Life Jacket Anyone????

I am not posting on my other blog. Not yet anyway. I just feel that it is wrong to post there. I talk about this love we have, this bond we share, as if it is some fucking fairy tale. Well, there is nothing fairy tale like about prison, there is no happily ever after. There is nothing romantic about prison visits, nothing to brag about my husband being a convicted felon. Let alone his lies-God only knows how long they have been going on. Nothing pretty about another woman being involved in my marriage, in my fucking husbands private life. PRIVATE LIFE---IN PRISON!!! It is totally embarrassing that my husband can find time for someone else in prison, its fucking humiliating.
I am not sure what to say, or what to write. All I know is that I want to write, I need to write, even though nothing is making any sense at all, my words are mixed up, my thoughts are not even sentences, so please forgive me. I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to physically hurt someone. I want to go and get a nice bag, snort my brains out, and go numb. I want to go and get some wonderful pills, pop a bunch and just forget that I am alive. (NO RED FLAGS. I'M NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING. just being honest about how I feel) I want to do anything to stop this sickness inside of me. I want this horrible feeling to go away. I cant even describe it. It is like my entire body, inside and out has razor burn. Even when the wind hits any part of my skin, it hurts, it burns constantly. My heart is hurting unlike it has ever hurt before. Shit, everything hurts in me now. I am sick. I can't eat, can't barely sleep, I don't want to do anything at all. I hate getting up in the morning, I hate getting ready for work (i barely do that even, everyone there is so politely pointing out the fact that I have looked like shit all week). I don't want to cook, clean, or do anything with the kids. My poor Noel has been doing Nick's homework with him all week. I don't want to exist right now. I want to hide, to run away. So far away from here, and find a safe place to go, so i can just totally melt down. I have never been a weak woman. I don't cry really. I don't fall apart. I don't think about choices in life, I simply do what I have to do to survive. I have never depended on anyone, but myself. Especially since Joe has been in prison. I have been doing things all by myself. No one financially helps me, mentally helps me, emotionally helps me, or spiritually helps me. I get no support from my family. I get conditional assistance with the kids once in a while, with constant reminding of it. And now, things are just falling apart, and all I want to do is find someone to run too, someone to just take care of me and my kids, I just want to climb into a bed, and stay there for about 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years knowing my kids are taken care of. I am drowning and I am searching for a life jacket, because I am just to tired to continue treading these damn waters. So quickly things fell apart. It took me so long to get all that I have, which is not much, but to us, it is the world. I have always focused on the love my family has, how lucky we are to have that. Now, I am just losing everything around me. I don't know how this happened to us, and the thing that is killing me, is that with my kids and me, it is all my fault. I feel like with Joe, it is my fault also. Like, he is going to someone else, because I am failing him as a wife. I am not providing for him the way I should. I should be working two jobs like I used too. I have a family to provide for. And I am failing at it. I am drowning, and taking my kids with me. I just can't stop this, I am trying, but I feel like the fight has left me. I just want to quit now, just give up. I have never wanted anyone to do anything for me, hell, I never let Joe do anything for me. That is just how I am built, and now, this whole mess with him, it feels like it has just broken me. Another woman. God. After all he has put my family through, another fucking woman. Unreal. In prison, another woman. I just can't get over this. I keep reading that letter, over and over again. Throwing up, and reading it again. Crying, putting it down, washing my face, then picking it up again. Why would he hurt me like this? I have tried to be a good wife to him, since the day we met, he knew he was loved every single fucking day. He knew his wife was here, caring about him, devoting herself to him. Yet, there he went, ANOTHER WOMAN. Not to mention the entire parole thing. I wonder, what did he tell her? Would this continue once he is out? Would he sneak around with her, calling her, seeing her?? Then have the nerve to come up in my bed at night?? Oh God, WHY WONT THIS JUST STOP!!! I want to shut my mind off, shut my heart down. I want to sleep. No- I want to eat a real meal, keep it down, take a hot shower, and sleep. Sleep for days and days. Preferably in someones arms, and at this point, I don't want Joe's arms. I just want that safe feeling to come back to me. I feel like a small child, lost, wandering around.
I need to thank all of you. Letting me go on like this, not making an ounce of sense. I needed to get that out, and probably will need to do it again. You are all so great, trying to help me through this, someone you don't even know. That is amazing, and I really do appreciate it. I am grateful to have all of you in my corner. Sorry for this long post. But thanks for listening.

A Little Something I'm Passionate About Lately

For anyone who checks out my site at all you might have seen that back in May of this year I decided to stop taking Cymbalta. It just felt that it was time to experience the world on my own and not under the influence of a mood elevator.

