to everyone looking for help and hope please read for yourself overcoming narcotic addiction

[jw272]

well i am here to tell all who do not posses the power of struggle, i have been taking hard narcotics for 6 1/2 years those drugs made me do horrible things and things i am not proud of but i stand here today sober and clean and no more withdrawl feelings. i started out playing semi pro football and got injured with a spinal cord concussion and 2 lower herniated discs so that means yes i got prescribed oxycontin,vicodin,percocet,darvocet,roxycet,loritab,and methadone. and please anyone who is thinking about going to a detox place, please think twice about it. if you want them to fill your body with horrible drugs just to get you hooked on something else, its not worth it. there is no hope in clinics. i see doctors as drug dealers the more you come in the more they get payed especially right now in this economy. people i have taken oxycontin 80 mg 9 times a day, and 10 mg of percocet and vicodin 15 times a day, i was almost a freakin vegitable.
look plain and simple you are the one in control of your life narcotics are the devils drug, my withdrawls lasted almost a full year till my body got back to normal, the hard withdrawls where the famous feeling like a dead fish flopping outside of the water, cold chills, shaking badly after i woke up, couldent or dident want to move at all, throwing up for no reason, peeeing out of my rear end, pure hell..and like i said take control of your life and just stop, the reason your body is doing the withdrawls is because its doing its best to get back to its "a" game. what helped me was my strong will to survive i did this to myself and now i had to clean myself....there is hope pray to god or whatever you believe in. you do not need depression meds you do not need more drugs, shut up sit down and survive. i am clean now for almost 2 years now i have no cravings i do not want that again....point blank if my arm gets shot off, just pass me the tequila and a couple of advil

[beatingthis]

Well, thanks for this.
Good on ya!


Terry

[randy1953]

I am happy for you but its not the same for everyone.To begin with heavy opiate use hits the mid age folks much more than the younger ones as i am assuming you are. When you are older its much harder to have that strong will like you had. Also every situation is differnt did you have love ones around you for support, did you have to worry about keeping up a job for your survial? What I am saying is this one size does not fit all and honestly what you did is hardly ever done on purpose. Where you will see it done is in jail where a person has to go cold turkey and has no chance to do anything else. However in the world out side its far differnt. I know I am addicted and I do not live in the US where you have clinics and recovery centers. These are a godsend to people because first they can flush out all the drugs with IVs this by itself helps so much and then there is what to do when your clean unless the real issue is taken care of as to why you used in the first place then you will use again.
This is where a possible ssri or another drug may do the trick.  Taking pain killers when there is real pain does not cause addition its after the pain goes and still using that does so there is a reason a person uses after the pain is gone and that reason needs to be addressed. So I am happy for you but remember a relaspe is always possible.
Randy

[HelpinUtah]

WTG JW!  Great job!!!!  It's not easy, but you DID IT!  WOOHOO!!!

Personally, I do believe that some people do need antidepressants or a drug rehab center.  My opinion is that whatever works for the "individual" is key.  Some people can go cold turkey, some need to taper, some need rehab., some need therapy, some need sub or methadone, and some need a combination of the above.  

As for me, it was cold turkey, but my doctor helped me by carefully monitoring me on anti-anxiety medications and an antidepressant and it worked for me.  I also attend therapy.  Every person reacts differently.  

I just don't want others to be discouraged if they choose a different path because everyone is different.

Hugs,
Janet

[Ella789]

Oh my gosh, I so disagree with Randy1953.  I think jw272 has hit home with alot of people on this forum.  There are Chronic pain sufforers, as I am, but if you think just because you take meds for pain that you are not addicted to them then I suggest you stop for 24 hr or so and see just how addicted you are!!  This mans' post gives hope to untold numbers of people who have been down to the bottom of their lives.  It is his story of how he made it through and I am proud he had guts enough to write and post it! He wasn't worried about being judged by others and their thoughts.  As a human being goes, we all live, hurt, love and die.  jw chose to live.  God bless him!

Ella.... Chronic pain sufferer......SLE,fibro,raynaurds,depression opiate free2/16/09

[randy1953]

Well I do not know about that when your in real pain the pain reliever goes all to the pain and should not if taken correctly give you any sense of euphoria. I remeber when I have oral surgey on both sides of my mouth I was in terrible pain and they put me on perodon the highest dosage well after a week or so no more pain and not a bit of WD. Now I understand what you mean with chronic pain because your taking the pain meds all the time so I would say you may be correct as I was speaking of acute pain not chronic.
However the idea of not using a clinic or doctors that know how to treat recovery to me is just nonsese and really not smart at all. You just need a good doctor that really knows his drugs.It makes no sense at all to go through a whole year in hell by using no treatment at all when in less than 2 weeks you can recover just fine.
For me and it should be for everyone here is not how we can get clean but staying clean that is what counts and that is what I need to work on because if you do not get to the root of it all it will just pop up again and again and again.
Peace
Randy

[Ella789]

Yes, I see what you are saying. Opiates do work well for short term use.   I just know that this person, jw, probably started out the same as me.  He took it for pain and it did help.  After a month on opiates a person will still crave.  They may not know what is happening, but some do.  Our forum fits jw and me too.  I can relate to his pain although, I am a totaly different person who knows all to well what pain is and what addiction is.  The way jw wrote his post was to me and for me "in your face" laying it all out from his soul to ours.  

