Evagation

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

At least she's finally getting some sleep.

(This entry ended up being written over the course of the past three days. So, besides being insanely long, it also has three distinct parts. Sorry about the long-arse entry but I really didn't want to mess around with cutting it up and turning it into three separate entries.)

Monday, April 9th

Devin and I were supposed to head down south again this weekend to celebrate Easter.

Except I finally managed to sleep for longer than four hours at a time. I crashed out Friday evening, fairly early. Devin attempted to wake me up Saturday morning to at least TALK about whether we were heading down south, or not, except I wasn't communicating. I remember him coming in much later (or, at least, it felt much later to my sleep addled senses), kissing me on the forehead, telling me that he's going to let me sleep some more because goddess knows, I must be TIRED, and that he was going to play disc golf.

I slept until the afternoon. Then crashed back into another deadening sleep right after dinner.

Managed to get up and go out to breakfast with my Aunt T. and my Dad yesterday morning. Dad celebrated his 65th birthday last week (or, maybe on Saturday, I'm absolutely horrible with birthdays) and, at breakfast, we all talked about going out to dinner.

Guess who slept through dinner? When I crawled back into bed at two o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, I knew something was going on because I was passing up the "America's Next Top Model" marathon on MTV, which is sad but I would happily watch it all weekend, to sleep.

Devin tried to wake me up at some point but I'm fairly certain that I hit him. Or, at least, attempted to hit him. He let me sleep some more, after that. At some point, he brought the phone into the room and said something along the lines of, "Your family is wondering what the hell is going on."

At least, I think that's how I ended up with the phone in the bed. It woke me up at around ten o'clock last night, and it was my Mom telling me that I'd hurt my Dad's feelings by missing dinner. Which I did feel fairly guilty about, except my little brother hadn't even bothered to see Dad over the weekend, or talk to him, at all (we're no longer religious enough for his new life as a Baptist, which is fine except I don't understand how our desire to not celebrate what is, essentially, a pagan holiday that was adapted into Christianity has anything to do with whether he acknowledges his father's 65th birthday, or not).

Although I got Mom feeling sorry for me when I reminded her that I'm going off the opiates and, until the weekend, hadn't managed to sleep for more than three or four hours at a time, so my body definitely needed some rest.

Then we talked about Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and how I'd finally found a few meetings in our town that aren't associated with a church, and she asked me if one of them was in the multipurpose building of our town's hospital, and I said yeah, there was, and how the hell did YOU know that, Mom?

I'd forgotten that Mom and Dad went to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings when I was a kid (even though Dad wasn't an Adult Child on a Alcoholic, and was there supporting Mom, who most definitely was an Adult Child of two Alcoholics--even though, oddly enough, my maternal grandfather died of COLON CANCER, not liver disease, even though his liver was definitely killing him, he just happened to get colon cancer before it finished him off--and boy, having such a close relative of mine die of colon cancer has always sent my doctors into a tizzy). She explained that, while she's definitely proud of the fact that I'm kicking opiates, that maybe Narcotics Anonymous isn't going to help me out, very much.

"It's full of weirdos, Katie."

"Well... yeah, Mom. Drug addicts usually aren't the most normal of people."

"I know that! I mean weird even for drug addicts! There was even this group that obviously was addict to Anonymous meetings, and the guys kept asking me out, and the girls kept asking your father out. I'm just saying... it might not be the best place for you."

"That was twenty years ago, Mom. Maybe it's different now."

Except I didn't really believe that because there isn't much evolving when it comes to drug addicts. In the sense that the addicts themselves haven't really changed at all over the years (especially running with the theory that once a drug addict, always a drug addict), it's only the treatments that have changed. I don't know about any of you, but I miss the time when those of us opiate addicts could get drinking passes, or whatever the hell they called them in the eighties, because being a drug addict in the eighties meant that you could still drink alcohol on occasion. Although I always wondered if that meant that the alcoholics could just try a little coke every once in a while.

"Besides, Narcotics Anonymous is for the, you know, REAL drug addicts, Katie. Not girls like you."

