Bye, Felicia

Or, as I should say, "Bye, Suboxone." 

I've been down to 1/2 mg of that nasty shit for a week now. I still have a few weeks' supply left, but I've decided that this morning's dose will be my last.

I've made some drastic changes in my life and my health since June 1. I started eating healthy foods, low in fat and added sugars, and I've been going to the gym every day. I do yoga daily. And I drink water like it's going out of style. I've been meditating and praying to my Higher Powers every day as well. And I feel wonderful.

Except for this lousy buprenorphine flowing through my system. It's done its job. I'm off opiates, and my plan is to stay off of them forever. And the bupe does not fit in with my new life choices. It's not healthy. It can't be good for my teeth or my mouth in general to be melting a strip of bupe and naloxone under my tongue every morning. And the bottom line is, due to my daily cardio workouts, I don't feel like I need it anymore.

When I dropped from 8 mg to 4 mg, I felt like I wanted to drop dead. It was a drastic decrease, and I felt terrible. But then I started changing my health habits. Eating better. Getting even just a little bit of exercise every day. Utilizing my other meds to ease the withdrawal symptoms.

And it worked.

Now that I'm down to 1/2 mg, I'm at the point where I feel like, really, what's the point in dragging it out? Yeah, my bowels are very enthusiastic right now. Yes, my legs are a little twitchy, and yes, I have screaming anxiety almost all the time. But I hurt my pectoral muscle a few days ago, and the doc at the emergency room gave me a five day script for 5 mg. Valium. So, since the pec feels better, I'm going to be using the remaining Valium to get me off the subs. I have 4 left. That's enough for 4 days, because I only take them when I feel like I'm gonna go out and punch a kitten.

I know, I know. I'm not supposed to be taking benzos, either. But every reliable study I've read has said that short-term use of a light benzo like Valium is key in getting you through the hideous anxiety that comes from bupe withdrawal. I can't use the kava because it gave me that disgusting shedding rash. But bupe has a crazy-long half life (37 hours). So it will take like two days to get the last of it out of my system, and then I will be totally, absolutely drug-free. No opiates or opioids, no benzos, nothing.

I'm making LIFE CHANGES. I don't want to be one of those people that has given up on life. I have gone through a lot of loss in the past couple of years. My daughter, my mother, my father, and my soulmate. And I thought I needed some kind of buffer to cope. But all the buffers did was keep me stuck in a state of non-feeling, and I haven't dealt with any of those losses. Hell, I haven't even dealt with my miscarriage from 10 years ago. That's a lot of shit. But I think maybe going to a bereavement group is a little healthier than sitting on the couch shooting dope and snorting bars, don't you?

So, here we are at the end. Thanks to everyone who has supported me on this journey. This blog will not be all about drugs anymore. I'd like to add a little more humor, since that's how I write, and maybe some sex, if I can get me some. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'll see you at the gym. Or a meeting.

Namaste, bitches.

So, It Does Get Better. Eventually.

It's been two weeks since the Suboxone cut, and I'm starting to feel a little bit better. Which is not to say that I feel great, but I wasn't expecting to feel great, just well enough to do my job and take care of the things I need to take care of. To stay out of bed for more than an hour or two every day. To do my laundry. To shower.

Actually, the laundry is just going now, because, while I felt well enough the other day to get it started, the thought of folding all that shit and putting it away exhausted me. The reason I started it today? I have therapy tomorrow and I can't walk in there in dirty clothes. I don't want them locking me up in the psych ward because I haven't done my laundry in two weeks. Also, I'm out of underwear. I mean OUT of underwear. I don't even have a pair of period panties in my drawer. And while you can Febreze a pair of jeans, you really can't do that with panties. So, the wash is going. I have three loads of clothes, plus linens, which may or may not get done. 

