Hello
@Conscious-signal-447, welcome to Bluelight and thank you for reaching out. I am sorry you are struggling to keep afloat. What are your intentions? Would you like advice on how to stop using drugs? Are you using anything that is not prescribed?
I don't have much experience with opiates so I hope you someone can chime in and help with some words of wisdom.
Hello
@Conscious-signal-447, welcome to Bluelight and thank you for reaching out. I am sorry you are struggling to keep afloat. What are your intentions? Would you like advice on how to stop using drugs? Are you using anything that is not prescribed?
I don't have much experience with opiates so I hope you someone can chime in and help with some words of wisdom.
Hi Jerry,
Ideally i would like to stabilize and become more functional like socially speaking. Also, stabilize and gradually decrease pregabalin use. I don’t really know what is the root cause of my agoraphobia- prior to recovery this was never an issue.
As I mentioned there is a lot that I’ve tried without a whole lot of success.
I hope someone thinking about recovery doesn’t read this and use it as an excuse to not pursue recovery. Recovery seems to really work for some people, Ive met some people that have had astonishing success with it. But that just isn’t me and I’m just trying to be honest about where I am emotionally so I can find some solutions that work for me. Because what I am doing isn’t working at all right now.
I do not use more than what is prescribed opiate wise, or rather I haven’t since I went to inpatient treatment in August 2019. I was discharged on suboxone 24mg and have tapered to suboxone 2mg. I guess I feel like I can’t really say that I’m clean because of the suboxone.
I routinely misuse pregabalin. It is not a controlled substance where I live (yet) so I have at least 2 scripts rocking at any given time. I am prescribed pregabalin 150mg a day (one of my scripts anyway) but use between 300-600mg a day. It’s a horrific drug to try and get off of. Im no stranger to managing withdrawal symptoms but pregabalin is a different beast. I see a lot of people on here recommending it for the management of opiate withdrawal symptoms (this is how I was first introduced to it too) and let me save you a trip through hell- never use pregabalin for opiate withdrawals. Honestly like exhaust all other comfort medications (clonidine, loperamide, Advil, Tylenol, gabapentin if absolutely necessary, benzos short term for sleep etc) and then wait 72 hours before even considering pregabalin. If I had to do this all over again I would have taken the 3-5 ugly days of opiate withdrawal vs. Pregabalin addiction.
If I were reading this I think a logical question that I would have would be “jeez if you are having so much trouble with the pregabalin, why not go back to inpatient treatment?”. The answer is the medical community has still not recognized pregabalin addiction as a “thing”, despite the fact that the occurance of it is very well documented in Europe. No recognition of the disorder prevents inpatient admission from being covered by my extended health benefits. Secondly, I have a 4 year long custody/access family court battle that has literally drained every resource I have (including my pension, all savings, all lines of credit, etc) and any “relapse” would end my case in a bad way (according to my lawyer). Finally, as I mentioned in my intro, I self reported to my regulatory college (I’m a health care professional) and the hoops that I have had to jump through as a consequence are positively asinine. You would think that a health care professional self reporting an opiate addiction would be perceived as a responsible, healthy and safe (in terms for both the health care professional and the public they serve)…I certainly thought this would be the case but as it turns out I was dead wrong. You are treated equally as harshly for self reporting an addiction as if you overdosed at work and had to be resuscitated by your colleagues. Any “relapse” or even “lapse” would definitively end my career…such as it is. Presently I am randomly called 3 times a month to take a witnessed urine drug screen. This urine drug screen is in addition to the urine drug screens I do for my suboxone script. If even OTC drugs show up in my urine and I don’t have a script it is considered a relapse and breech of contract/professional misconduct.
So ya. I’m in between a rock and a hard place in the worse possible way. Can’t get help because I know what the fall out will look like, but can’t keep going as I am. If you have any advice at all I’m all ears. My situation feels totally untenable.
Thank you to whoever is reading this. I hope things are going better for you then they are for me.
-E
) burdened with this. Each of us has to untangle the roots of this killer for ourselves because though the condition is identical the roots can be wildly varied and diverse. Homophobia has surely played a part in your story. I hope that you can stay away from the meth--it's a seductive road even when everyone knows how it usually ends.
(I will be gone for about two weeks starting April 3 however so please don't hesitate to reach out to any of the mods at any time.)
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