Erm... what? "Mom. Even just earlier this year, I would follow two Vicodins with two Percocets, and then when those wore off, bump it up to three Vicodins, and two more Percocets. I think that's called a drug addiction, Mom."

"Well, of course, but it's not like you were shooting up heroin."

"Only because I didn't NEED to shoot up heroin. I had a doctor who was writing me prescriptions for unlimited amounts of Vicodin and Percocet! Although I would never, ever, shoot up heroin."

"Exactly. Because you are so scared of needles." This is true. Did I tell you all that my doctor had to physically hold me down at my last colonoscopy because the anesthesiologist didn't get the needle in on the first try? In fact, she finally had to switch arms because she just couldn't get the vein in my left arm, and all I remember is sobbing like a baby, while Dr. Dhillon held me down and said, in his darkly accented voice, to not move my arms. Which is when the anesthesiologist piped up and said, "Oh, she's being VERY STILL." Which is also true. Even when I'm crying over the stupid needle, my arms are stiff as boards because I know what happens if I flinch, and it means more poking at me with a needle. At least this time around they didn't call me a baby and tell me to act my age. After I complained to the American Medical Association about their rudeness, and wrote them a letter telling them that I don't care if I'm screaming the roof down with my fear, you do not call your patients names, they finally learned to keep their opinions to themselves.

"Mom. Just because I never shot up heroin doesn't mean that I'm not an opiate addict."

"Well, I KNOW THAT, sweetie. Remember your Aunt Lucy? I know about drug addicts. It's just that I don't see how you'll get any help by being surrounded by people who probably DID shoot up heroin. You're just a pill popper. Those people are probably going to be a lot sicker than you are, Katie."

"Um. Isn't the point of Narcotics Anonymous the fact that you can't judge your addiction against anyone else's?"

"I know, I know. I'm just trying to warn you about the sort of people you might run into at the meetings."

Entry is now interrupted because I had actual work to do, so I drafted it away and never got back to working on it. Until today--Tuesday, April 10th

As much fun as dialogue between me and my Mom is, I'm killing that particular conversation. It never got more interesting, anyway, and it mostly illustrates that I am no longer hiding away my drug addiction.

Since I am now addicted to "Oprah" (something I will mention in an upcoming entry about shows I watch, books I read, and anything else that should cause me to be ashamed of my desire for bad pop culture), I got home last night and started watching the new episode.

"ADDICTION" blazes across the screen, helpfully pointing out to us viewers what the topic for the show is today. Oprah starts talking about these five people on her stage, and how they consented to have their lives filmed for a documentary about addiction. At this point, I'm expecting a reference to "Intervention" on A&E because that is one hell of a disturbing show, even though it is brilliant in the sense that it helps families pay for lengthy rehab treatment for their loved ones (the ones who actually 1) make it to rehab, and then 2) actually make it THROUGH rehab, which is not something most of the addicts featured on "Intervention" are capable of doing).

But no reference to "Intervention" is coming up, Oprah is referring to an HBO documentary film entitled "ADDICTION." (Upon hearing this, I immediately paused Oprah and started checking HBO for show times of this documentary, and it recorded at around 7:00 this morning, which I guess is a good time for cokeheads and tweakers because they never sleep.) Out of the thirty addicts featured in the documentary, she has chosen five to appear on her show.

The first guy, Rick, was a television reporter for "Inside Edition" during most of the nineties (and, I think, late eighties) but what nobody knew was that he was a crack/cocaine addict. Oprah explains that we're now going to watch pieces of Rick's story as recorded by "Addiction." Oprah warns us about graphic drug use. Which doesn't bother me, all that much, because Rick liked to smoke and snort his drugs, not shoot them up.

Lots of Rick smoking the crack. Then it cuts us back to the show, and Oprah prompts Rick into explaining about that one time he interviewed the FIRST President Bush (I seriously hate it when people refer to him as the "FIRST President Bush"), at a charity event to help people say no to drugs, except poor Rick had just smoked a ton of crack about an hour before the interview.

