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Addiction: Substance Abuse Community
This community is a place to share information and support with others who are trying to stop using drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco or other addictive substances. Discuss with others, the symptoms of addiction, addiction recovery, ways to quit like tapering and cold turkey, and withdrawal symptoms. If you are interested in general "chat", please visit our Addiction Social Community.
vicodin
by tonny13, Jun 21, 2003 12:00AM
After 3 years of 7 Vicodin Es's a day,I am now down to 4. Will I always continue to want them and I don't just mean the withdrawal cravings, I expected those. I have recently just admitted to myself that there is a twisted, sick part of me that does not even want to quit. I understand that I have to quit for many reasons, but that does not mean that I completely want to. I started taking them for chronic back pain, actually compression fractures. I have heard of people who self medicated with opiates for depression, I have never struggled with that, but I am seeing now that I did self medicate by continuing to take them for chronic sometimes debilitating fatigue. I never expected the burst of energy they gave me. I took diet pills back in the early 90's after having my children, they didn't give me energy like the vics do, nothing ever has. I have never before had a problem with an addiction to anything. But, I'm afraid that I will miss these pills until the day I die, which I understand will be sooner rather than later if I continue to stay on them. I think what scares me the most is hearing people say, you will not quit until you completely want it. Does the fact that I still like the pills doom me to fail? I'm seeing now that I can handle the physical realities of being off of them, and I believe that I have the willpower to stay off of them. After all, we all do things we don't like to do all the time. Will counseling maybe help with feelings like this?
it has been almost six months since i have abused narcotics. and most days i don't think about them. most days. and at one time i had eight years clean off of narcotics and could literally go for weeks and months without obsessing over them.
the doc will be along soon to share his wisdom with you! ;-)
peace,
amber
I'm coming out of my w/d --- oh gosh, it's never worth it, is it? It feels so good to take those pills, but my god when you go c/t ---- DAMN!
I'm not out of the woods yet. You know --- the crying, that ever-present longing to call that doc and lie so you can get more. And the bad thing is, my neck is killing me. Man, it's tough to be strong. I'm doing the best I can, following the recipe and all, but I still feel messed up. Severely messed up.
I wanted to let everybody know I had my email at home disconnected, but they did it before I could let anybody know. PLEASE, my friends (you know who you are) and anybody else....please email me some encouragement at my new email address. It is ***@****.
I love all of you. Please send some positive energy my way, and I will do the same.
Love and appreciation to each of you. Please write to me at the email address I posted below (***@****), so we can talk. I have to access that email away from my house, because I had my line disconnected (two phones is enough). So if it takes me a couple of days to respond, please don't worry. I miss your encouragement and humor!
Sorry for wasting important room --- I'll stop now.
Terri, I'm ashamed to say that it hasn't had much to do with strength keeping me down to a somewhat low dose for all of these years. I think it had more to do with my tolerance being low to begin with. After all of this time, I still get a buzz from taking 1 vicodin. Believe me, if my tolerances were different, I would probably have been up there with you at 20 a day. You wouldn't believe the crazy lengths that I have gone through to make sure I always kept up my supply. I have more respect for someone coming off of an amount like that and think you probably have more strength than me. I am taking the L tyrosine and some of the other vitamins recommended on here and they do seem to be helping a bit. My problem with the tiredness actually has been with me my whole life, long before any opiate use or tapering. Before I ever touched a drug, I've lost a job because I was just too tired to go to work. Nothing ever helped with that before vicodin, not that the vics are really helping, I know they're just masking it, but I think that is one of the reasons I got so addicted. I'm glad to hear your doctor's appt. went well and the subutex is working for you so far.
Southernbelle, my thoughts are with you. I will keep emailing you.
pain and then operations for about a year or so as prescribed.
then the death of my younger brother along with a few other famly deaths is a short period of time and i found myself
abuseing the vikes and wound up takeing 10 to 15 a day and
more. they sucked the life right out of me , and i stoped getting any buzz from them, and was just taking them to function. so i could get to work. In the end they started to make me feel like ****.i kept tring to get off them , but
the depression and lack of energy kicked my butt.
i felt like i was 100 years old every morning i woke up.
i was clueless about what was happening to me untill i found this fourm, and it cleaded up a lot of what was happening and why. i had been clean for 16 years in na before i started on the vikes, i was unaware of how addictive they were and how
complacated and painfull the withdrawls were.
well thanks to all the good people here i learned a lot about
opiates and there effects on the body.
along with the recipe and lots of encouragement from the good folks here , i found my way back to a life without drugs.
peace!!!!!!!!!!!!!!hippy i will always be gratefull to
everyone here. I still go to na meetings i have been going
since i was 16 im 43 and i still love to go to meetings.
It's a place where i get to give something back.
along with living a life based on an awakeining of the spirit.
and practicing spritual principles on a daily basis.
percs
Your words made me feel like reaching out to you. I identify so much with those feelings of not being good enough to do things, even when you prove it to yourself you are. For me, those feelings came from the way I was treated by my parents - my mother a sort of emotionally absent rage-aholic and my father just emotionally (and physically) absent. On top of that, my mother had sort of a mocking sense of humor which would bring up strong feelings of shame in me when she laid it on me.I wound up with this permanent bad feeling inside about myself. Anyway, you probably have your own influences from the past that linger on in you. Getting in touch directly with those feelings of shame and probable feelings of anger (I would guess) at the shame perpetrators -and at yourself, probably, and then finding a new way to be in relationship with yourself - more low key, more accepting, more self aware - is one of the goals. This has really helped me. Gestalt therapy has helped me the most, over the years. I am no longer controlled by addiction in big ways now, although still in small ways. I can look people in the eye (sometimes!) I feel that I do good things in my job sometimes. I work as a methadone counselor, and I'm really into helping people get in touch with their inner selves, as well as learn about the characteristics of addiction. I believe in therapy so much that I still see a therapist myself. It's still very important to me. I was so hurt by my upbringing that I had very little feeling of Self inside. (I'm not saying that the answer lies in blaming your parents - it's just a place to start, to understand the origins of inner troubles. Just blaming and then sitting back does no good at all.) Support from peers is a wonderful thing when you have troubles, too. This forum seems like a very healing place to find help. I went to a 12-step program for years and this is the kind of help I got there. I really recommend those, too, if you can fit your ideology in with theirs.
Maybe you can find a good counseling or therapist, Kim, one that knows about addiction.
Hoping you will get help and feel better.
H.