Mental Health What's wrong with my body? opiate/benzo/stim use

[RobotRipping]

So in october i decided no more opiates and since then i've been on a long taper with kratom and lope and a few hiccups where i binged on dilaudid and oxy and each time used codeine for a number of weeks to keep me stable in school (in the last 2 months). Am I just stuck in paws right now? I don't get it. I have 0 motivation, feel fucking depressed/stressed like i can't take it anymore, my usual psychotic issues are still being covered up with my etizolam habit but the other shit is really getting to me.

I feel like i am going to snap some days and other days i feel fucking great. I've had a few manic episodes over the years as well but they were all drug induced. My dad has bipolar depression as well and my family has a a huge list of mental disorders that it makes me afraid to even reproduce.


anyway, i'm going to see a psychiatrist who specializes in ADD/ADHD and i already take 20mg dexedrine every day that's not scripted so i know he could certainly help me but i don't know if i'm just trying to get a solid connection to be stimmed every day or whether i'm really addressing the underlying issues. I don't even know what the underlying issues are, mostly that i am bored with this mundane reality and i use drugs to make it more interesting and the drug use has fucked me in every way imaginable.

So i know opiates/benzos aren't going to fix my angst, anxiety, inability to focus and complete lack of motivation, but is it just PAWS still? or that i do indeed have an underlying mental disorder or a combination of all these things?

i'm just confused, all i know are the symptoms, i have no idea what's wrong with me at this point. I know if i don't take 8-10mg of lope a day, i shit myself nonstop so definitely still some opiate issues there.

I feel like i'm dead without dexedrine and it takes about 40mg of dexedrine to make me feel like i think i should feel.

anyone else have any ideas? gone through this yourself? i can't tell whether i'm a polydrug addict or whether i am trying to cope with an underlying issue or both. Either way, i've been wanting to blow my fucking brains out for the last month for some reason, with brief periods of happiness. Something isn't the way it used to be in my body and i'm just not sure what it is.

TL;DR I'm just looking for some advice, or to talk to someone who has been through this shit and seen the other side or even not. Just any insight whatsoever would be appreciated. basically i am wondering if i will come out of this terrible state of mixed emotions because it's the result of my past opiate abuse or is it an underlying condition that needs to be treated? specifically with stimulants or would that make things even worse?.

also to note: i'm in a fucking intense condensed course at school right now and the pressure is huge, so that is playing a massive role in all this but at the same time, i am using stims and trying to detox off opiates completely and am dependent on etizolam at >10mg/day, never thought i would see the days of double digits fuck.

 

[FnX]

i can't tell whether i'm a polydrug addict or whether i am trying to cope with an underlying issue or both.

It really sounds like your usage started as self-medicating and escapism of sorts so personally I would be inclined to believe that it is the combination of both. When someone takes the path of self-medicating with psychoactive drugs, rarely if ever does the underlying reason just disappear unless properly treated/addressed. I think it's quite rare to know exactly what the underlying reason even is in the first place.

I'm also guessing that the etizolam you're currently taking is seriously hindering the recovery/healing process your mind and body are going through; I've experienced it myself with clonazepam before and even though I can't really say for sure, I think it's a universal benzo thing. Basically at worst it turns the whole recovery process into a endless fucking nightmare. To know what exactly lies underneath I believe your only option is to get rid of all the excess, but that's truly easier said than done. Once there are no drugs affecting your system and your body has healed to where ever it's point of normalcy lies, then I believe the question whether you have an underlying condition that should be treated with stimulants or not can be answered. Otherwise how can you ever know if you're medicating an underlying condition or just offsetting PAWS, acute withdrawals or even benzo side-effects? It's hard for me to say this because it applies to myself as well, I would so much prefer a quick and easy way out but I think that would be just shooting in the dark at best..

The biggest problem in your case is the tricky school situation I guess. You're under so much high pressure right now that you need 'afterburners' just to get by day by day that it's hard for me to see how could you possibly throw away the life boat of drugs to allow your body to recover without hurting other areas of your life such as school. Usually people who are stuck in a similar jam tend to go the route of long and slow tapers, but to be honest it sounds like you need change, answers and a new direction to head for sooner rather than later. It feels like suggesting a long and slow etizolam taper might just make you want to blow your brains out even more as it would just add extra pressure on top of an unbearably stressful life situation. Maybe during a much more relaxed period of time in school? I will promise you that if you manage to properly taper yourself off from etizolam, in the long run you will become a stronger and mentally more resilient person than you ever were when using benzos. The problem is that before you can get there you'll probably have to go from worse to worst.

Though I do respect your decision if you plan on taking benzos for the rest of your life. Just know that benzodiazepines impair all learning and recovery is a form of learning too, perhaps not conscious learning but you are effectively re-training your mind and your body. The worst part is that the person taking benzos usually isn't aware of this deficit in the first place, only after a serious reduction in dosage or complete abstinence does it become obvious.