Obviously, now that Oprah has gotten him to admit to something that is horrendously humiliating, she moves on to the next addict. Crystal who is... yup, addicted to crystal. She and Oprah talk a bit about her addiction, how she first tried meth when she was 20, and promised herself that she would never do it again. Which gives Oprah the chance to interject that Crystal was lying to herself about crystal, so let's see some of her scenes from "Addiction." Again, we are warned that they contain graphic drug use.

Crystal suddenly appears on the big, Oprah show monitor-thing that looks bigger than a movie screen, and she's shooting up meth into her jugular vein.

Which damn near gave me a heart attack. I do not handle watching people shoot up very well, it makes me feel nauseated and dizzy. Especially people shooting drugs into their neck, which I didn't even know drug addicts were doing nowadays, and I've seen a lot of "Intervention" on A&E.

So, someone needs to explain to Oprah that there is a vast difference between the graphic drug use of a guy who smokes crack, and the graphic drug use of a girl who shoots up meth in her neck.

After lots of wonderful scenes full of the girl shooting meth into her neck (which must be far more disturbing to Oprah's audience since Crystal's neck on that giant screen would be about four feet long), Oprah asks her why the hell she was shooting up in her neck, and that Oprah has never even HEARD about junkies doing that, and that she's done a whole lot of junkie shows.

Crystal explains that, well, she started off with smoking it. Then that high wasn't good enough, so she went to snorting it, which wasn't much better than smoking it, so she started mainlining it into her arms. Which she loved because we all know that drugs are gorgeous things when done intravenously (except I let anesthesiologists do this for me) except then she blew out all of the major veins in her arm. Which is when she came up with the jugular vein idea because that was the next biggest vein in her body that she could think of (which, I guess, gets her some drug addict points for originality, even though any heroin junkie could have given her a huge list of veins to try before stabbing herself in the neck) and boy, was that one hell of a great high.

Crystal is wanting to talk about her recovery from meth but Oprah is still stuck on the neck thing. She explains to Crystal that she's heard mainlining any drug gives a really fast high, so what was Crystal's high like when she shot up in her neck? Even though Crystal pretty much already answered that question, and is obviously trying to hold herself together through all of this questioning, so major points to her for that, Crystal explains that shooting up in the arm is nice, and all, but it doesn't result in an instantaneous high, just a quick high. But shooting up in the jugular? She was high before she even took the needle out of her neck.

(Which makes me hope that no heroin junkies caught this particular Oprah show because they might start thinking that shooting up in their jugular vein is a fabulous idea, and why the hell hadn't they thought of that before?)

Since Oprah got all of her ghoulish questions answered, she moved on to the next addict. And I will stop giving you all a complete re-cap of the show because I really just wanted to talk about the girl who shot up meth in her neck. The other three addicts are: William, a crack/cocaine addict; Tom, an alcoholic for fifty years; and Cheryl, a cocaine addict.

Cheryl was definitely the most eloquent of all of the addicts, who basically summed up what every addict needs: Instead of asking us why we can't stop using drugs, ask us what you (our friends and family) can do to HELP US stop using drugs. That's a great lesson for anybody who has a friend, or family member, that is a drug addict.

The show also taught us that there are a lot of studies being done on the brain of an addict. Dr. Anna Rose Childress explains that they are now taking pictures of addict's brains as they play cues/triggers on a continuous loop for the addict's viewing pleasure. At first, I thought that these cues would just be a bunch of images of people doing drugs, of the drugs themselves, etc.

Since Oprah is also not getting the cues thing, she asks her production people to cue (ha!) up Dr. Childress' example of what they would play for a cocaine addict.

Turns out that the pictures of drugs, and drug use, last a total of 33 milliseconds (seriously) and they are interspersed between long periods of blackness. So, for us, it went something like: black screen, flash of coke vial, black screen, flash of bubbling spoon. Dr. Childress would play this cue reel for the addict (although the cue reel would be specific to that addict's drug of choice, since the aforementioned crackhead, William, participated in this study, Dr. Childress used his cue reel, and then showed us pictures of his brain).

