It might be late to add a comment now, but I just wanted to tell you what I used to do as a nurse. I would take to work with me a dozen tylenol extra strength, then throughout the shift, would encourage patients to take their pain meds, switching their vicodin with my tylenol. Also one time after a patient threw up, there was a vicodin in the basin. I fished it out, rinsed it off, put it in a spoonful of applesauce and swallowed it. How's that for great lengths? I had a particular job once where I was the one in charge of ordering meds. It was easy for me to order extra, and pocket it. Easy. Needless to say I'm not nursing now.
kt

I have used the fake pill method too.  I would find something that looked like the meds and replace it so I could get the real thing.  One thing about addicts is that we become very "smart" for lack of a better word.  I hope to use my creative mind for good now instead of evil.

Hug,

Shelby

funny thing is,  all I had to do was to go to my doctor, heck, I just had to call him.  I was getting 360 Vicoden at a time.  I figured out how the insurance game worked and I knew that after 23 days, I could get another months worth.  Then I could wait a couple of days and call back and say that they really weren't working so he would give me a months worth of something stronger---oxycontin...both extended release and ones for breakaway pain.  My point is, it is amazing simple to get these drugs "legally".   I am not blaming my doctor.  I take full responsibility for my own stupidity.  I took the damn pills.  But, too many doctors do not monitor very closely the writing of prescriptions.  Luckily,  15 days ago, I checked myself into a recovery center and I have been clean ever since (AND PLAN TO STAY THAT WAY!!!!!!!).   Peace.....Dad of 8

It is pretty easy to get around the system isn't it!  I think you will stay clean....you sound very determined and your head is in the right place!!!!!!

I feel my face turn red thinking about this. I was asked to watch my neighbors home while they went away on vacation. I had just run out of my pills and was starting to feel the w/d's. I brought their mail in and went straight to the medicine cabinet and found a bottle. There were only about 10 percs in the bottle and I took 2, the next day 2 more and the 3rd day the rest. I went out to a pharmacy and found a pill that looked very similar and replaced them. The pill was a multiple vitamen and nothing dangerous. It is the only time I did something that bad for pills, I usually got them with legit scripts.

Tim

Here is my story:

I am 35 years old, and married to a wonderful man have 3 kids, one of my own and 2 step kids who live with us.

Anyway all started 4 years ago with me, I was out one night and had a bad bad headache, had nothing to take and my friend who had been with me had some percocets she had been in a horrible motorcycle accident and waslife flighted and almost didn't make it, so she will be on these pills forever... Anyway she offered me one of her percocets and i took it... God from that moment on i was addicted... Unreal, huh?

So anyway for the past 4 years i have not really had any trouble getting them, just went to my Dr. and faked pain, it has been working up until about a yr. ago...he started catching on to me, so i ended up shopping for Dr's. Now i have 5 family dr's.... amazing huh???

Well up until about 2 weeks ago i found myself calling all my dr's and asking for a refill and guess what they all said it is too soon. Now they are all on to me and can no longer get them... My friend always has some buut because of me she had ran out early now she cant get her refill until This Friday... I had no choice but to quit taking them, I honestly did not want to quit, i liked who i was when i took them... Since i cannot get any i had to stop had no othe choice.

I found myself going to my parents house where my father is dying of Total bone cancer and don't have long to live, and i would steal from him anything i could get just to have that feeling one more time...But guess what they were realizing pills being missing also... So i was screwed there now too....

On Sunday, June 3 2007...by the way is my sons birthday just turned 14 the day i quit...I started my withdrawals... OMG the worse thing i have ever had to go through in my entire life... But finding this site and having support from everyone here who was a little ahead of me is what truely got me this far
(day 10)...

About 7 days ago if someone would have told me i would be on day 10 and clean...(by the way, i have had nothing since them, except a few advil) I would have told them... Ya Right....I am a failure at usually every thing i do in life... I am a very weak person, so to be where i am now, i am proud....

Although, I am having major depression right now, and feel those cravings so darn bad, and have not slept more than 12 hours in the past 10 days... I will succeed...( I HOPE )

I have a very supportive hubby who loves me so much....He has been my shoulder to cry on the past few days, and boy does that help me...
Unfornately, after him taking off work for the past week to be here with me, He had to go back this morning, he is out of town now and will not be home until tomorrow afternoon, so this was my first real day of learning how to deal with this on my own... Up until now, i didn'tthink i was gonna make it... But as the day goes on i am getting a little better..

Thanks so much for letting me tell my story, It helps me when i tell it...

Hopeless

Tim that's funny cause I did the same thing... to my wife...only they were my pills and I didn't want her to know how many i (little i) had taken.

Now the above story is the very least that we can do.  I have a black-belt in "Stranger than Fiction."  And you cannot even imagine the stories I could tell and choose to forget.  Em just use your wildest imagination by a factor of ten and you will get close.  The froggiest i've ever been is with alcohol delerium tremons.  (this is off the question of "getting")  I don't think you can get farther out on anything like I have seen with alcohol.... total full on halucinations and paranoia.......  being chased by demons and the like.  Speed has a tendancy to do this too... especially if you've been up for 9 days without sleep.  Why do we do this??? I ~~ DUNNO??? Can't imagine doing it again.  Thought I had found the perfect drug in the hydros.. didn't know the cost was so high later.  Sorry Em, I had a few stranger than fiction stories but am too embarrassed.
Have fun with you paper.