Best wishes
Ella

[brenda959]

i am highly addicted to opiates. but i also have chronic pain. i have trouble walking, sitting, standing, even riding in a vehicle is miserble for me. i have been on narcotics for at least six yrs. i had to take them to be able to work. now i've got a very bad problem i can take soooooo many pain meds in one day that i'm ashamed/embarassed to tell everyone. it has gotten to be a metal addiction that i think might be worse then the physical. i can take 4 to 5 at one time several times daily. but due to health problems i've had to quit my job. chronic pain being the culprit. i weaned myself off xanax twice and i can't believe that i'm so addicted to opiates that i can't get off myself. going to a clinic is no option as i can not afford treatment since i'm unemployed and lost my health ins. i really need some help here. i'm also a very bad asthmatic with copd. i have dound out that the pain meds help my breathing. i've asked two different doctors about this and they tell me that the opiates relax the lining of my lungs and therefore making it easier to breathe. my last thought at night is opiates and my first thought in the morning is opiates. if i quit cold turkey what can anyone tell me aboaut what w/d will feel like and an approximate time to when i can see some light at the end of the tunnel

[Ella789]

Hi!  Welcome to the forum also.  
I know how the opiate dependency is, I took them for 5 years.  I also detoxed with the help of some Clonidine and a few tranzene, immodium,heating pad,otc pain meds, benadryl,  Look in the Health Pages for the Thomas Recipe and see what you can take from it.  I was able to wean-down from mine, and then when I had taken the last one-half pill I jumped.  The Clonidine helped with the creepy,paniky,feeling and the quarters of tranzene helped too ,  these two things saved me.  Oh, and the immodium too(lol)  Please try to take fewer each day till your back to 5 or 6 a day, I know that sounds hard, but then you may be surprised at how your pain levels decrease instead of keep increasing.  It may or maynot work for you but you are going to damage your liver taking soooo much.  I say that cause I care, not to be mean.  I know about pain and chronic pain, I live it every moment of my life.  I did get free but you need to make sure this is doable for you,  I don't know, you may be where you need to take them.

Hugs

Ella

[mr.lucky66]

I don't  relate much to the original poster. Pass the tequila? no thanks

[randy1953]

Can you please tell me how many mcg of Clonidine you were taking per day when you first stopped. Also did you take trazodone if so did you use both when you stopped.
Thanks
Randy

[Ella789]

I went looking for my empty bottle of Clonidine, not here, I know it was low like 3 or 4mg. every 6 hrs.(the dr. only let me have 12 of them)  and the tranzene was 5mg. and that I quarted cause I only had like 3 of them.  I can tell you that the clonidine really did make a differene, I could tell it kept me in my skin, so to speak.  D@#$ w/d's !  after the 4th day or so I started to feel better.  My dr. told me it takes about 2 mos. for the receptors in the base of our brain to fully recover and that made me feel better. I figure he should know being he works at the phychiatric hospital too.   Hope this helps with the info.

Ella

[randy1953]

Thanks but you must mean mcg not mg. I think that highg would stop your blood pressure completley. I ask because I was taking  .150 mg  notice there is a decimal point before the 150 twice to 3 times per day but it made me feel lousy. I guess Trazodone must be differnt than Tranzene. Here I can buy 100 mg Trazodone.
When did you stop taking the Cholidine did you only use 12 and that was it.
Thanks
Randy

[Ella789]

Maybe mcg on the clonidine, wish I hadn't pitched the bottle.  Anyway, it did help so much.  The Trazodone sure sounds alot like tranzene, is it a benzo?  
Yes, I took them every 6 hrs till gone, as I didn't feel like sleeping too very much at first/ even tho I had cymbalta and remeron for sleep.  With w/d the first 4-5 days are pretty intense.  I was grateful I had what I did compared to some who barely had anything!  Wow.  I hope you can find a way out and off the morp and make it back to your USA home!!  darn unhandy being in another part of the  globe.

Ella

[randy1953]

Thank you it means a lot just post here and here all this good support.
I have converse more today in English than i have in months!
Peace
Randy

[mr.lucky66]

Tranzadone is not a benzo or a narcotic it's an old time antidepressant. It can cause A very uncomfortable side effects in males.

[broknbck]

yea, i am on the same page as you.
i will not even take a tylenol now for pain. and i have had some doosies.
i would not want to give the pills the pleasure or satisfaction - hah

i mean , hello......, we know how it works , right?
you have to find something other than the damn pain killers when you are in pain. and stop considering that it is an option any more.