 

[RobotRipping]

thanks for the reply, i figured my post was too long for anyone to get through it lol but i greatly appreciate your take on things.

Each week i'm getting better, so it's definitely opiate PAWS that were/are causing the majority of my problems. So i figured that out at least and the cravings are getting easier and easier, and life is as well.

I am tapering my etizolam doses, i know it's just a bandaid solution but i did about 1 year and 5 months of having no benzos, except once a week or something for panic attacks (in the last 3 months, before that i was benzo free). I did get back to normal, but the very issues that got me into benzos were still fully intact and because of my benzo abuse from years ago, i also ended up with depersonalization and derealization, to the point that it is debilitating to live a normal life. If i lived alone in the woods, and was self-sustaining my life, it'd be no big deal but the fact that i have to live in this society makes it near impossible to function.

Benzos do however make me depressed, to the point where i consider jumping out in front of a car or a bus or ODing. That's what led me to etizolam as it doesn't cause this effect and i've been taking it since January or late December. The issue with etizolam is that i have a big benzo tolerance and i did abuse it at first, so my doses are too high right now.

I'm working on correcting that, remaining relatively stable at 8-9mg/day now and hope to go down to 3mg/day either over the summer or in 6 months depending on how stressed out i am. There's always going to be an excuse to stay on etizolam i know but i do think it's necessary for me to function at this point, as i've fucked up my brain after years of abuse that my recovery time would be in the 2 year range, which is not practical for me, and even after that, i may still have DP/DR and other strange symptoms.

I have gone through therapy to address the underlying issues and it profoundly changed my life for the better. But there's no doubt there's still some seriously unresolved stuff under there and i'll likely go back into therapy in the summer when i don't have the stress and time constrains that school put upon me.

I did notice severe cognitive impairments with benzodiazepines, but it's not really the case with etizolam; my marks are quite high in school and i excel and learn/remember things extremely well, it's like my old photographic memory is coming back. I may be fooling myself here but i completely understand what you mean. I don't know if i'm really impaired because i've lost my reference point but in comparison to my classmates i do quite well.

and actually a long and slow etizolam taper is completely cool with me. CT withdrawal and i will blow my brains out no questions asked but etizolam isn't that bad to actually taper with. I can get down 1mg/week if i'm really trying and the only issue is insomnia. I think i may have bipolar because of my manic episodes and hypomania, but i don't typically get depressed, of course those bouts of hypomania and mania were triggered by drugs but my dad is also bipolar. We've talked a lot about our symptoms and they completely align. I do have ADD though and those 2 disorders don't go together, and my psychiatrist isn't much help in figuring out what's wrong with me either as the symptoms for each overlap quite a bit. I just don't want to get stuck on tricyclics, anti pschotics, mood stabilizers and all that stuff, as i saw my dad go through it and it really sucked for him. He treats his bipolar with cannabis only and it works better than any other med i've seen him on. I smoke cannabis as well, but i can't smoke much or i'll get anxiety, if i had the right strain i'm sure it'd do wonders though.

what a struggle life is sometimes but i work really hard, study really hard and that pay off is better than i'd ever get from a drug and that realization has kept my drug addiction issues at bay, i'm just dependent at this point.

I have a new direction, changed my lifestyle completely, even eating habits, forced myself to face my fears and all that worked wonders but it wasn't quite enough. All in all i am extremely proud of where i am at now, before i used to be an unemployed junkie living off my girlfriend's money and support. Now i am studying in a highly profitable field and will easily get a job in my field, especially in the area i live. Things aren't all rosy of course but i definitely think my opiate addiction was to blame for the misery i have faced over the last 6 months and i'm just about over it.

so really my plan is to taper down to 3mg/day of etizolam and if life is okay at that point, i'll taper more and try to get off etizolam completely, as it's expensive as fuck to maintain and if my source runs out i risk death or seizures or terrible withdrawals.

As for the stimulants, i'm not sure what to think, they calm my anxiety (d-amp) as well as greatly improve my concentration/focus and memory and i do legitimately suffer from ADD according to my psych and the DSM. It's tough to say if it's the right path but i don't abuse d-amp at all, nor do i abuse etizolam. They don't caues mania for me though, so it kind of rules out bipolar but then SSRIs do cause mania for me, i just don't know, everything is conflicting in my mind.

and wow this is another long post, definitely d-amp that does that lol but it's such a complicated and convoluted issue in my eyes and i could write a book on what i've experienced. I really do hope one day i can come off any gabaergic and function like a normal person, have kids and have them look up to me and not to know that i'm a junkie. I want to be successful and am absolutely determined this time around, i will not fail, i refuse, i'll try over and over again until i die if i have to. No more, 'fuck it, life sucks, i hate myself so i'm going to get fucked up forever' that just didn't work out for me at all.

anyway thanks for your insight, it's more appreciated than you can imagine. No one else understands me and my situation like you did above.