Evagation

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Being kicked by the addiction.

It's been two weeks. I know that I'm going to make a horrible day counter because numbers jumble around in my mind.

I cannot understand why people talk about kicking their addictions. I'm not kicking anything right now. I'm getting kicked, repeatedly, in the head. At least, that's the one part of my body that has been in the most persistent, constant pain since I stopped taking opiates.

Never mind the fact that I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep since I stopped the Vicodin and Percocet. I can manage without sleep. I was an opener at Starbucks, for goddess' sake, for nearly three years. My work days began at 3:45 in the morning. Thursday nights were always the worst. I adore CSI (to the point where I am always considering, just in the back of my mind, that maybe it would be fun to take some criminology classes), and would stay up until ten watching it, even though my shift began at four am on Friday.

So, not sleeping because I'm no longer pounding my body with drugs doesn't particularly bother me. I have my computer, and wireless internet access. I have a wonderful library full of books about all sorts of things. Keeping myself occupied until I pass out in the wee hours of the morning isn't difficult.

It's the headache. Especially behind my left eye. The one that they took out of my skull and clamped a buckle around. That eye. It is throbbing, right now. Pulsating and grinding with pain that I haven't felt since I was recovering from eye surgery last year.

Although the strangest thing about kicking the opiate addiction is how tight, and itchy my skin feels. If you've ever taken opiates for any length of time, you know that, after a while (or after a particularly strong dose), your body begins to itch. When I was popping both the Vicodin and the Percocet on a daily basis, I was constantly having to monitor my nervous scratching. Otherwise I would scratch these huge red welts on my arms. I'd almost smash my nose in with my fist because it itched so damn much.

I honestly thought that all of the itching would just go away after I stopped taking the opiates. No one told me that it would only get WORSE. Which is especially harrowing because I still catch myself doing the junkie knock to my nose, as if hitting it really hard will make it stop itching, and without the opiates, doing that really, really hurts. I didn't even realize how much of a natural reflex it had become until I was about a week into this foray away from opiates, and could not understand why the hell my NOSE was hurting so much. I don't normally have sinus problems, and I've never done any drug that required passage through the nasal cavities.

Then I realized that I was still banging on my nose, even though I was off the drugs. In fact, since beginning this entry, I've already whacked my nose at least three times. Granted, the withdrawal seems more intense at night but still... that's a lot of nose whacking. No wonder my damn head hurts.

What the hell kind of weird junkie withdrawal is THAT? Banging your nose with your fist? For some reason, I can accept the fact that I would often cover my body in red welts from all of the scratching but admitting that I am punching my own face? That just seems sad.

And of course I am jittery as all hell. Yesterday Devin made some reference to my "foul temper" (which is certainly a fair statement, considering my Irish ancestry and my flaming red hair) and I went ballistic. Of course my temper is foul. I am a drug addict without her drugs.

The man is a saint for putting up with me. At least I've gotten to that comfort level with him, where I know that no matter how awful I am (whether it's my disease putting us through hell, or simply my crazy-ass temper raining down all over him), that he will never leave me.

That doesn't excuse my bad mood, though. I usually try to pull myself together and go back and apologize for screaming at him for no reason at all. Except for the conference over the weekend, we're spending most of our time sequestered in our rooms (which makes it sound like we both grounded each other, or something equally inane) because I am in no shape to be around people. Even dealing with the conference was a huge trial because people wanted to talk with me, get my story, hear about my journey with Crohn's Disease, and the part of me that is being consumed by the opiate withdrawal didn't want to talk to any of those people AT ALL. It took every ounce of will-power I have to not run from all of those chattering people and retreat back into the safety of the truck. I spent most of the conference with my head in my notebook, taking copious notes through-out the entire process because the paper didn't want do make small talk with me.

Have I mentioned the freakish withdrawal symptom that is leaving me freezing cold, with goosebumps covering my entire body, even on the nice, 80 degree days? I'll be sitting at my desk in the office, bundled up in a huge sweater, wearing my heavy corduroy pants, even thought the atomic clock telling me that it's currently 82 degrees inside the office.

And I know that it has to be due to the intense withdrawal. Because even the heavy sweater doesn't keep me warm. I'll just sit there shivering, running my hands up and down my arms, trying to push the goosebumps back down into my skin. My father-in-law mentioned something one day last week about how weird it was that I was bundled up in a perfectly warm room, and I certainly didn't have a good excuse to give him for it. Since I would rather not announce to my Mormon in-laws that I'm in the middle of getting my ass kicked by opiate withdrawals.

I probably told him something about how I seem to be losing quite a bit of weight, and maybe that's what is making me feel so cold. And that's actually a somewhat true statement. I have lost a surprising amount of weight over the last two weeks.

(Although I really shouldn't be surprised. Since I've also stopped smoking pot, even though my docs had finally gotten me a prescription for it, because I learned at the conference that even though some docs DO recommend pot for IBD patients because it gives us the munchies and gets us eating, they're beginning to learn that it's a treatment that works best on IBD people who have Ulcerative Colitis, not Crohn's Disease. It turns out that smoking anything is just a really, really bad idea for people with Crohn's. This information is so new that none of the docs at the conference could explain WHY smoking doesn't affect U.C. patients nearly as much as it does the Crohn's patients, they simply know that Crohn's patients who smoke tend to have shorter periods of remission, and get extremely intense flare-ups from it.)

So, goodbye maryjane. And hello loss of appetite. At least there are no withdrawal symptoms when it comes to pot. Unless you count the aforementioned loss of appetite.

Normally I wouldn't really care all that much about fluctuations with my weight. Having IBD for eighteen years has taught me complete detachment when it comes to how much I weigh. Since my weight is almost always dictated by my illness, and the only time I really cared about my weight was when I had to fit into that insanely small wedding dress.

Except now I'm just annoyed by it. My clothes have gone back to being too big for my bony frame, and the thought of going clothes shopping in the state I'm in seems a bit like getting bumped from purgatory and into hell.

Although those 34-DDD bras that I bought a few months ago are ALSO too big for me. I'm thinking that's my consolation prize for trying to deal with my addiction. Even though my eyeballs hurt, and I'm punching myself in the nose, and wandering around in sweaters on perfectly warm days, and not sleeping for more than five hours at a time, well, at least my boobs have gotten smaller.

Not to mention the fact that my liver is probably ecstatic because I'm no longer making it filter massive quantities of opiates on a daily basis.

And the whole getting clean, and healthy part. That's definitely a good reason for putting myself through all of this, especially without the luxury of rehab. (Is it wrong that rehab sounds a bit appealing to me? I'm a bit drawn to the idea of being in a place where my only job is to focus on making myself better. Especially if they let you take an entire suitcase full of books to rehab.)

At least it gets a little easier every day. Which is a horrible cliche but, like most cliches, it has elements of truth in it. Even though the headache, and the other aches and pains, don't noticeably improve on a day-to-day basis, that's not such a horrible thing because I'm changing on a day-to-day basis. I no longer wake up and obsess about the fact that I really, really want some Vicodin but dammit, I can't have any Vicodin, so I'm just going to stew about it all day and spew crankiness on anyone who comes too close to me.

Now I wake up resigned to the fact that I can never have any more opiates, and that I just need to get on with my life. I suppose that doesn't sound very inspiring but I'm trying to cut myself some slack on this because what really matters is not relapsing and begging my doctors for more opiates.

And hopefully I'll wake up some morning in the (hopefully near) future and won't even think about opiates at all.

Labels: addiction

Posted by Katie. on Wednesday, April 04, 2007 at 11:19 PM | Permalink | 0 comments | links to this post   

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