Disappointed - Addiction & Recovery Message Board

mel486 · 01-25-2009, 04:58 AM

I am so disappointed right now I can't even see straight! I missed my goal - No! I blew my goal up and missed it by 6-1/2 hours. I didn't even make 24 hours since I took my last pill. Tapering down went in the wrong direction today. The withdrawals were more intense tonight and I broke at 3AM and took the Percocet earlier than I wanted to. My shaking has stopped and I'm exhausted. It's 5 AM and I'm going to go to bed and get some sleep. I feel as if I let the group down.

reachout · 01-25-2009, 09:47 AM

Hi Denon

Friend, no one is disappointed in you here except you. Smiles. As we make our way off of an opiate, there are no two days that are exactly the same. We set out with a basic plan, but often it must be tweeked in order to keep making progress. Progress... that is always the goal. Progress. The closer we are to the final doses, the harder it becomes.

Personally, I think you are tormenting yourself a bit with the way you are tapering. Rather than trying to stretch your dose to the maximum number of hours ( which is sending you into full withdrawal each time, perhaps you might make the stretch shorter and the dose smaller. It probably will mean crushing a pill into crumbs and measuring the dose from that. As I neared the end of the taper from Oxycodone, I began merging 3 doses a day into two and then one. Since you are already at one dose, I would suggest to start making that dose smaller and smaller. Rather than waiting until you are beyond control with symptoms, start waiting as long into the day as possible and then taking it. Stay put until you level out a bit.. a few days. Then stratch an hour. Keep at it.. cutting really slowly, strretching a bit, leveling out. For me, I nnever let that last dose happen after early evening to help my body start learning to fall asleep on its own again.

In tapering, we always get antsy at the end. There is a great tendency to want to jump, rather than walk, off at the end. It is not withour symptoms, but slow and easy keeps the symptoms more possible to endure. It also gives the brain and body time to adjust gradually to having less drug and producing more of its own chemicals.

I hope you have gotten some rest. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, Friend.... it will start shining brighter for you soon.

With all hope
reach

mel486 · 01-25-2009, 10:57 AM

Thanks for the encouraging words. I got 5-1/2 hours sleep this morning and I'm feeling better. I came to the same conclusion laying in bed this morning that instead of taking one dose and pushing for a time goal, to split the dose so that I take it twice a day. I'm going to try that starting today.

Since I have never been through this before I don't know what to expect. I'm learning each day and I need to realize not to expect things to go the way "I" want them to go, but I have to see how my body is going to react to the decreased drug and work around that.

Starting another day...

pingeye2 · 01-25-2009, 11:40 AM

Denon,

I am proud of you for going through what you are going through right now. I know, just like everyone else here knows, what a lonely feeling it is to go through withdrawl. Whether it was the times I went through withdrawl by choice to try and quit my drug of choice, or the times I went through withdrawl waiting for a phone call to come with my drug of choice, the bottom line is it is a terrible feeling that cannot be competly described to "an outsider". There is one positive aspect to these terrible feelings, both physicaly and emotionally, that withdrawl or in your case tapering can end up helping us in our recovery. I am sure that at this point you are thinking about how great the pills make you feel and how everything would be fine if you could just take enough pills to get you high, and in this regard those thoughts will never completely go away. Years from now after you have kicked the habit, you will always have those thoughts come into your head from time to time and hopefully your memory of withdrawl and all of the the symptoms that withdrawl entails will keep you from going back.

The one thing that is my anchor in recovery is remembering all of those lonely nights and the depression and physical pain that I had to deal with waiting for my best friend opiates to bail me out. I know that now I no longer have to deal with those terrible feelings and I no longer have to feel like I am on an island alone with no where else to go but down. So right now try and remember how you feel and how awful it is and tell yourself that these are feelings that you never want to experience again. And remember these thoughts months from now or even years from now when you are getting those cravings to go back, and your brain is telling you that you have changed and you can handle just taking a few pills, know that you cannot handle jsut taking a few pills, know that even taking one pill will start a chain of events that will bring you right back to that lonely island. Remember all of the positive things that have happened to you since you cleaned up, and remember all of the stress it took to live that life at the behest of a pill.

I wish you the best of luck in your recovery, and if even one thing that i just wrote can help you in any way, shape or form either now or in the future than that is a positive thing. One thing that is often overlooked in society because of the stigma of drug addiction, is that recovering addicts are very strong people and posses will power that others couldnt even imagine. What i try to explain to people who feel that all addicts are just weak junkies is to think of themselves and picture having to stop eating completely, granted it is different because humans need food to survive, but i think it is a meaningful comparision. Now for those to people to think of what strenght and will power it would take to deprive themsleves of something that their body is beggin for, well this is no different than the strength and will power it takes an addict to kick their addiction, because in the strong grasp of addiction, the human body depends on this drug in the same way that it depends on food to survive. Sorry to go on and on about this but sometimes when i start writing it just keeps coming out. Again, good luck to you.

mel486 · 01-25-2009, 03:59 PM

Thanks pingeye2 - I think my biggest problem was being so naive about the drug that the doctors put me on. Until I started having withdrawals and not knowing what was happening and then I started the research. I'm still learning more and more each day.

I never took the pills for any euphoric effect. I strictly took them to help relieve the pain. Between them and the other drugs that the doctor had me on, they made me sleepy, which I enjoyed because when I was asleep was the only time I didn't feel pain. The Percs cover the pain some, but never ever stopped it.

I love to write and one night before bed I wrote a short article called, "I'm a Drug Addict." I learned from this group that I'm NOT a drug addict, but I have a drug dependency to stop my pain. There was a good analogy comparing insulin to a diabetic. A diabetic is not addicted to insulin, they are dependent on it. I'll have to throw away my article I wrote now. :-)

I found out that I learn something new everyday and I have tried in the four days that I have been on this forum to share that knowledge with people here. I'm taking things one day at a time right now and what I learn or experience today, I'll apply to tomorrow and see what it brings and and try to get me one step closer to becoming dependency free.

Thanks for sharing with me.