New user, accepted to med school but have to beat this nefarious disease first. Hi :)

[achiral_spiral]

Brief introduction. My name is Matt. I graduated from college with degrees in Cellular Biology and Psychology, but was addicted to opiates since the second semester of my freshman year. Also smoked pot every day since high school up until last year.

I was a "functional" addict though and maintained a 4.0 GPA through my first two years, but my grades began to slip when I went from popping percocets to railing OCs. Got up to over 100mg a day and by 3rd year of school began shooting morphine, dilaudid, oxy, opana, and even fentanyl. Never did heroin because I never ran into it where I was in college. By year 4 I was missing classes and exams and my last semester GPA was a 2.6. I graduated still with honors with an overall GPA of 3.77 (my first two and a half years buffered be, but the downward trend did not bode well for the medical school application process, in regards to the selection committees noticing such a trend). Still I applied, thinking that getting in would motivate me to quit on my own. This proved untrue. I decided to withdraw my enrollment and take the year or two off to get things straight.

I am highly knowledgeable in biology, chemistry, and pharmacology. In addition to my pre-med education I took graduate courses in biochemistry while an undergrad, and did two summer internships in a pharmacology lab at a major research university. I still want to go into the medical field, although not necessarily as a doctor. If and when I beat this disease I would like to aim for a dual MD/PhD and hopefully turn the negatives in my life into positives and either treat people with addictions or do research in addictions, or ideally both as a professor at a medical center. These are lofty goals which would require me to distance myself, psychologically and temporally from my active addiction. After 6 years of opiate addiction which progressed from popping pills to snorting pills to shooting pills to shooting heroin, and two stints in rehab which resulted in relapses after 60 days and 80 days, respectively, I have been using again for the past 5 months.

I also suffer from anxiety attacks and insomnia and non-epileptic/idiosyncratic seizures (they happen if I get dehydrated, sleep-deprived, imbalanced electrolytes, etc) and before I was addicted to opiates had a legitimate prescription to Klonopin which I did not abuse. I took myself off after graduating because I was managing my anxiety with coping mechanisms and preferred not to be on the benzos while abusing opiates for obvious reasons (the combination if not spaced out properly or at low enough doses could and would have killed me). Recently my doctor and father (who is also a physician and aware of my addiction) agreed that I should go back on Klonopin. I took them while still using heroin daily (just 0.1 or 0.2g per day, so not an INSANE amount, although my withdrawals are particularly severe for the relatively low daily use I have,.

Anyways, Last Tuesday and Wednesday I binged and did 1g in 20 hours and almost OD'd, almost burned my apartment down nodding out smoking a cigarette, and might have taken a klonopin with the high (for me) doses of H. That Wednesday I after I came out of the fog, I decided I needed to detox myself. I used my Klonopin to manage the withdrawal symptoms by taking twice my normal dosage, three times a day instead of two times a day. I went through the acute WDs and made it to today, Sunday, and unfortunately relapsed and dosed with two points today,. I am hoping that I will not go back to square one and experience the exact same intensity of WDs as if I had never taken 4 whole days off, but this time I do not have my Klonopins to aid with the WDs to allow me to still go to work and get some sleep...My questions for you guys are:

1) Do you think my WDs will be less intense after quitting for 4 days, relapsing, and not using again after the one day of relapse which involved two doses?

2) If so, should I go back to using again until I can get my Klonopin refilled in 11 days and then quit and manage WDs with the Klonopins? They worked AMAZING for my WDs last week. I slept 7 hours, only waking twice, no cold sweats, minimal nausea, not much vomiting except the 2nd day, and of course imodium for the diarrhea

Thanks for any input you guys might have. I intend to contribute as much as possible to this site given my education level, interest in drugs and pharmacology, and personal experience with the hellish nightmare that is addiction. Thanks for allowing me to participate here, I hope to assimilate well into the bluelight community!

 

[achiral_spiral]

oh, by the way, I did join last year for one or two days and then traded my laptop for dope...and am just now returning to the community, so I still consider myself a new member

 

[Xerolad]

Med school is not like college. It's now-or-never time. If you want to be a doctor, you and your previous life need to part company immediately. You just won't get through it if you don't. You're a smart person, probably the smartest in all your classes. You are about to enter a world where everyone is as smart as or smarter than you, and if you can't put opiates aside for the duration, you are going to stand out and not in a good way. Med school is extremely demanding. Go through rehab and stay clean until you are through school. Once you finish, you can do what you want as long as you keep up appearances.

 

[BlueHues]

^^I believe you posted something similar in another thread, and I agree with the response you got....Relapsing after 4 days cold turkey will most likely reset the whole opiate withdrawal process. You hve quite an extensive history of having a physical dependence to opiates. I've used IV heroin on and off for 16 years. I've detoxed myself, gone through about 10 medically supervised detoxes for heroin, detoxed from methadone after being on that for a few years, had prescriptions to suboxone for 6+ years and switched back and forth from heroin to sub maintenance multiple times.....I have at least 5 close friends who have used opiates as long as I have who would say the same thing, been to rehab multiple times and spent multiple years in 12 step programs personally meeting hundreds of opiate addicts that will tell you the same things..."Using once will reset the whole detox!"....

I had to give you that little resume because every time someone asks a similar question on BL, all the casual pill users come out of the wood-work and try to say that you don't go back to the beginning if you relapse for one day...

The only time that this would be true is if you were still in the early stages of opiate use and you're brain hadn't been permanently altered by opiate dependence....It can take a long time for that to happen....I've known people who used opiates 3-4 days a week for a year, and when they try to stop, the withdrawals they get are more mild and of a shorter duration than what they eventually become....But after six years you've definitely crossed the line to where using opiates only once in the midst of withdrawal will cause you to start over! Also, 3 consecutive days of use will give you a physical habit again and the WDs will be almost as intense as they would be if you'd been using for 6 months!

Opiate addiction sucks! That's why, when I plan to pick up the needle, I plan on starting a habit....I don't even try to lie to myself anymore!