12/04/08 a really long rant for the new guy, how many days is this Fred???

Beating this drug at the moment has become all consuming.   It is all I can think of, it is all I want to read about and it is all I want to write about right now.  

emergee asked me tonight how much "time" I had.  What I SHOULD have told "e" is "not enough" or maybe "just barely a glimpsing, grasping, I'm trying anything now" response.  Technically, it's still the evening of my second day of going cold turkey.  And I must say, the five days before I stopped entirely,those days when I tapered from 8+/day to 1-2 pills/day hurt worse than the last two of COLD TURKEY.  I am about as patient as I am addictable. (is that a word?)  The wierd thing is that I have those sweet little white pills in my "drawer" right now and while the physical symptoms are still kicking my ars, I can chose to not take them at this moment.  And it's actually already becoming less awful.

Kicking this evil addictive drug has become all consuming to me, just as making certain that I had a righteous supply of my DOC (drug of choice) had become all consuming these past six years.  My wife sees me at this computer for hours on end now and I don't think she "get's my obsession with getting off this T.  Then in the evening after she goes to bed, I read and reread the postings you have made previously again.  You all have become as a "higher power' to me.  Mercifully, I planned my withdrawal to coincide with a week off work, so this is my "tramadol vacation", you see!

And why not have a little levity on a subject that is otherwise, so dreadfully serious.  It's no big deal...it's just a matter of life or death.  

I had to chuckle upon reading a post from last week by someone which read, "I've been up until 5 in the morning every night because of the restless legs symptoms, but other than that I feel fantastic!"  As in, "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?  But sadly, I DO know EXACTLY what that person was going through.  

I want to address what I think may be a misconception of some first time guests to this site, and frankly, a feeling that I had when I first visted you all.  To wit, how can these people make postings of success, when there must surely be more people like myself, who feel so defeated over this addiction?

Fair enough.  

As Emily once noted, the people who log on (like me seven days ago), who are genuinely  looking for help, but who are finding it impossible to take that first step, sadly don't post.  I know I visited here more than once  without posting and I thought you were all hypocrites or do gooders or liars at first glance.  But as I ventured back to this site again and again, is search of a hope TO TAKE MY 1ST STEP, what I found was a bunch of sick puppies - just like myself.   We are seeking to do battle with  this terrible subtile, sneaky how it get's you, DENIAL wrought  disease.  You all just happened to be a day or a week, or a month or six months ahead of me in the fight.  And hopefully, our postings will give the strength for other poor puppies like myself, to do battle with this drug once and for all.

The notion that my first TINY steps toward recovery could be something I am proud of, is laughable.  Are there any sports fans out there?

Hello Sports fans, welcome to the big show.   Tonight we find FRED, once again  waging battle against TEAM TRAMADOL.  The two have matched up previously TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND NINTY SEVEN TIMES.  And the score leading into tonights contest stands at:   ...TEAM TRAMADOL 2,190.  and TEAM FRED 7( if you include/count my taper!).  

I have seen some sports franchises with some terrible win/loss records.  The Washinton Huskies, for example, here in Seattle, this year  are a dismal 0-11 this season.    Go Dawgs!  :(   But I can't recall EVER recall seeing a team with a win/loss record as dismal as my own.   7 wins and 2,190. losses.

Yup, that's how proud I am of myself.  I have succeeded EXACTLY  seven times in the past 2,197 days in my fight with this terrible drug(it was actually only 2 completely OFF this drug).  WHOPPY!!!  So please don't anyone reading this think I have overcome anything.  I just got tired of being dependant on something more powerful than myself.  Tired of waking up each day, telling myself that THAT day would be different FROM ALL THAT HAD BEEN BEFORE, only to require more and more tramadol to achieve what I felt was a "necessary" pain free existance i REQUIRED in order to lead  a productive work and home life.  So I get that, "I can't afford to go off tramadol" reasoning.  I said that 2,190 out of 2,197 days in the past myself.   (more like 2,195 failures, but whose counting?).  

Heck, after dinner, I had so much energy on T and I felt so good that I would be known to go outside in the dark and plant bulbs in the garden.  Or I would log on to my work computer in the evening and work productively until the wee hours of the morning.  I HAD TRAMADOL POWER.  So make no mistake, the drug made us feel very very good. That is, until we required more and more of it to work it's magic...until it turned on me and actually CAUSED pains in places I didn't even know could hurt.  Here's the really crazy thing.  As I am coming off this, my hips (original complaint six years ago) don't even hurt any more.  

So we come to the point where we are trapped like rats.  Trapped by a doctor who doesn't fully understand that the same amount of this drug will not continue to produce the well being that it did in the beginning.  HINT:  M.D.s won't typically prescribe more than 400 mg/day. if I had really gone to "non traditional" online methods of attaining this drug, I am unsure what might have happened to me.  I would probably still be spending lots of $$$ on way too many pills/day just to feel "NOT unwell".  

It's odd that I was never able to apply what I know from other 12 step programs to beat this disease. Once again, I didn't have a problem, OK?  These were harmless, non-opiate and SUCH pretty SMALL white pills, harmless by the hand full, it seemed.  I am certain that I have been in denial and have compartmentalized this addiction for a long time.   Tiny steps today toward freedom.

Question:  How many of us shared with our siblings, cousins, parents, or even children that we tatke T?  I for one did not.


So where are we at?  We have denial and we have guilt and we have hiding behavior.  This isn't sounding too alright to me by this point.  Houston, we have a problem.  

I don't know why anyone else has tried to stop, but for me, it came down to this, "did I want to constantly face withdrawal symptoms EVERY month at the end of my "allottment", when I had consumed well more than my daily dosage  on the front end of a "cycle", so that I was sweating, aching, tingling everywhere ONE WEEK out of every month, or did I want to make my best effort to do WAR this time and be done with this?"  

You all have provided such loving advice for someone like me.  Today I picked up and am using some Hylands Restful Legs, B-12 and Imodium AB.  Thanks to all for the advice, it does help.

In closing, I have a pretty darned dismal record of defeating TEAM TRAMADOL.  It isn't pretty where I sit.  The score the past 2,197 days stands at 7 days of wins (only 2 c/t) and 2,190 days of losses.  Certainly nothing to be proud of.

But for some crazy reason, about a week ago, I admitted I was powerless over Tramadol and I conceeded that my life and my constant cyles of failures had become (for me) unmanageable.  And after visiting this site several times (and at first thinking you were all a bunch of pollyannas), I came to see your small successes as a sort of power greater than myself.  It hasn't been easy and it hasn't been fun, but WITH YOUR HELP and example, I am determined to beat this terribly, addictive, largely unregulated,  over-prescribed, seldom understood, terrifying to quit drug that has been part of my life for over six years.   7 - 2,190 isn't a pretty record, but guess what?   I am determined that tomorrow that win loss record will read:

FINALLY FRED 8, TEAM TRAMADOL 2,190.  And that my friends, is worth living another day to see.