That's when it got interesting. When William was shown pictures of things like cats, windows, and other random, normal things, his brain was not doing a whole lot. But when William watched the cue reel, even those 33 milliseconds of drug stuff got his brain completely fired up. Tons of bright redness in William's brain, which most of us know means that his brain was working over-time.

Which is how doctors are now learning that it's more than just environmental triggers that drive an addict deeper into their addiction, it's also their brain telling them that this drug is the most important thing in their life right now, and that they must get the drug. The brain studies also showed that, while one part of the brain is going crazy, sub-consciously telling the addict to go get more drugs, another part of the brain is not doing much of anything at all. Dr. Childress called this the "brakes" of the brain, and that the brakes in an addict's brain aren't working properly at all. These "brakes" are what give us the ability to use reason and logic in our everyday lives. That's why when you ask an addict why they can't just, you know, STOP TAKING THE DAMN DRUGS. The addict can now fire back and say, well, it's a brain thing. My brain isn't letting me take my foot off the accelerator (the part of the brain that fires up when an addict just thinks about getting high), and my brakes are completely gone.

So, now they're developing neurological meds to help addicts deal with their addiction. Although I was pleased when Dr. Childress made the point that this isn't a cure, just another form of treatment, and that addicts should, in no way, think that this gets them out of going to rehab, or Anonymous meetings. That every addict should use ALL of the tools available to them to help them deal with their addiction, and not just one or two of them.

See? The Oprah show can actually be completely interesting sometimes.

After watching Oprah, I saw that there was a "House" re-run on Fox. Woo! I love me some "House."

And it's the episode where Cuddy dares House that he can't go a week without Vicodin because, apparently, the world is conspiring to keep me thinking about my addiction every hour of every day.

Although only a few things from the "House" episode got me thinking about Vicodin. (Besides the fact that every time House fists another few pills of Vicodin, I instinctively reach for my Vicodin because House was my unwitting drug buddy. I'm so glad I had Oprah to tell me that this was one of my triggers because, you know, I might not have realized that since we drug addicts are considered to be morons.)

The thing is... House's Vicodin use is completely wonky. And I know from whence I speak. When Cuddy is chewing him out for how much Vicodin he takes, she says something along the lines of, "Did you just take more Vicodin? You're already taking 80 mg. a day!"

Just in case you all aren't Vicodin addicts like me, and have no idea what 80 mg. a day means: 80 mg's of Vicodin means 16 500's a day. Vicodin comes in two dosages--the 500 mg. pills, which is the most popular form of Vicodin because it is far easier to get than the other dose, which is 750 mg.

So where did I get the idea that House is taking at LEAST 16 of the 500 mg pills per day? Well, the 500's have 5 mg's of actual hydrocodone, which is the lovely opioid that makes Vicodin fun, and 500 mg's of acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol. That's what gives it the 5 mg/500 mg split on the prescription bottle. The 750 mg dosage of Vicodin works in the same way--it has 7.5 mg's of actual hydrocodone, and 750 mg's of acetaminophen (making it 7.5 mg/750 mg).

This is where I start to get a little angry at the way Fox portrays House's Vicodin addiction. Obviously, in order for House to be getting the 80 mg's of hydrocodone that Cuddy is insisting he takes on a daily basis, then he would need a hell of a bigger pill bottle than the little dinky one he is always using. Even if he only got a week's supply at a time, that's still 112 pills, and those things are BIG. For some perspective: I was allotted 3 of the 500 mg's of Vicodin on a daily basis, so I got 90 for the whole month, and those 90 pills filled up a very big pill bottle.

In all honesty, there is no way House could even fit his daily dosage of Vicodin into those tiny pill bottles. There's just no way. The little bottle would maybe (MAYBE) fit half of his daily dosage.

There are also a lot of stupid doctors where House works. When I started taking double my daily dose of Vicodin because my tolerance got so high that I had to double the dose just to get a meager high. I was switched onto Percocet (I was diagnosed with arthritis when I was twelve, just in case there is someone reading this who is wondering how the hell this girl got herself so many painkillers, and my knees hurt on a daily basis, and swell into agonizing balls of pain a couple of times a week). Percocet has oxycodone, instead of hydrocodone (don't ask me why one is more effective than the other, that's something for a chemist to explain), and is also cut with acetaminophen.