I also did the NAMI walk on Saturday. Granted, it was only 4K, but I honestly didn't think I was going to be able to do it at all. I brought two bottles of kava with me. However, I locked one of them in the van, because I'm a fucking genius, so I did the whole walk with NO kava. And 2 mg. of Suboxone. As opposed to 8 mg. I went with a bunch of people, and I figured, hey, it's at Jones Beach, there are bathrooms everywhere. Well, there are. But they were all locked. Towards the end there, I have to say I nearly shit my pants, but I managed to finish the walk and get to the only open bathroom, the one at the beginning of the walk, and I pity whoever was in there with me, but I got it done. I slept all day Sunday, and most of Monday, but I'm up now.

Kava helps. Kava, for those who don't know, is a root in the member of the pepper family, and it has anxiolytic properties. Sometimes, people have "reverse tolerance" and it takes a while for it to start working, but once it does, it's awesome. You're clear-headed but calm and able to cope with a myriad of things, like people. People are a problem for me, and the anxiety from this withdrawal has been the number one problem (aside from having to poop every 15 minutes but hey, according to Dr. Douchie, that's all in my head).  With the kava, I'm relaxed enough to get through things like group therapy and the car ride there and back without wanting to kill myself.

The problem is, if I drink enough of it to feel REALLY relaxed, I get SO relaxed that I just want to go to bed. So, I've stopped making it in gallon jugs, and I make two shots (we call them shells) at a time. Just enough to take the edge off, without sending me back to bed.

The stomach issue, I don't know what to say about that. I was starting to think that maybe it was a virus, but it's lasted for a couple weeks, so it's not that. I tried Imodium, but unfortunately, since it's an opioid (it just doesn't get you high) it doesn't seem to work with the Suboxone. So, I'm riding it out.

I want to tell everyone reading this that I feel amazingly better, that the 4 mg. is holding me just fine, that I can do everything I did on 8 mg. But, unfortunately, that's just not true. If I force myself, I can do SOME of the things I'm used to doing. I can work, that's most important (at least it is for me). But I work from home, so that's not a huge deal. And I try to take a walk every day, because cardio supposedly helps. The NAMI walk certainly helped, at least a little. But then, like I said, I spent the next two days in bed. So maybe not 4K, but at least a few blocks, and fast enough to make me sweat.

I'm sure that by next week, I'll be feeling relatively normal. And then I'll have a week of feeling relatively normal before Dr. Douchie drops me another 2 mg., and I feel like shit all over again. I promise not to bore you with all the details, but I do want this blog to offer SOME hope to others going through this. I want to be a little bit positive about the jump off Suboxone. So, expect some bitching along with some hope. Because, more than anything else, I want this blog to be REAL. And I promise, it won't be all about Suboxone, or even recovery. It's just that that's what I'm going through right now, and it's kind of all-consuming.

Except for the erotica I'm writing. That's consuming some of me too.

Anyway, that's the latest. If you're interested in why I went to the NAMI walk, you can check them out here.  They do awesome work for the mentally ill, and it's a cause that's dear to my heart. Feel free to donate to them. I won't mind.

Things are getting better, as they always do. Nothing is permanent. Good or bad, it always changes. So just remember that, when you're feeling like shit. Or even when you're not. It will pass. Hopefully, my next post will be more positive. Or at least funnier.

Seven Days In and I Want to Drop Dead

This sucks, ladies and gentlemen, and not in a minor way. It sucks like all the sucking ever sucked in the history of sucking. I had no idea when I started this Suboxone taper that dropping from 8 mg. a day to 4 mg. a day was gonna kick my ass so bad or I would have held out for the 2 mg. drop we'd been doing all along. But my doctor, for some reason, thinks that he knows better than me how I feel and how my body responds. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: I've been reading some studies that suggest that a slow taper with a low jumping-off point is preferable. I'd like to drop by 2 mg. per  month until I'm down to 1 mg., then cut the 1 mg. dose in half for two weeks and jump off at 0.5 mg. That's what I feel most comfortable with, since I've been on 16 mg. for a year now.

