Rio Fantastic
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2009
- Messages
- 1,727
PAWs always hit me after quitting opiates, and when it hit me it hit me fucking *hard*. I don't know if it's just my biochemistry or maybe it's related to my bipolar I diagnosis, but PAWs for me consists of insane mood swings - it's a guarantee that during PAWs I will go through many, many days of cycling through euphoria one hour and literal suicidal depression the next. It's an insane rollercoaster and it's so exhausting and miserable and unpredictable and shitty that I often check out and decide the junkie life is better than the crazy bullshit my mind puts me through when it's deprived of opiates.
After a lot of experimenting, I found a three-part strategy to deal with PAWs. I am a lazy motherfucker, so I've tried each and every combination of just doing one or two parts, and it's never had the same effectiveness. All three parts have to be implemented, daily, or the PAWs will be overwhelming. When I'm doing all these, PAWs becomes much milder, manageable. Without it, I go insane. They are simple and you will have been advised all of it before:
Exercise. You will not feel like it. Your mind will come up with a million and one excuses of why today isn't the time. Fuck that. You either suffer the pain of an hour of exercise or suffer from brutal depression and the life of a junkie. Which do you choose? I personally go every day during PAWs, alternating between lifting weights and cardio (HIIT). Sometimes I only go for 20 minutes, sometimes I feel great and do 2 hours. The important thing is I go and don't leave till I've at least worked up a sweat.
Healthy eating. The occasional indulgence in some huge sugary dessert or fatty cheat meal is a welcome indulgence during PAWs, but it must be an indulgence and not the foundation of your diet. Eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, lean meats, nuts, seeds and I personally limit refined sugars and carbs generally, and when I do eat carbs its whole-grain. Skipping the healthy eating has always ended in disaster for me - the first few days of healthy eating suck, since during the depression of PAWs all I want to do is sit on my ass and eat comfort food and the positive effect lags a little, but a few days after starting to eat healthily my energy creeps up, my outlook becomes more positive, and I use that energy and optimism to work harder in the gym and keep bulding momentum. Don't make things harder for yourself by depriving your body of what it needs to function optimally - eating like shit all the time is like pouring petrol onto the fire of depression. Don't make this mistake.
Meditation. This need not be a huge commitment (although the benefits, for me, scale with how long I've spent in the session) - ten minutes a day is all you need to start, but I'd recommend building it up to 20 minutes. This will require discipline as well, but what's 20 minutes out of a 16 hour day? A mistake I used to make was expecting the benefits of meditation to happen during meditation. This is hardly ever the case for me even now, and was never the case before. Meditation isn't about sitting at a beach and drifting away, it is and should be a fucking struggle at the start, especially for a junkie going through PAWs. It requires constant vigilance and practice, but the benefits will quickly bleed into your life, and it's a fantastic tool for combating cravings and negative thoughts directly - the longer you practice meditation, the easier dismissing these kinds of negative thought patterns that don't serve you will become, until its second nature. It is the only tool that directly helps you to control your own mind using your mind, and it's invaluable.
This may seem like a lot, but I urge anyone going through PAWs to commit to trying the three-point plan for just a week. Commit to a healthy diet, daily exercise & daily meditation, and you will watch the overbearing monster that is PAWs shrink to the size of an annoying little gremlin in real time, until you've conquered it entirely.
Hope this helps someone out there!
After a lot of experimenting, I found a three-part strategy to deal with PAWs. I am a lazy motherfucker, so I've tried each and every combination of just doing one or two parts, and it's never had the same effectiveness. All three parts have to be implemented, daily, or the PAWs will be overwhelming. When I'm doing all these, PAWs becomes much milder, manageable. Without it, I go insane. They are simple and you will have been advised all of it before:
Exercise. You will not feel like it. Your mind will come up with a million and one excuses of why today isn't the time. Fuck that. You either suffer the pain of an hour of exercise or suffer from brutal depression and the life of a junkie. Which do you choose? I personally go every day during PAWs, alternating between lifting weights and cardio (HIIT). Sometimes I only go for 20 minutes, sometimes I feel great and do 2 hours. The important thing is I go and don't leave till I've at least worked up a sweat.
Healthy eating. The occasional indulgence in some huge sugary dessert or fatty cheat meal is a welcome indulgence during PAWs, but it must be an indulgence and not the foundation of your diet. Eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, lean meats, nuts, seeds and I personally limit refined sugars and carbs generally, and when I do eat carbs its whole-grain. Skipping the healthy eating has always ended in disaster for me - the first few days of healthy eating suck, since during the depression of PAWs all I want to do is sit on my ass and eat comfort food and the positive effect lags a little, but a few days after starting to eat healthily my energy creeps up, my outlook becomes more positive, and I use that energy and optimism to work harder in the gym and keep bulding momentum. Don't make things harder for yourself by depriving your body of what it needs to function optimally - eating like shit all the time is like pouring petrol onto the fire of depression. Don't make this mistake.
Meditation. This need not be a huge commitment (although the benefits, for me, scale with how long I've spent in the session) - ten minutes a day is all you need to start, but I'd recommend building it up to 20 minutes. This will require discipline as well, but what's 20 minutes out of a 16 hour day? A mistake I used to make was expecting the benefits of meditation to happen during meditation. This is hardly ever the case for me even now, and was never the case before. Meditation isn't about sitting at a beach and drifting away, it is and should be a fucking struggle at the start, especially for a junkie going through PAWs. It requires constant vigilance and practice, but the benefits will quickly bleed into your life, and it's a fantastic tool for combating cravings and negative thoughts directly - the longer you practice meditation, the easier dismissing these kinds of negative thought patterns that don't serve you will become, until its second nature. It is the only tool that directly helps you to control your own mind using your mind, and it's invaluable.
This may seem like a lot, but I urge anyone going through PAWs to commit to trying the three-point plan for just a week. Commit to a healthy diet, daily exercise & daily meditation, and you will watch the overbearing monster that is PAWs shrink to the size of an annoying little gremlin in real time, until you've conquered it entirely.
Hope this helps someone out there!