Which is why someone should have switched out House's 16 Vicodin-per-day habit into, maybe, an eight Percocet-per-day habit. Someone should also talk to him about adding tons of fiber to his diet, otherwise he will never poo again in his entire life because 16 Vicodins a day means no movement of the bowels. Although his freakishly gaunt appearance makes a bit of sense, now, because he probably loves Vicodin far more than he loves food, so he probably gave up on food a while ago.

(Which does make perfect junkie sense. When I was taking both the Vicodin and the Percocet on a daily basis, I really didn't care about food. At all. All I cared about was taking more pills, which hit you a lot faster if you take them on an empty stomach. Although that tends to make a person, even me and I'm really good with my opioids, a bit nauseated.)

Once again, coming back to this entry the next day--the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

I have got to stop writing these things while I'm at work.

Just finished watching the HBO Documentary "ADDICTION," and I am both frightened, and energized, about everything I learned. It's not like A&E's "Intervention" series at all. Instead of focusing on drug addicts hitting their "rock bottom" and following it up with an intervention, the small films that made up the "Addiction" documentary discuss what happens AFTER the intervention. Now that we've got the addict to admit that they have a problem, how do we go about treating addiction as a chronic, but manageable, disease?

While I'm glad that the medical community is finally learning enough about our brains on drugs that they are discovering ground-breaking new therapies, and educating the public about addiction as a chronic disease, I'm also very, very angry with myself. On top of everything else, I had to go and willingly give myself a NEW chronic disease.

Although I'm trying to get past that because... well, at least now I'm willing to admit that my opioid use was becoming a huge problem, and that I needed to stop using them. I actually wrote a letter to ALL of my doctors, explaining that I had realized that I have an addiction to opioids, and to NOT prescribe them to me no matter how much I beg, and cry about the pain. I did that over a month ago. Because eighteen years of dealing with a chronic disease has taught me how to manipulate doctors into giving me whatever the hell I want. Until the opioid addiction, being able to get what I needed from my doctors was simply a matter of me explaining to them what was going on with my body (whatever symptoms I was suffering from at the time) and the course of treatment that I thought would be the best way to go.

Which is probably why they also gave me the pain killers. They trusted me enough to let me run with my own treatment options and, thankfully, they still trust me when it comes to my Crohn's. Just not when it comes to pain, and my cons for using that pain to just get more drugs. I think the fact that I fessed up to the addiction is what kept my doctors on my side. If I had continued to con them for the drugs, and lie about how deeply I had sunk into them, I don't think any of my docs would ever have fully forgiven me for deceiving them, and abusing their trust.

It also sucked to learn that opiate addicts are the addicts with highest relapse rate because our withdrawal symptoms could go on for weeks, or months, or even years, the doctors in the film explained. It all comes back to our brains, and how we (opiate addicts, and not, necessarily, all addicts) have those opioid receptors in our brain and when we start taking a lot of external opioid drugs, we completely fuck up the natural opioid receptors in our brain. We basically flood our brains with far more opioids than it could ever produce naturally, and it we continue to do that over a period of time, we're basically re-wiring those receptors to get them accustomed to the onslaught of drugs. We actually trick our own brain into thinking that it needs all of those extra opioids to survive, which has a lot to do with why the withdrawals are so incredibly intense.

The good news was learning that the brain has an incredible capacity for healing itself, and that it is possible to completely reverse the damage done to it by drugs by simply remaining sober.

At least the withdrawal symptoms are lessening on a weekly basis. Even though it is still kicking my ass on some days. Or, rather, on all days, it's just no longer a 24-hour per day problem, and more a 10-hour per day problem. After spending the weekend mostly in bed, finally crashing out from the crushing insomnia that plagued me during the first week of sobriety, I'm back to not being able to get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning.