I have stolen from my husband continually.  I have told him every lie in the book.  I would even suggest he take a shower or go to the store for me so I could raid his meds.  I feel awful for it.  There are no words to describe the guilt.  That part I am not sure how I am going to deal with it.  I have never bought them on the black market or anything like that.  The only time I ever stole anything was from him.  The most important thing to me was how to get the drugs...at one point I would have sacrificed everything to get high.  I knew I was risking my family by my actions.  I just didn't care.  My all consumming thought was how high.  NOTHING else mattered.  

Shelby

Before I share unconsionable things I have done for pills, please share with me how you have stayed clean since Dec?  I am so angry with myself for relapsing and I just want to do it right this time! I let myself get too comfortable being in recovery or I let my guard down....I don't know why?

Anyway, enough of that.  I too stole from my in-laws....I was the caring daughter-in-law who would go over after my MOL's knee replacement surgery and snitch from her stash and when my FOL's back went out I was there again!  The worst thing I think I have done was stealing from my son when he had a ureter blockage and needed surgery!  He was so brave and said he was fine with just Tylenol...well goody for me....I had a bottle of vicodin at my disposal and I probably would have talked him out of the pain if it got me one more pill.....How sick and twisted is that? I would take a bullet for my sign (as long as the vicodin was readily available!!!! I am a "good" mother and I love my 4 children to the core!  It sounds even more depraved seeing it in writing!

Good luck with your paper....you deifinately will have lots of material to draw from!
Peace,
Marcie

I have so much respect for you and how well you have been doing on your recovery. You are so committed and it gives me hope. You have come a long way and I know it hasn't been easy for you. Keep doing what you're doing because it is working. Hats off to you my friend!! I am on day 20 and still have my really bad moments.

Tim

I guess the thing I feel most guilty about was after my brother died I took some his pain pills and benzos. I was nursing him but was also active in my addiction. He didn't need them anymore of course but I feel like it was really bad karma. I still feel really guilty about it.

Wow, you guys, thank you so much for responding!!! I, too, have gotten scripts and then called the doc the next day ( a doc who was more than willing to prescribe) and told him the Codeine wasn't working...then he'd prescribe Vicodin, so I'd have two full bottles of pain meds. I am humiliated thinking about how low I stooped. I also stole from a family friend I was dog sitting for, and I was so bad into my addiction, I didn't even care to just take a few. I swiped them all. Disgusting. I have done several things like that, and am just so ashamed of myself.
Marce, the ONLY reason I have stayed off pills since December is because of my son. I am too scared to go back to being on pills, because towards the end, they made me SOOO depressed about a half hour after I'd take them, and I will NEVER forget that depression, or the HORRIBLE w/d's...I have NO tolerance for pain or discomfort, and the w/d's were so bad, I could never go through that again. I also read the bible, and I am not preaching, just telling what works for me, but I do this every night: I simply open the Bible and flip to a random page and begin reading. I swear, it almost ALWAYS pertains to what I'm feeling or thinking at that moment, or pertains to what is going on in my life at that moment. I have become closer to God the past six months, and He is the ONLY reason that I am still clean, giving me the strength to keep my son in mind so I don't relapse. I guess I have just always told myself that I refuse to let a pill run my life...the days that I do have cravings ( and I have them all the time) I get angry...angry at the PILLS. I get furious that such useless garbage has such a hold on my mind still, and I refuse to give in. That's the only way that I can explain it, really. Reading the Bible every night is seriously the only way for me.
Again, thank you guys soooooo much for your honesty. I really appreciate it, and it's good to know that I'm not alone, and that there are other good, decent people in this world who have made some bad decisions like myself. I really love all you guys!!

I called a doctor after he prescribed Vicodin and told him the Acetaminophen was making me sick and could I have Vicoprofen instead. I forgot about that. I hope your paper turns out great!

I also wanted to tell you that when I got a script, I would put them in a vitamen bottle so my wife wouldn't know.  She caught me fishing around for them and and confronted me. She threw 37 down the toilet.

Addicts are considered nothing but a social stigma walking the earth like zombies, loathed and ostracized by most people.....

They live in insanity amongst demons who seduce them then control their thinking in their brain and then try very hard to kill the body....

Using drugs becomes an obsession and nothing else matters, nothing......
Addicts leave victims in their path most of them family members and friends...

The insane mind of an Addict is a very scary place. It is a place where monsters live and breathe fire, it is a place where Satan himself dwells in all his glory.............

I thought I might write your opening for you...........

Wow, you are one strong cookie! Kudos on your honesty!

I have done that...stolen from my FIL and also from a friend who's husband was recovering from a minor surgery but because of a stomach condiiton he cannot take any pain meds. ( A friend I have known since age 2,  no less) They got and filled the rx anyway and never used it...and about 3 months after his surgery he was fully recovered and that full bottle was still there on their baker's rack in the kitchen, amongst bills and business cards and keys and the **** we all accumulate, and I just swiped that sucker. Yep, I did that. And I still can't believe it. Where did I get the utter gall!? Horrible. No one ever asked and I am never telling. I truly believe no one noticed. This was years ago, 3+, at what I now know was the beginning of an active addiction. The FIL's were so old they were about to expire and he actually first offered them to me 9knowing my knee history and problems)...and I said no...but later stole them anyway. I would be shocked if they even remembered or knew what I was talking about if I fessed up today. But the things is...I remember.