[randy1953]

Hey just say it your talking about having sex and not being able to ejactulate is that what you mean?
Thanks
Randy

[boogieman]

hi all. first off, detox is necessary for many as things like alcohol and benzos can cause life threatening withdrawal symptoms. as far as methadone or suboxone, that can be different. i personally found the methadone program to be state sponsored addicttion, but that's me. getting and staying clean requires action and more action. a prayer and simply sitting back and enduring life is a bad game plan for those who are truly chemically dependent. this thing is a disease and it does not just go away. results are proportional to how willing we are to do the footwork. and for most all addicts including myself, tequila is no better a coping mechanism than heroin. a drug is a drug. please consider what's at stake. best wishes,             gm

[randy1953]

Your words...getting and staying clean requires action and more action. a prayer and simply sitting back and enduring life is a bad game plan for those who are truly chemically dependent

Those are some of the most wise words I have ever read!
Thank you
Randy

[worried878]

U should probably make ur own post so ur needs will be addressed.it will get lost in this post and if it were ur own people could answer and help u out..post a new question and tell us ur doc, length of use and what ur plan is..and keep posting

and i was skimming this post...i felt a bit of blame in the post..on the healthcare system..and it is us/ourselves/who put pills in our mouth....unless u r a child or have some sort of psychological defect, then u can read the package insert and know drugs are addictive/narcotics are anyway...and many/most/can take them and never have a problem/some do/like us/the big US!  LOL  (not really funny at all)....no one ever shoved pills down our throats ...i only know of a few that patients have gone to OP centers(most can not afford it) and there was nuttin but praise for them but i am sure there r bad ones too...my friend went to one where they used subutex for a week and weened her down/off the sub in a week/....now she had to do inpatient for 3 different times..the last time was 3 months/and she literally dint want to come home cos she was afraid/she was safe there...but she did come home and we celebrated her 3 year mark the other night at our meeting...any plan to get clean is a good plan/but we r all different///different strokes for different folks..all we can do is keep moving forward!

[dominosarah]

No tequila for me......i will wing it.

[jw272]

that is what i was going for ella thank you, look very simple just stop, i have withdrawled so many diffrent times its not funny, i treated my body like an experiment on how to get through, i am married with 2 children and no one knew for a while that i was hooked on pain killers cause i was able to hide it so well, i had no ones help but myself and i started to realize that meant the most, we are funny creatures us human foke and we tend to trick our selves into anything without realizing it. you really wanna know how i stopped after taking every pain med from a-z many times a day. i would get very angery at myself not in a bad way in a good way. i got angery because i wanted to give up i fueled my own anger into positive thoughts when my body ached so bad i got my *** up and jogged it hurt so bad..but like i said i did this to myself, i took nothing but b12 vitamins a 1000 mgs of calcium and yes methadone does eat away your calcium i lost one of my teeth cause of it. people stop thinking you need meds that is your addiction craving for something else you programed your self this way now your mind is programed to trick you into a substitute. i know its hard i now its very challenging, but if you think about if you stop your mind power is stronger than any other. you have to learn to adapt..we always look for easy way outs. challenge yourself i was never religious until that day when i was lying facedown with no one around and overdosing on oxycontin, now i know you can see things that are not there but i swear on my life i saw an angel, this thing told me its not my time yet..i finally got up after several hours of sleeping in my own vomit and urine and thinking  that i just killed myself. that day that very day changed my life, from that day on i have been sober, i even challenged my self hanging around with some one who had painkillers i had them in my hand and i let them go and stepped on them. people whether you believe or not there is a god out there and he is watching us committ our crimes of damaging our selves, it is only then at rock bottom he will show you....have faith people let your bodys heal them selves thats why we have our own natural defences. you can do it..and by the way i hate alchohal it killed my father it was a joke saying id rather do that than take pain meds

[jw272]

and please i mean no one any disrespect but man i hate that word relapse, yeah i remember the first time i had sex it was awesome, thats a memory, of course your gonna remember the good sensation of it, the clinics haha thats a joke i remember the day i walked in and pleaded for help, you know what they did they put me on antidepressents why i wasent depressed, they put me on methadone why i was trying to get over narcotics, but i gave them a shot to only realize i dident need this ****. all i heard from them oh your doing a good job, i feel your pain im so sorry, i mean like i said i wasent depressed if they dont shut up im gonna be depressed, ive learned when someone is sorry for you youll find its ok to get back on it because you have a problem..................IF YOU WANNA STOP HANG OUT WITH ME FOR 1 MONTH THATS ALL ILL NEED WITH YOU, AND ILL GURANTEE YOULL SEE THE LIGHT AND STOP

[Ella789]

I understand ya and can relate to your posts. keep posting and shareing, we all count on here and we all have souls that need to heal.  I can see humor in alot of things and I know it for what it is.  I don't drink either.  A glass of wine for my birthday or christmas.  Or share one with a friend once in awhile a margarita,  that's not very often tho,  I learned that along time ago, drinkin too much only depressed me.  

Hugs
Ella