Dr. Douchie:  Any withdrawal symptoms you feel after 4 mg. is all in your head.

Me: Not really, I've been to this rodeo before. And the studies....

Dr. Douchie: Anybody can write anything on the internet (side note: I guess that's true because I'm writing this, but still) and I am going by the FDA's protocol.

(Another side note: as of this writing, there  IS NO FDA PROTOCOL TO GET SOMEONE OFF SUBOXONE. Only to get them ON it. So whatever, Douchie.)

We've had this conversation every month now since I started my taper, with me feeling more and more frustrated because, let's face it, even if it were "all in my head," he's my fucking psychiatrist and my head is his JOB. Plus, it really sucks when you feel like your psychiatrist isn't hearing you and keeps offering your vistaril for your anxiety (I don't have hives, asshole, I don't need an antihistamine). Finally, last month, he told me he was going to cut my 8 mg. to 4 and then stop my script. Of course I freaked out. So on my last appointment, I brought backup with me, another counselor to help me advocate, because I couldn't believe that this guy still didn't get it.

Again, he blew me off, and the research I'd brought with me. Then my advocate chimed in, and we came to the plan where I'd go down to 4 mg. this time, then 2, then cut them in half and jump at 1. Which was not what I wanted, and I figured I'd feel kind of crappy with cutting the dose in HALF, but it was better than jumping at 4.

I thought.

Let me start out by saying that I don't think I've digested any of the food I've eaten since Sunday night. I started the lower dose last Wednesday, and I felt pretty okay for the first couple of days, apparently because my brain was still basking in the warm fuzziness of buprenorphine. Plus, I was drinking a lot of kava. Which is a huge help, but I'll talk about that later. But I ran out, and I decided to give it a rest because my skin is getting dried out from it. Right now, let me just tell you, my bowels feel like I've been on an extended colon cleanse for the world's longest colonoscopy. I walked to the grocery store yesterday, the one time I've been brave enough to move out of shouting distance of one of our two toilets, and I almost didn't make it to their nasty ladies room (having that kind of diarrhea in a nasty bathroom, by the way, makes you feel even shittier, like you now reek of shit). I'd thought maybe the kava root was causing it. Nope.

Also? My anxiety is off the fucking charts. I can't sleep for more than an hour at a time. If I wake up at 2 am, I'm done for. That's it for the night. I won't feel anything close to normal enough to rest until I take my first 2 mg. dose at 6 am; I can't take it any earlier than that or I'll be shot for the afternoon and I'm trying to maintain SOME kind of a normal life here. Without having at least a cup of kava in my system, I'm quite literally sweating bullets at the thought of doing anything other than reading funny mom blogs and eating chocolate (which is what I got at the supermarket).

My legs feel weird. My stomach has that hideous shitty knotted feeling that anyone who has gone through opiate withdrawal will recognize as the realization that shit is about to get real. And it only alleviates for a couple hours after I take my dose, then it comes back.

I knew I was going to be uncomfortable with this big drop. I said that. But it feels like nobody is listening to me telling them how my body feels. I haven't been to group twice this week because Monday I was shitting like a champ and last night I woke up at midnight and was kicking the blankets around in between running to the bathroom for the next six hours.

I called my therapist and told her what was going on. She said she would email my doctor and have him call me. That's a vain hope. I doubt he will, and if he does, I probably won't understand wtf he's saying anyway because of his accent (also he needs a hearing aid, which makes me suspect he doesn't really catch most of what I'm saying to him).

The way I feel right now, if this is going to keep up, I'm going to just jump ship and deal with the withdrawals. Because I don't want to be in a low-level panic for the next three months. I can't live my life like this. I don't have the luxury of lying around on the couch while I kick the drug that was supposed to help me live like a "normal person." I'd rather go through the withdrawal all at once, treat my symptoms as they arise, and deal with it like that.

We'll see what he says. Stay tuned. If you need me, I'll be in the bathroom.