To my surprise, I was told that I could not just stop taking this medication but that I would need to taper down. Ok, not what I was planning on but I wanted to be successful at coming off Cymbalta so I followed my doctors advice.

To my dismay as soon as I started taking a lower dose my body started to go through withdrawal from Cymbalta. I couldn't believe it. I thought that when I was in rehab detoxing and withdrawing from Oxycontin it would be the last time in my life that my body would be sick due to not having it's drugs. I was wrong.

My doctor didn't prepare me for what I was going to experience. I had flu like symptoms, canker sores, bone pain, total malaise (I was taking a four-five hour nap each day), explosive anger and worst of all...brain zaps. For anyone not familiar with this phenomena a brain zap is an electrical jolt feeling in your brain. I was getting those a couple of times a minute. These symptoms lasted 19 days...19 DAYS!

Suffice to say, since my doctor was "unaware of Cymbalta causing withdrawal" I was convinced I was dying. That was until I googled the term Cymbalta withdrawal. Although there was no "official" information on Cymbalta withdrawal there were message boards filled with people experiencing the same thing as I.

I posted my frustration on my site in an article I lovingly called Cymbalta Withdrawal Sucks. The response I got to this post was astonishing to me. I have hundreds of comments from people going through the same thing that I was. And what was the common theme? They were never told upfront that Cymbalta had the potential to cause withdrawal and even worse their physicians were unaware of this fact.

To put it mildly...this has me really fired up. I started thinking that I need to do something, I need to get the word out there. So I am proud to say that I have done a couple of things to spread the word.

1. I have started an Online Cymbalta Petition addressed to Eli Lilly which is essentially a demand that they make any and all information regarding the potential for Cymbalta to cause withdrawal. There is also some stuff on their about their drug reps informing physician offices prior to giving them free samples to hand out like candy. I am urging anyone and everyone who would like to see a drug company disclose complete information on a drug so that patient's can make an informed decision about their drug sign this petition.
   
2. I have filed a formal complaint with the FDA and through my website am urging those who have suffered through the Cymbalta withdrawal with no prior knowledge of the potential for this withdrawal to file a formal complaint with the FDA.
   

I have also started to email information to local and national TV News channels and Newspapers and so far I have gotten some interest in this story. All of this is in an effort to enact change. I appreciate all of you being patient with me ranting about this subject to no end.

Take Care
Erin

sickgirl finally says hello

I originally requested to be part of The Write Thought some time ago but have not yet had a chance to contribute anything until now, even though I've been following the site religiously since its inception. I think that it its an amazing place for those of us battling opiate addiction to be, regardless of what side of this addiction you find yourself. For two years, I had been a regular part of junkylife.com, which was similar to this endeavor. I had a journal there which was entitled Why Do Anything When You Can Forget Everything? but unfortunately it is no longer there, deleted I guess.

I say I guess it's been deleted because I honestly don't really know what has happened to my site, a site that I spent two years pouring out my guts, agonizing over my addiction, etc. None of my emails sent to the webmaster of junkylife.com have ever been returned, nor have any of the comments made to him on his own site been answered. I know that I never requested its removal. I do know that many promises were broken and even now, almost three months later, I still feel sad over what occurred.

There is a silver lining to all of this, now that I was able to discover everyone here. Up until finding this site, I'd been feeling extremely lost and adrift and alone, but most especially, frightfully disconnected from what had become for me, my support group of fellow opiate addicts. I look forward to being part of this project and thank you all for allowing me the opportunity to be part of it.

So for my first entry, I'd like to recount what has been happening to me these past two and a half days or so because it hasn't been terribly pleasant and no doubt there will be many here that can relate.

Well, after barely enduring the past 48 hours, I certainly have a new found respect for methadone that's for bloody sure. Maybe respect is not the most accurate description, but I do know that this will be the first and last time that I'll ever take my MMT for granted. I see now how easily I've allowed myself to become complacent about my treatment. Never again I say!

For the first time since I've returned to MMT, I missed going to the clinic to get my scheduled dose. Circumstances were such that I just could not make it there yesterday. I honestly thought that it really wouldn't be much of a deal as I'm only on 80ml and have been taking my dose since February of last year as well as been stabilized on this dose for the last nine months or so. I had taken my dose on Tuesday at approx 1pm and figured that I would be fine until this morning at 10am.

I got through the majority of yesterday without incident. Work was fine. I noticed in the afternoon that my stomach was unusually unsettled and that I had a few uncontrollable sneezing bouts, but I simply put this down to picking something up from the kids, as Sara had been complaining since the weekend of being really congested, plus having a sore throat. By about ten last night though I started to really feel like crap.

