Right back at you, TLD, and CONGRATS on your sobriety from opioids!!! We all know this is no easy task!! I hope you are DAMN PROUD of yourself and I wish you all the best in continuing to recover and rebuild your life! :D Right on!
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Ruby,
"the last dose" makes some excellent points. They brought up PAWS (Post Acute Withdrawal), which is no joke. I talked about the acute withdrawal, and if you are taking something short-acting like oxy or h, those should last approximately 3 or so days. For some, a bit longer. I find my worst physical symptoms - aside from insomnia, which takes a long time to straighten out for ner personally as I'm already inclined that way by nature - start to improve after 3 days. Important to note that when you feel so incredibly ill, those 3 days/72 hours feel like a fucking eternity. And to make it worse still, thee overwhelming, overwhelming majority of people CAN NOT SLEEP for longer than a half hour, maybe a full hour if theyre really lucky, so you get to be wide fucking awake and cannot take a sleep time machine into the future lol. I write "lol", but as youre going through it, it doesn't feel funny or humorous in the least!
I'd like to build on the excellent points they made, two things:
1.) PAWS can be terrible. Some people get it worse than others. You don't want to find out through experience if youre one of them. So, after the acute withdrawal, you may we'll not be out of the woods. You may find yourself completely unable to sleep, you may find yourself struggling with MASSIVE anxiety, depression, etc. Opioids/opiates ate very similar to endorphins, which the body naturally produces. Therefore, when you take then regularly, your brain thinks,"Oh, ok, you've got that covered for me, so I don't need to produce endorphins so much." Endorphins serve many important purposes and have several tasks and functions. A quick google search will give you more info on that. So, once you come off of these drugs, your body struggles to find its equilibrium. It takes a while before your brain produces adequate endorphins again. Of course, dopamine and more is also affected. Then theres also the way the brain down-regulates, the way it "grows" more receptors while you take these substances to be able to handle the influx of opi's. These are things you can google, or use the search function on this site for. This is the main thing your body is going through during WD.-.desperately trying to re-balance it's
chemicals, neurotransmitters, etc. This is why you suffer going cold turkey. It's not the same feeling as having a bit of an opi hangover the next day. Its far worse.
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2.) I like to also warn people of the following, because I dint think people think about or talk about this enough, and itr can legitimately create a huge problem for your future self should you experience enormous physical pain. Having a chronic, painful condition that makes mee susceptible to bring in life-altering pain, pain that interred with my sleep, ability to work, my ability to "life" lol... I feel it important to point out that one day, you may find yourself in so much pain (whether due to illness, an accident, etc - doesn't matter why), & you may find your health falling apart due to lack of proper sleep.... And other measures to improve youre level of pain have proven ineffective..... This is a case where strong pain meds could be the best option.
But.... if you developed even a moderate habit, you will have a tolerance to them, and find your pain is not easily controlled. Doctors npwadays are mostly on the "opi's are evil and I don't wanna lose my license" train, over-hyping the negative and ignorinh the fact that in some cases, it may be the only known way to reclaim some semblance of a life of quality. What will you do if that happens to you? When the dose prescribed doesn't cut it because your tolerance is high?
You can search here on this site for "chronic pain opiates opioids" and see some sad stories.
You truly don't know what thee future holds. Opi's are incredible and to bee respected. For some, it's the only way they can sleep and takes care of themselves att all. Opis have a placed and a purpose. But if abused, they can turn into a terrible experience.
That all being said, by now you have either taken them or not. What did you decide too do and why, and what will you do inn the future? Please do update us.
Theres a lot of loving, caring, sportive energy here. You have found, imo, the greatest community of it's kind online. If you update, you erlol receive a lot of suport from caring people with experience. Wishing you well, hon. Take care. Peace.