It's a bit crazy because I've slept through my alarm both yesterday, and today, so I was an hour late to work on both days, and I stumbled in like I had a nasty hangover. In fact, it FELT like I had a nasty hangover. My head ached, I couldn't form a coherent thought, and I was yawning like I hadn't gotten any sleep at all. I could tell that my father-in-law thought I was either hungover from drinking too much the night before (definitely not the case, since I haven't had a drink since last Thursday), or was heavily abusing drugs.

I don't particularly feel the need to explain to my in-laws that I'm actually trying to STOP abusing drugs, and that the opiate withdrawal looks a whole lot like someone who is actively abusing drugs. Since that would necessitate me having to tell them how many drugs I was taking, and they consider addiction to be a choice a person makes (and my mother-in-law is extremely judgmental about drug addiction, and pretty much puts it in the same category as homosexuality, and she firmly believes that these are bad choices made by bad people).

So, unless they ask me point-blank if I'm abusing drugs, I'll probably just continue letting them believe whatever they want to believe. At least for now. Right now I'm more concerned with actually getting through this addiction, and the withdrawals, because I don't really care what people think of me. I'll probably start caring at some point in the future but right now, it's the very last thing on my mind.

Because. Withdrawals. Are. Evil. I completely understand why opiate addicts have such a high relapse rate. We'll pretty much do anything, even if it means making another pact with the devil for more pills, just to make the withdrawals stop. And I know about methadone, and Revia, and the other pharmaceutical treatments for opiate withdrawals but I'm tired of taking more drugs to deal with the symptoms that arise from having taken other drugs. It's a cruel, vicious cycle that never ends.

It's like when my Crohn's flares up and I have to go back on oral steroids. I don't just take the Prednisone, I have to also take calcium supplements so that it won't completely gnaw away my bones, and a mood stabilizer (usually Elavil) because Predisone will make anyone crazy, and a whole lot of other drugs, depending on how much Prednisone I am prescribed. I can easily double my daily intake of pills when I'm on Prednisone because the side-effects are inconceivably intense.

Because once you get on that merry-go-round, it's damn near impossible to get off. Since none of us enjoy being in pain, or simply feeling uncomfortable in our own bodies, there is this crazy desire to just throw as many medications into our system as we possibly can to help us mask the pain, and discomfort. Which is how we trick ourselves into thinking that we're not drug abusers, we're drug USERS, and that drugs help us live better lives.

Of course, this is often true of chronic diseases/conditions (or infections, or cancer, and you get the idea) because, without my 6-MP (6-Mercaptopurine, also known as Purinethol, a drug used primarily to treat acute lymphatic leukemia), I would definitely not be in remission today.

But I'm actually using that drug to treat my disease. To keep me healthy. Whereas I was definitely abusing pain killers, even though I was legitimately in pain, because I had completely lost the ability to determine the intensity of the pain. I was treating a minor headache with the same amount of drugs that I used to treat my incredibly swollen, and bruised knees.

And then I started using the opiates just to keep me from going into withdrawals. I believe this is referred to as maintaining the addiction solely for the sake of the addiction. Which is when you know that things are really bad. When I started taking Vicodin first thing in the morning (or Percocet, if I felt that it was a particularly ugly morning), even before I had breakfast, I knew that I had crossed that invisible line between use, and abuse.

Even though it took me months before I actually confronted the problem, and started dealing with it. After my brief bout of sobriety last year, and then getting yelled at by my Internal Medicine doc because I could have freakin' killed myself from detoxing at home, and not in a hospital, we tried the taper-down method of getting me off the opiates. (Similar to using methadone for getting opiate addicts out of the clutches of the drug, except my doc and I figured that we should try having me take progressively smaller doses of Vicodin until I could safely stop using it altogether and not have my doc freak out over the possibility of me going into cardiac arrest from trying to get clean.)

Maybe it would have worked if I was doing addiction counseling on a weekly basis but the only thing tapering down did for me was extend my drug abuse. Doc and I started on this taper-down method MONTHS ago, and I quickly became content with the idea that hey, it was okay that I was still taking some opioids because I was just easing myself away from the addiction.

