When the Going Gets Tough the Tough Relax
I was reading the Diary of a Quitter the other day and I was struck by her honesty. Now a great many of her posts pass along the inspiration that she has come across in her reading, through other blogs, from therapy, friends and other sources of support and these are great and helpful in her own way. But when she admits as she does in her posts “Hard to Fight It” and “The Honeymoon is Over” that recovery is not all pink clouds and happy reclamations of life, love and happiness.
She says: “Those first few months after I started Suboxone treatment were filled with the excitement of doing something new, plus the motivation of desperation. Now, the newness has worn off and I’m left here with myself and my habits and no easy way out.
“So it is time for me to recommit myself to this process of healing. This point, right here, is the point where I usually quit. Where the inspiration has run out and the goal is still out of sight, I give up. I start in with the self-sabotage, craftily stirring up some kind of drama so that when I do quit, it looks like events have conspired to foil me, once again.”
Even though Suboxone promises the instant gratification of renewed mental clarity (that you may not have even realized that you lost during your prescription painkiller addiction), it has no cure for that plateau that happens to all of us a few months or, for some, a few weeks into a new venture. Call it boredom, call it depression, call it fatigue. There are so many reasons why we give up. It’s being honest with ourselves and recognizing our patterns, our triggers and the emotions that preclude a relapse that help us to fight them. By not giving in, by distracting ourselves until the feeling passes, by recognizing the seriousness of the situation and choosing not to use right now, today, and making the same decision when tomorrow comes, we can get through these feeling when they come and go to sleep each night knowing that this is ongoing process and that it doesn’t have to overwhelm us, that we have the choice to get through it the best way we can, no matter how that is.
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March 9th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Hey! Thanks for the shout out!
March 31st, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I resisted the addictionologist’s reccommendation that I get on Suboxone once I found out that it was just another opiate. I was on methadone for almost 10 years when I realized that it was doing me no good. I’d been addicted to pain pills before that. The methadone clinic gladly accepted me and gladly increased my dose pretty much whenever I wanted. I first got methadone “on the street” in pill form and at the time I thought it was a better high. When I found out it could be gotten at a clinic I went and did it and stopped abusing pain medication. I picked up another nasty pill habit from another user at the clinic however. Let me just say that benzodiazapine withdrawal is actually far worse than coming off opiates. The combination of the two(benzos and methadone) seems to be popular among methadone addicts. Anyway, when I realized that methadone, for me, wasn’t any different than taking pain pills all the time I decided to quit. It took me a year and half just to ween down to 60 mgs from 200 per day. The hospitals and most of the addictionologists all said I’d need to get down to 30mgs before they’d treat me. I nonetheless walked away from the clinic at 60 mgs and was determined to find someone to treat me so I could get a doctor’s excuse from work. I needed about three months to feel a modicum of normality. If it weren’t for my steely resolve(strengthened by the methadone clinic itself which had told me I’d fail) and high metabolism I might have needed longer. I didn’t sleep for at least the first month and had all the symptoms indicated for methadone withdrawal plus those associated with benzo withdrawal(i.e severe vomiting, hard core shaking, massive mental hell). I was thinking at the time that the C.I.A could use withdrawal as one real method of torture. I’d prefer waterboarding. I think the toughest part was all the mental hell I went through. When I started to feel better it was like transitioning from one world to another, one mode of existance to another with, as Coleridge wrote “more than just youthful spirits restored”. In any case, I sensed going in that it would take time some time to get through it. After all I’d been on various opiates for almost ten years before the nine years I was on methadone. I’m writing this in hopes that it passes by someone who was in my boat. I’ve been opiate free for a year now. The methadone clinic was like slavery in the sense that I could never even leave town without making sure I had the take home priviledges. Everything was centered around it. I don’t miss it a single bit now and I think of myself as a savvy veteran in a vast drug war I had waged on myself. I knew it was going to be hell but one of the things that helped me is that I knew that it wasn’t a fatal illness and that when it was over I’d be a better person because of it. I won!
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Wow. Congratulations, Aaron. A very eloquent post. And happy one year anniversary. That’s a huge benchmark and I’m impressed. I certainly hope that the person(s) who needs to read your story find it here.