Want toi quit - PTSD, depression, blood clots, 45 and heart broken from divorce - any hope?

[tapedisp1]

I really want to quit.  I quit for six days 10 days ago then being an idiot, I relapsed. Day 5 and 6 were better than days 3-4 but I relapsed anyway.  Being off, did allow me to see how "masking" the drugs are to what life used to be like and should be. I mean things like having a sex drive, a healthy sense of urgency and accomplishment etc are all hidden away when I'm using.

But I am scared - I am 45, not in the best of health (Blood clots and pulmonary embolism from knee surgery last year). I also have PTSD and depression and I know I am self-medicating but, the docs could not help me well enough with the PTSD & Depression to make living tolerable. The drugs allowed a chance of feeling good- but my PTSD and Depression are so, what's the word? - "Evil" that they cause me to psychologically beat the snot out of myself when I use so the "feeling good" part goes away (I am aware body adopts, this even takes that into account as I incrased my dosing) - then there won't be anything to help and I fear I will become suicidal again.  I am in a new level of Dante's "Inferno."

Can anyone, anyone at all, offer me some concrete information I can hang onto?  I need facts as I have a scientific background and tend to dismiss "touchy feelly" support - which I have come to realise is really my problem - I don't think I deserve to be loved let alone capable of feeling it from others! Don't get me wrong, I have the capacity to feel love - it's just that my underlying dysfunctional self-blame and guilt won't let me feel it - "I don't deserve to be cared about" is the thought that jumps in and stops any satisfaction of being cared about. Everything about this seems to include dysfunctional cyclesI

I am also very afraid detox will kill me!  When the PTSD set in, with it's incredible somatic( ("of the body") effects, My body REALLY reacts to my thoughts and feelings. Some context - PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as the name implies follows trauma and the bad effects from not processing the trauma completly at the time of the event because your brain uses a self - preservation technique of processing the event so that you are not overwhelmed and able to still take some action to save yourself. Unfortunatly, this results in not just the seperation of the feelings from the information about the event(s) but it sets up a new "network" in your brain used to process the trauma - so new experiences may get side-tracked into getting processed through this new network and it then triggers prior knowledge and feelings of the past traum(s). These thoughts and feelings are ussually overwhelming A)Because the original event was overwhelming and; B) The feelings, seperated without context of "normal" knowledge, come up in their purest form and are magnified. So, your brain in it's infinite wisdom, employs another very basic self-preservation tactic used by just about all creatures - "Fight or Flight" responses. This is further complicated by the fact that when your brain originally processed the traumatic events and split the feelings from the information, it used other area's of the brain to perform splitting, processing and storage; In mine, and many other cases of PTSD, very basic structures of my brain were employed to do this. These "basic" area's of the brain include all things realated to regulation and protection of the body. Again, that's were the "fight / flight" responses come from.

PTSD people may be triggered and then the body reacts as if in danger - sweating, breathing, heart rate, alertness all accelerate. This is your body's way of preparring to take some action - either to fight the threat or flee from it. Some experience full blown panic attacks and they feel like they are having a heart attack - rarely, they do have a heart attack.  

In my case, my body reacts to my emotions. Example 1) Just before I began dealing with the traumatic event in my life (abuse by priest), I had a vasectomy. This part of my body was involved in the trauma - During the procedure, I immediatly experienced rapid heart and respiration, high blood preasure and profuse sweating. My doc took about an hour to do the procedure as I was bleeding profusly and my vas deferens (What is cut in vasectomy) kept being pulled up inside my body. [SIDEBAR: In males of many species, in trauma, the body includes a further defense - it pulls the testes closer to the torso!]  I had exteme pain (this is what set off all of my pain med abuse) for the 12 months that followed. I would wind up ER's with complications - infections, hydrocelles, hemotomas (blood clots), etc. Then, I began to deal with the trauma as it came flooding back to me one day, On that day, all of the complications stopped!  Prior to that day, my brain had caused my body to react as if it had been damaged.  My white blood counts would be high, I would sweel, bleed etc. BUT IT JUST STOPPED the day I told someone about the abuse.  There are many other examples but the most concerning are the recent ones as they may emerge during a detox.  I got divorced 3 weeks ago. In the days that followed, I fiented 6 times and developed edema (Retainment of fluid. In my case I gained 30 lbs of fluids in my surgical knee with a lot of swelling and "pooled" blood in my foot. This is a sign of heart failure).  About 3 hours after I was served with the summons for divorce in October, 2008, I was in the hospital with a Pulminary Embolism - blood clot in lung that frequently causes death.  In both cases, once I uttered "my heart is breaking" (from the divorce) my symptoms would resolve.

So that is where my real concern comes from in terms of surviving detox.

Help please! please, please! What can I do? Are there programs that would or could address my concerns?

Kind regards - may God bless you!

tapedisp!

[theeagle]

I have never heard of a pulmonary embolism being psychological?   I do thank you for your post - I am Viet era vet and address some PTSD issues - and from another trauma or so ..... I learned some things. Thanks for that.  So are the cardiac funtions currently compromised? What about BP?     You really might be more comfortable - or also use - the expert addiction forum at med help.....a SubDoc Jeff Junig is on it and he is an addictionologist and psych Doc .....  probably be interesting for you to chat with him ....he is also quite clinical..............