That was obviously a completely moronic method of treating opiate addiction, especially since I wasn't participating in any other addiction therapies--I wasn't in counseling, I wasn't going to meetings, I wasn't doing anything except taking a little less Vicodin than I was before. Although, according to the HBO "Addiction" site (which is highly informative and quite extensive), the taper-down method is a known method of treatment for opiate addicts, but I still think that it's useless without the addict going to counseling, and meetings, as they are tapering down off the drugs. Because, otherwise, you end up with someone like me who gets her last bottle of Vicodin on 3/5/2007, with it's 90 pills because one of the assistants in the doctor's office faxed the refill request to the pharmacy, not realizing that we were still on this taper-down method, so I should only have gotten 30 pills.

And since I'm a drug addict, it took me less than two weeks to polish off that bottle of Vicodin. Yes. I'm being completely honest. It took me about twelve days to go through 90 500mg Vicodin pills. Which was more than double my daily dose. I knew that it was going to be my last bottle, so I did what any addict would do, and just threw myself into taking them all day, every day, until they were gone.

Which was when my doc gave me a few day's worth of Tylenol-3 (that's the one with codeine) because I had, once again, done a stupid thing and was endangering my own recovery. The Tylenol-3 was certainly not strong enough to get me anywhere close to being high (only six Vicodins a day could manage that frightening feat) but it did help wean me off the opioids.

So, now I'm back to just getting through another day without taking any more opioids. (The "Addiction" documentary taught me that opiate is a term used to describe the drugs that are derived directly from opium plant--heroin, opium, and morphine--and that opioid is used to describe drugs that are synthetic--Vicodin, Percocet, Dilaudid, and others.) Which has been made even more difficult by the strange, central California weather that has been going on lately. Today it's cold, cloudy and generally gloomy. Under normal circumstances, these are my favorite days of the year because I don't really like the sun. On cloudy days, I happily open all of the blinds, curl up with a book in my comfy office chair, make myself some hot tea, and generally enjoy the hell out of the gloom.

Except my arthritis absolutely hates gloomy days. I walked one of the disc golf courses with Devin yesterday (I don't play it because I do not enjoy throwing discs, running off to retrieve a disc, and then starting again with the whole throwing thing) and I could not stop complaining about my damn knees. It was such a lovely evening, not too much sun and a really nice breeze, so I had no idea why my knees were acting like I was in the arctic, trying to climb an ice mountain.

Once I finally hobbled home (I left Devin at the course because I just couldn't walk anymore without collapsing into a whining ball of pain, so a friend drove him home) and took a look at my knees I was pretty distressed. The damn things were completely swollen, so I had to elevate them, ice them down, then do some simple stretching, and yet more elevating, even more icing them down, and then I wrapped a heating pad around them.

When I woke up this morning and saw the cloudy gloominess, it all made perfect sense. The change in atmospheric pressure had wrapped itself like a vice around my knees (and, to a lesser extent, the other major joints in my body).

Except today there is no Vicodin, or Percocet, to help me cope with the pain. Which is why I need to get myself to a damn Narcotics Anonymous meeting because a few more days of this crazy pain will probably crush my will, and desire, to stay away from the opioids. The most important thing that I have learned from "Intervention," and "Addiction," is that no drug addict can do this on their own. Because there will always be cloudy, gloomy days that wrap themselves around my body so tightly that all I can think about is getting some drugs, any drugs, just to make it all go away.

Labels: addiction

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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.

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About Me

Name: Katie.

Location: Central Valley, California, US

Personally, I think I'm rather boring but my husband tells me that I'm crazy, so who knows? I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease when I was eight and have been battling the chronic illness my entire life. In spite of that, I manage to remain foolishly optmistic about life and am having one hell of a time living mine.

View my complete profile

Links

• My LiveJournal
• Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America

Previous Posts

• Where I've been.
• My bizarro week.
• Out of touch with time.
• Acting like a baby.
• Confession.
• At least she's finally getting some sleep.
• Being kicked by the addiction.
• Those crazy kids and their widgets.
• Hanging in there.
• For now, everything stays the same.

Archives

• March 2006
• April 2006
• August 2006
• November 2006
• February 2007
• March 2007
• April 2007
• May 2007
• June 2007

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