Opioids Decisions, decisions

[birdman9]

Hi there, this is my first time posting though I have read many posts for a long time now. If I am posting inappropriately or if you all have another thread I should jump on feel free to let me know. My intentions are not to break any rules. I want to explain what is going on in hopes for some help from people who have been through it.

First of all I am 26 a 6'0 250 lb former collegiate football player who is in good shape. I do exercise often and I am very active. No real friends or family know about my problem and I would like to keep it that way. I now work for an event company which is seasonal work. It is now winter and I am not working full time though I have been interviewing for other jobs as much as possible. I think this will help me get off if I can just find a good job, which I promise I am working to do this. I have a college degree and I am wasting potential.

As I said I am a former football player. I started doing 10mg roxys to ease my knee and back pain which quickly escalated into doing 30mgs over the past two years. I have daily thoughts of quitting as I know it is not something I should be doing. Although I am in pain I feel as though I could get just as much relief from Meloxicam (which I have been perscribed) and Alieve, though I do have a bad stomach. The problem is I am mentally hooked. Though my habit is not what many would consider a huge habit I am having a hell of a time quitting. I have been through CT WD twice and made it to the third day and fell right back into it. My daily habit is anywhere from 30mgs to 90mgs. The most I have taken in a day is 150mg but that was only once or twice. I usually insuffalate.

I really don't get high but it helps me so much that I actually start to feel like I should be on it, which I shouldn't. I am embarrassed and ashamed and the people who really need them are right that we who don't need them are awful for using them. I am sure there are also many people out there thinking to themselves that I should just get over it and move on, believe me I have tried. I am not willing to go to rehab for many reasons unless I absolutely need to. I just feel that if I goto rehab and am put back into the situation I will still need to stay clean. So why go through that?

I have used Suboxone and it works great but I can only get limited amounts (1-2). I understand when to take it as to not precip and it does work but for me it doesn't help with the cravings. When I take more than 2mg it makes my stomach hurt but if I take .5-1 mg it works great. So I have figured out a dose that works and I would only consider doing it for a week tops, most likely less.

For the past week I have only taken 1 30mg per day I feel fine. I thought that I would be able to get another sub but it didn't work out. However before I knew it wouldn't work out I took 1mg from a friends who had one. So after doing a week straight of only 30 mgs per day I then took a mg of Sub the next morning and I was fine until the following morning where I started physically feeling terrible, depressed, etc. I had no more so I did 1 30 roxy throughout the day and I was fine, barely felt it. I finally then got more suboxone and took it the next morning (1mg) So I have about 7mg of suboxone left. Again I understand that I am not on a huge amount so feel free to judge .

I guess what I am looking for is to better understand what else I can be doing to help the cravings. How long the mental stuff will be strong and if I am to take a mg of sub each day for like 3 days will things get better? I have read a lot but so much information contradicts other information so I am trying to become better informed. Has anyone had a smaller addiction such as mine?

Thanks in advance.

 

[tricomb]

Focus on the little things, and getting back in touch with what used to make you happy.

Eat a healthy balanced diet, take vitamins and exercise for at least 30 minutes of cardio 5 days a week.

Never snort pills anymore, it is addict behavior and with oxycodone especially it is a stupid route of administration, it is like 20% less effective than oral dosing and causes damage to your respiratory tract amongst other things.

It will actually work to your advantage though, for example, for every 10mg of oxycodone you insufflated, you'd be lucky to see 6mg of that reach your bloodstream via the nasal route, vs the potential 8-9mg in the bloodstream taken orally. This is not very significant at first glance, but it does add up somewhat, and your habit is not overly large, I don't even think you should use buprenorphine personally but thats just my $0.02, just do a rapid detox if not cold turkey if you can, then just avoid it. One of the benefits of cold turkey is that the experience you go through really shows you what you've been doing to yourself, and it really helps you in the future with your chances of relapsing again.

