HeScoresHeShoots
Bluelighter
Hi everyone, I haven't posted in a long time and I doubt anyone remembers me but I wanted to share my experience on this topic on the off chance it could help someone else.
I'll leave out most of the tedious details for brevity's sake but the way the whole thing started out was I got effectively laid off from my dishwashing job I'd had for almost 4 years b/c I was coming in with my arms looking as if I'd bear-hugged a cactus, at 135lbs(I'm 5'9) and I was either high or coming in sicker than death. They told me I could get my job back if I went to detox and brought them back paperwork saying I'd completed it so I went to the Emergency Room a week later an absolute mess so they'd basically have to take me into detox. The detox in my area was actually a suboxone based detox but they were full up so I ended up getting sent by Cabulance two towns over to another detox that was methadone based. I was put on a decent ammount of methadone and librium as well as some muscle relaxers that with a few nights of decent sleep and some real food made me feel human for the first time in well over a year. They allowed me to stay for a week and at the end of the week they asked me if I wanted to be fast-tracked to the methadone clinic or if I just wanted off the stuff. Me being the good addict I was saw free drugs and decided that was definitely something I'd be interested in. The trade off, however, was that I couldn't just go back to my hometown b/c there is no clinic out there and there was no realistic way I could make it to one on a daily basis but at the time all that was waiting for me at home was an eviction notice and a lot more of the same misery so I opted to go to a rehab so I could continue to take methadone. For the first few months methadone was just a free opiate to me and I kept going up until my clinician told me that I either had to switch to maintenance(I was on the six-month taper by default) or I'd have to start coming down. I got the documentation required to switch to maintenance with no intention of ever coming off the stuff and meanwhile I'd completed two rehab programs and then transferred to a long-term program. Long story short I'm now over a year and a half sober and I have a new job and I'm back in school after 5 years away. I can't say it was all the methadone but knowing I couldn't just go back to the way I was living without going through methadone withdrawal was sometimes the only thing that kept me from doing it.
I'll leave out most of the tedious details for brevity's sake but the way the whole thing started out was I got effectively laid off from my dishwashing job I'd had for almost 4 years b/c I was coming in with my arms looking as if I'd bear-hugged a cactus, at 135lbs(I'm 5'9) and I was either high or coming in sicker than death. They told me I could get my job back if I went to detox and brought them back paperwork saying I'd completed it so I went to the Emergency Room a week later an absolute mess so they'd basically have to take me into detox. The detox in my area was actually a suboxone based detox but they were full up so I ended up getting sent by Cabulance two towns over to another detox that was methadone based. I was put on a decent ammount of methadone and librium as well as some muscle relaxers that with a few nights of decent sleep and some real food made me feel human for the first time in well over a year. They allowed me to stay for a week and at the end of the week they asked me if I wanted to be fast-tracked to the methadone clinic or if I just wanted off the stuff. Me being the good addict I was saw free drugs and decided that was definitely something I'd be interested in. The trade off, however, was that I couldn't just go back to my hometown b/c there is no clinic out there and there was no realistic way I could make it to one on a daily basis but at the time all that was waiting for me at home was an eviction notice and a lot more of the same misery so I opted to go to a rehab so I could continue to take methadone. For the first few months methadone was just a free opiate to me and I kept going up until my clinician told me that I either had to switch to maintenance(I was on the six-month taper by default) or I'd have to start coming down. I got the documentation required to switch to maintenance with no intention of ever coming off the stuff and meanwhile I'd completed two rehab programs and then transferred to a long-term program. Long story short I'm now over a year and a half sober and I have a new job and I'm back in school after 5 years away. I can't say it was all the methadone but knowing I couldn't just go back to the way I was living without going through methadone withdrawal was sometimes the only thing that kept me from doing it.
