Please help with 12 day sleep loss from oxycontin

[bronzeback75]

I have been 12 days since cold turkey quiting of 160 mg daily of oxycontin,I need serious help in the sleep department I beleive i am throu the worst of the physical withdrawals but need sllep soon or will have another nervous breakdown please help i also have lost 14 lbs due to lack of appetite

[Unwise]

Littleguy and seamstress, thanks for your responses.  As always, they help.

I hate to hijack this thread, not that it hasn't meandered already, but I am wondering if anyone here has had experience with any of the "Rapid Detox" centers that are out there?  These basically offer a service where they put you to sleep, "reverse your dependency," then send you on your way with allegedly no cravings and a drug that will block the effects of opiates if you take any.  While I understand that there is more to recovery than this seemingly too-good-to-be-true quick fix, it certainly seems like a viable way of expediting withdrawal and detox in order to get on with life and recovery.  From what I have read in various articles, etc, it seems to work.  Unfortunately it is not covered by insurance and will run about ten grand.  Before I shell out that kind of money (as if I have it to shell out!) I would like to hear from anyone who had gone through it, or knows someone who has.  Is it for real or just a scam?  At this point in my life I do not have the time to spend two weeks or 28 days in a rehab facility and am looking at rapid detox as a serious alternative. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for all your help.

[Seamstress]

Have you ever read "when bad things happen to good people?" It was written by a rabbi and while I don't remember it as I read it years ago and the drugs have taken their toll on my memory, I do remember I was quite impressed with it at the time. It really seemed to make sense. Probably went into the mixture of different religions I've read about and different philosophies that make up my own particular faith.

[littleguy]

Ah, unwise... I am nearly certain, that if you do indeed follow your heart, all will be well.  Surely, that's as much as even a deity could / would ask for.  

littleguy

[Unwise]

Getting off the topic of religion, I am posting this question here because I have never been able to post a new question on this forum.  I always get the message that the qouta for new questions has already been met for that day.  I think we all do an admirable job of dealing with this shortcoming, but wouldn't it be easier and more informative if we had the ability to create more new questions instead of "hijacking" threads or creating meandering posts?  Perhaps this is a question to be directed to the admins of this board, but I was wondering if everyone else feels the same way.  I'm not sure what can be done about it, but I thought I would bring it up.

[Unwise]

It's me, the human ping-pong ball.  I read your posts and smiled that familiar smile of recognition.  Seamstress, I know of which you speak, that dubious feeling of prayers unanswered and events in our lives that only a fairly twisted God would bestow upon us. Because of these things, religion is a tautology, something that cannot be proven wrong by the very tenets on which it is founded, i.e., infallibility.  What may seem like God's cruelty is often explained with a sweeping statement like "The Lord works in mysterious ways."  Indeed, and that's hard to argue with.  Likewise, I have seen a similar thread of logic (or lack thereof) in AA, when I was told to pick a styrofoam cup as my Higher Power.  Anything to make it work, right?  Uh....well, that's not for me.  But I've already dwelled on that and made it topic for numerous posts, enlightening and otherwise, so moving on...

My own anecdote about God, which may explain a lot of my cynicism, has to do with the loss of my brother.  I was six years old at the time.  He was much older and killed in a car accident. I saw my parents torn up.  They began to go to church more often, donated tons of money to the church, got involved in all kinds of extra-curricular church groups...anything to fill the void of the loss.  In time, they had a falling out with the church over something that still remains unclear to me, and went about rebuilding their lives still believing in God and going to church on Sundays, but also I think they learned that all the money and extra time they devoted to the church would not ressurect my brother.  As for me, I was a child, but I was inundated with well-meaning books from relatives and family friends that told little stories of how God had meant for my brother to die at such a young age, that there was some kind of master plan to this tragedy, that my brother was in a better place, sitting on a cloud with Jesus and, presumably, listening to AM pop hits.  All of this drivel was supposed to make me feel better about my brother's death, but instead, it made me angry at God.  I saw right through it.  Even at six, I found it hard to swallow that God needed my brother up there in heaven so badly that he couldn't have just left him with us, where he made us happy.  And so a young atheist was born.  Not that I didn't struggle over the years to come to terms with God's mysterious ways and try to believe.  I was confirmed in the church and even thought of entering the priesthood at one point.  Then I began studying different religions, and realized that since God comes in many forms, not one of them is more valid than the next.  The promise of hell that was sure to come to every Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, and whoever else didn't accept the blood of christ as their only saviour...well, that just didn't smell right.  I studied the wars that have been fought in the name of the Prince of Peace, the torture that took place under his banner, the greed and pain and suffering that sprang from organized religion...and I wanted nothing to do with it. I knew it wasn't Christ who personally instigated these travesties--it was the evil things that men do in his name, twisting his words and his message to their own selfish ends.  One look at the headlines will reaffirm this, with Catholic priests running like rats from the spotlight of sexual abuse that has finally caught up with them.  I wish there were a hell, for it is men like these, men who take advantage of the sacrament of Christ to molest CHILDREN who deserve to rot in it for eternity.  It seems to come down not to God but to man, and man is a weak and faulty creature.  Man wrote the bible and its a schizophrenic tome.  The old testament is about an angry paternal god who pulls nasty tricks on people like Job to test their faith, and wipes out the earth with floods and other disasters to teach the sinners a lesson.  Then, in the new testament, he does an about face and is a maternal god, a god of love and forgiveness who sacrifices his only son for mankind.  Keeping in mind that the bible was written by men, not god, this dichotomy is more understandable as two works of fiction written by individuals with two different agendas...agendas that have been twisted to create as much havoc and suffering as they have good.  

But I digress.  Littleguy is right.  Faith can't be forced on any of us, we must find it on our own, and some of us will find it in the oddest places and on our own terms that may not jibe with Christianity or any other organized religion (I am avoiding the word "cult" here on purpose).  Some of us may never find it, but that doesn't mean we aren't entitled to our beliefs nor happiness. So we all believe what we believe in because of something inside of us that tells us what we believe is true.  I can sit with a shrink or a priest or my sponsor til kingdom come and they can try and track down my lack of faith...though I think I did a pretty good job summing it up here.  And yet I still hope that one day I will have an epiphany, just as Raskolnikov did in his stinking cell on Easter Day (Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment) and I will see the light.  Until then, all I know is what I know, and what I feel in my heart.  AA, with its spritualism, has worked for many and failed for many more (including me).  Such is also the case for many other organized means of recovery and sobriety.  But research shows that there is an impressive success rate for those who somehow find the strength to recover on their own, which means that not only can it be done, but it can be sustained as well.  If you have faith, if AA works for you, then by all means, use it for all its worth. If you do not have faith and have problems with the 12-steps, know that there are alternatives and that you are not hopeless or wrong or somehow defective for not being able to adhere to those tenets.

My friends, whatever path you are on, whatever it is you believe, I wish you all the best of luck and hope you find happiness and success.  Thank you all for your insight, encouragement, and enlightenment. And if there is a God out there who is listening, I would like to thank him for this forum and the fine human beings who make it hum with hope.

[littleguy]

So, maybe one day each of us will find this gift of faith.  Seamstress warns about being careful what you ask for.... for me, I have no reservations about wishing for faith.  And in the mean time, dont let anyone make you feel less entitled to peace and happiness than someone who has this elusive gift.

littleguy