As is common with opioid addicts, many addicts who quit go on to relapse, but there's been a lot of looking into the rates of relapse and how they discontinued opiates, and from my own personal experience and the experiences that people have been shared with me over the years, cold turkey is pretty much the most effective way if you want to quit for good.

I'm all for tapering where it needs to be done, but I mean 30-90mg oxycodone is not that much, especially if you're usually taking 30mg, so buprenorphine could and perhaps should totally be avoided if possible, IMO.

 

[birdman9]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply! Yea I think the rush of snorting and also feeling it right away is why I do it. I will avoid that, but hopefully I can cut out my usage. What is the difference between rapid detox vs cold turkey? I should add that I drink tons of water every day. Also should I avoid coffee? I feel like that could substitute the energy part of it. I also used to take concerta (similar effects to adderral) and when I went off of that I saw a dramatic drop in energy. I don't plan on getting back on that as I am out of school. That was nearly 6 years ago. I do drink alcohol, not every day but I socially drink. Some have said it helps others have said avoid it, what are your thoughts?

The reason I use Bupe is because I am not a person who deals with the throwing up and extreme bowel movements well and it helps with that. I don't feel as though putting myself through pain will make me want to quit, but I do see your logic. I have been through the CT method and would like to avoid that. I have a pretty bad stomach and at first I believed that Oxy would actually not bother my stomach. Then I got perscribed Meloxicam which is not as bad on the stomach from what I understand. Do you think possibly tapering down to using like a 5 mg oxy would help or would that just be stupid? Like use one when I felt sick, would it help to suppress the depression part? This could help avoid the bupe. Like I said they don't really get me high anymore and I don't see myself upping my usage as I don't like the feeling of nodding out or anything like that. I also don't like the sub, it doesn't make me feel high in any way so I don't see myself staying on them. As I do know some people who use them as a means to get high.

Again thank you so much for your quick reply, just writing out my problem kind of has helped me in a way. Maybe a journal would help?

 

[tricomb]

Yes, I would avoid coffee/caffeine, excess sugars and especially processed foods especially stuff that contains high fructose corn syrup, cutting the crap out of your diet is probably the best thing you can do as far as efficacy for improving your digestive health, I can totally relate as I'm a chronic pain patient with extensive GI issues so I'm not new to digestive problems.

Get enough sleep every night, shoot for 8 hours and consistent bed time and waking times, take vitamins, this will all help with both physical and psychological aspects including that depression

What I meant by rapid detox was rapidly decreasing your intake by like 10mg per week if not faster until you're down to 5-10mg total per day, then if you're STILL having a lot of problems, take 5mg every other day. Oxycodone is not the best drug for tapering but since you're not taking a high enough drug to warrant switching to an extremely potent but longer lasting maintenance drug like buprenorphine, so just either stop taking it altogether and man up through the withdrawals, and accept the fact that you've dug yourself a hole with pain killers and that obviously it's not going to be pain-free no matter how you do this, bite the bullet and go cold turkey, OR do your best to rapid detox with your remaining oxycodone as I mentioned previously.

As far as the journals, ABSOLUTELY. Feel free to use this thread to document your taper and recovery and you'd be surprised by the support you get here from people who are, have been, or will be in your shoes at some point in their lives, but it's the internet and everything you post is forever so if you want to keep a private journal that's totally fine too, but you should be writing down everything that you're going through, the good and the bad, and it will help you keep to your goals and also show you just how far you've come. After 1 week without opiates, you might notice mild improvement, in 2 weeks, definitely mild improvement, then a month goes by, and soon you've been clean another month, then 3, then 6, and all your hard work is documented, signed and dated, so if you ever think about relapsing you can go through that journal and look at everything you are about to throw away, all the suffering you went through.

A lot of people use bluelight to document their recovery, it's inspirational to us all to see some positivity amongst the sea of misery and health complications induced by drugs.