reachout

Hello Old Friend

It is good to see you and good to know that the effort to get off the merry-go-round continues. It has been a longand hard road for you and the time is ripe to try another interstate here.

You wrote about going "full throttle" with the withdrawal and that got me to thinking. There is a kind of excitement in pusuing withdrawal. We have a goal, see a finish line, have a purpose to accomplish. You know I did a super long taper from oxycodone and then Xanax... months and months and months. For me, the stamina to do it probably came from the fact that for the first time in years, I actually had a goal, a purpose each day. Up until then, I was just existing, going through the most basic chores (and the least amount of them) and just waiting for each day to end from the moment I awoke. Get up, muddle through work, come home and go to bed. I had no interest in life at all. I was dying physically and spiritually and just biding my time until the end came.... which probably wasn't too far away when the withdrawal commitment finally came.

Months of withdrawing sure wasn't fun and I hated the symptoms. However, I did get a sense of accomplishment each time I conquered a symptom and lived through it. Finally, the end came, the last pill was taken and I was done. I evaluated it and thought to myself, "Now what? Now what the hell do I do?" I had retired so there was no job. My physical disabilities prevented me from finding another job. What was I going to do? Sit around and stare at the wall all day? It was like the letdown after all the frenzy Christmas can bring and the day after it is all done, the excitement is over. It was then that I realized I had lost the thinking about how to live not on drugs.

I had to relearn how to be on a routine. I had not done any household chores for a couple of years and had just left it all to Hubby, drugging myself out of the guilt. I had withdrawn from all my friends and family and had left them cold. So that day, I picked up a broom. I began to sweep the kitchen and as I did, I thought about all the things I had not done for so long that are a part of actual living. I folded some laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and thought and thought. Before I knew it, the morning had passed. I had accomplished things. Although the things were small and mundane, I had accomplished them. And so it went. Every day, new, small things were accomplished. I was in motion, moving physically and accomplishing small things. Baby steps, but steps none-the-less.

It came time to move on to bigger things. I needed to relearn to interact with others again. Phone calls to family and friends began. I found my interest rekindled in sharing back and forth with others. I rediscovered slowly the happiness that comes with interacting. Laughter came back, smiling became more natural again. I braved some lunch dates, I participated in family occasions. I found joy in spending time with my grandson. I began to truly live again, feeling the happiness of the good and the pain of the sad. Feeling.

I am sharing this because I don't want you to stop going "full throttle" when the withdrawal is finished. I want you to fully grasp and understand without a doubt that there is work to be done to learn to live a sober life again. If we only subtract the drugs from our lives and merely continue the same life, we will fail to reach true sobriety. We need to work in our brains to rediscover life again and to experience it as we did before we let the drugs become the center of our existence.

Everyday life is sobriety is pretty mundane, a lot of routine. However, a life in sobriety is also a peaceful life. We make plans, we spend time with family and friends, we work, we eat, we clean. We lose the desire to use drugs and eventually, we just stop thinking about them. We go to bed each night without the guilt of having wasted yet another day and we awake looking forward to a new day.

So, Ice, as you continue the terrific progress you are making in withdrawing, start making plans and think about the steps to be made to make sober living. Think about the routine things that you have stopped doing in drug haze and which you can start to do again to help ease yourself into sober living. Relearn and rekindle your passion for living.

Always
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