mom came home from church I told her my plans which she agreed with.
This feb 10 or 11 on a monday, I slept in a bit and got up at 8am and took my benzo's to take the edge off the wd's creeping up on me. I then called my ex sub docs office and told his nurse what i did, less than 10mins later she called back and said the doctor said I need to immediately go to detox where I was in feb of 05, surprisingly about the exact same time as this time.
My Mom took me there and duh me, I forgot to pack clothes, I just took my wallet and phone andwent in. BY the time I finally finished filling out all that paperwork, it was already well past 930 am or 24 hours since I last took methadone. I was already in pretty bad wd's. I was admitted finally and the nurse gaveme my valium and toldme I didn't need the xanax anymore and told me I needed to stay in bed all day, which was fine with me.
I toughed out 4 days of wd hell, by day 4 I was staggering into my suboxone docs office there and had blurred vision and had not slept in 3 days. He said, this is your day, it has been by the book wellpast the time i can try dosing you on subs again. He said you are going to be started on 4mg 2x daily. He then had me sit in the chair while the nurse toldme what I already knew about taking them. I then had to sit in another chair and be observed. I heldsaliva for 10 mins after the pills dissolved and gotup when I was done. They toldme to take it easy and I sat at the edge of my bed talking to my room mate who was cool.
we talked as I anxiously waited for some relief, finally after an hour, the depression was gone and the feeling like I was just waiting to die and the chills and hot sweats went away, surprisingly the hot sweats went away but I still felt cold just above my knees, the next dose i was warm up to my crotch. I was surprised that I could not sleep at all that night either. Next morning I was freezing and could not wait to eat a little something to have in my stomach for my dose.
I finally dosed at 9am, my valium and clonodine which I thought was strange to take because I had a 7 day clonodine patch on too. I then took my sub and waited again and went back to my room and sat there waiting. I was then called to the 1st group session of the morning. I suddenly felt calm and just loved bathing in the opioid glow of my morning sub dose, while I suddenly caught myself daydreaming as I watched the cars come and go from the parking lot across the street, the sun was out and I finally felt cozied up to my stomach at least, yet I was still easily chilled when I heard something emotional come up in group.
After my 9pm last sub of the night, suddenly that night I felt all opiated up, even more wound up than the night before. Me and my room mate were both unable to sleep, so he was letting me see stuffon his cool internet phone, now I had a kick on getting one myself. Suddenly the nurse heard the music and came in and saw us both sitting there and said "you two can't sleep listening to music", you gotta get to bed its 1:30 am, holy shit I thought to myself. SO we went back to bed, finally I had to go out to the nurse and say that i haven't been able to sleep the past 2 nights because I have this horrible abdominal cramps no matter which side I lay on and I keep having to get up and go to the bathroom.
Well she looked up what I could have, she said "have you had bentyl before?" I immediately remembered that name since I had that alot when I had my colon removed and then the "j pouch" surgery done, I said yea I had that way back when I had my surgeries. She said wow that's serious I didn't know you had that. I said yea I'm glad that is long past, so she gave one to me and said, this has calming effects and makes you drowsy, you should sleep now. I said thanks and said, dont worry my room mate is cool, he's not bothering me, I just thought talking to him etc would help me. she understood and said to get some sleep.
Well I sure slept then, in fact my room mate suddenly woke me up yelling my name lol. I said what? he said you're snoring, oh sorry I said. I then found myself on my back which I usually dont sleep on because I snore. SO I layed on my side again and surprisingly slept right up till 5 mins before they woke us up at the "death hour" of 6:30am, oh I hated that. I knew no subs until 9am.
Well long story short I was discharged 8 days after detox and upped to 12mg subs daily, which I had to cut in half to make it through the day. Suddenly a week after being home I suddenly felt this rage like I wanted to kill anyone on or off the road who even looked at me the wrong way. I was starting to feel blah too. I was like WTF?
I saw my sub doctor and said what was going on and he said "well subs aren't a "mood stabilizer" bullshit I thought, what the heck, damn I thought to myself, I should have never told him why I went on methadone in the first place. SO he had me see my psych doctor for a "mood stabilizer". my psych doc is cool and he's the one who gives me the benzo's, in fact next time I see him, I'm going to try to get him to switch me to Ativan 10mg and if all goes well I can hopefully quit the xanax I'll tell him. Well last I saw him he put me on this blah tegretol that I was supposed to titrate myself up to 3 200mg pills daily.
Well as I did I felt worse and more of a headache each day. Finally 2 days into the full dose I called him and told him what was going on and he told me to go down to 2 pills daily, which I tried for about a week more. Finally after feeling almost nothing on my subs, I just quit taking that crap, after two days the subs started working better and better each day. I was surprised that one day I was lucky on a Monday of all things to be able to get shit done and finally pack and ship the last of the shit I could even tolerate putting on crappy ebay and decided "I'm DONE with pos ebay for a LOOONG time now".
This whole week up till today, has been a rollercoaster from hell, yesterday I was barely ambitionable, the day before that was even worse. I had finally snapped and went on a rage after something went wrong and I had to take the trash out and I screamed every profanity I could think of towards the pos neighbors next door left hand side of us that I despise. My Mom said "dont you ever do that again" I said "I'll do whatever the F I want besides F the trash next door". SUddenly she came out with my 20mg valium and 2mg xanax and said "here get your blasted high as a kite high and shut up". I was like wow thanks.
She was starting to try to ween me off the xanax and valium too fast I think. After going back to just taking 20mg valium 2x daily I was a little better but not much different surprisingly. Even the pharmacist, one who I never sawbefore was surprised when I said, I can take benzo's on suboxone and it doesn't even effect me. HE was giving me bullshit about how I can't take benzo's while on 2 8mg subs daily. He almost wouldn't give me the subs, but luckily the two nice pharmacists that work there know me well and are cool, filled it already so he had to let me pay for it.
So now I have to deal with what to do when I get my next benzo script filled. Hopefully my psych doc will switch me to ativan, then I'll take it to a different pharmacy name etc. I thought I"d post my methadone story here so everyone could read the whole story and know fully what's going on. Because I posted in another section about how bad I'm doing now, I finally got some cool people giving me some cool info but scary but true info as well. I'm glad I know more about what I'm going through now. Looks like I have a "hellride ahead of me".
I'm at the point where I'm wondering if what my clinic doctor said was true when I was still on mmt he said "dont be surprised if you find yourself back here, because I am almost sure that suboxone or even tex will not work near as well for you as it did before you went on mmt". I thought "we'll see, well I'm seeeing the hard way now. Even the scary truth ofmy subox doctor telling me "if its anyone in the whole state that knows more about methadone than anyone else, it would be him".
I would not be surprised to find myself back there again, but everything is just a "waiting game right now". Wish me luck everyone, especially with my crappy weak body and health and strange body chemistry.