My stomach was still unsettled and my nose was running constantly, plus my body started to ache all over and my head was pounding. Great, I thought. As it had been what seemed like a near eternity since I had been dopesick, I'd allowed myself to become somewhat cavalier about the whole thing. How soon, and easily, we (can) forget. As there wasn't really a whole lot that I could do at this point, I basically decided that probably the best thing for me to do was to try to sleep through this whole ordeal, so that when I woke up in the morning, the first thing I'd do was drag my sorry ass to the clinic.

It has now been an hour and twenty minutes since I took my methadone and miracle of miracles, I feel just fine. My stomach is no longer bothering me, although now I feel absolutely ravenous, plus I've stopped sneezing and my nose is no longer running. Soon I imagine, the last of my body's aches will also disappear.

Obviously this illustrates what a powerful tool methadone can be in our fight against addiction. It sure is no lightweight. And yes, this also illustrates how addictive the solution to the problem can be and how yes, we may just be trading one evil for another with no great improvement ultimately in our "prison sentence". So what's an addict to do?

For me personally, I know that MMT is the best solution. Where I live, suboxone has not yet been approved so it can not yet be legally prescribed. Cold turkey is for the birds, literally! A decade ago, I spent just over two years on MMT and was able to stop it by gradually tapering down my dose. Once I had reached about 15ml, I just stopped taking it and except for about seven to ten days of mild discomfort, I didn't suffer much at all. All of my cravings by this point had also been eliminated. For another three years, I continued to remain opiate - and methadone - free. Going back to them is a story for another day.

Obviously I'm not yet in a comfortable enough place to even consider weaning myself off of this treatment but I also know that I'm not necessarily condemned to a life sentence although, if worse came to worse and I was, I'd eventually find a way to deal. Right now, all that I know is that I don't ever want to feel even remotely dopesick again if I don't have to.

I'll not be so cavalier in the future either, because at the end of the day, its also bigger than simply feeling dopesick. Obviously, my mood would end up affecting my family and my work, and not in a positive way. I've made far too much progress in the past year and a half anyway to mess it up. I'm also glad that I rode out the sickness rather than taking the easy way out by medicating with some other type of opiate. Let me tell you that around 4:30am this was a real possibility that I'm glad I didn't follow through with.

I wish that I had more time right now, but unfortunately, work is beckoning me. Now that I feel almost like normal - whatever that means anyway - I best get my day started! Cheers!!!

This can not be real

I got this letter today. From an old celly of Joe's. He told me that my husband, the one I have waited for all this time, the one I blog about how much I love, and how much he loves me, the one I believe in my heart of hearts to be my soul mate, is writing another woman. He also has this woman put money on his books, and she visits him during the week while I am working.
I am simply devastated. This can not be real. I do not understand this. I can not accept this. My Joe? Why would he do this to me, to our family? How could he do this? What the hell is going on with my life? Why is everything falling apart?

I feel like a complete ass. Like this has all been a joke or something, like he is making a fool out of me. What do I do? How do I handle this? How can I stop this awful pain in my heart? I can feel it shattering, just completely shattering, a million pieces. I can't stop this. I can't handle this. I am so lost right now, I just don't know what to do. So, I am reaching out here. The only place I have. The place I know to get some truth, some reality, some grounding. Please, help me. I really need it. I can't handle this one alone.

Fed Up

I am so fed up right now. I simply can not take anymore shit. I just can't. Everyone is leaning on me, for everything. I can't handle it anymore, I really can't. My sisters are very needy lately, and they are coming to me for so much. Everyone around me seems to be in emotional melt down, and it is really tearing me up inside. I can't take this life anymore. God, I just want my Joe home. Now, it could take months, and there is still that slim chance they can stop this. This revelation came out at visits. Which did not go so good, and that is all I am saying about that. But, for me, I am at the end of my rope. I want him home, I need this man home with me. I have been so strong for 4 years, I just don't have it in me anymore. I am tired, I am simply exhausted. I just want to run away. I need to run away. I can't do this alone anymore. No matter what I do, it is just never enough--for anyone anymore. I always am falling short with someone, somehow. Just when it seems things are going ok, boom, it is a mess again. I just wish everyone would stop and realize, I have enough to deal with in life. I can't solve everyone else's problems. I am only me, not some super hero. My shoulders are not this broad. I just can't handle this. MY life is falling apart, because of everyone else's shit. I want everyone to stop coming to me to fix what I did not break. I just want Joe here, so everyone in my family will get pissed and leave me the hell alone. Just go away. Let me be. Leave me to my life. I have never wanted a bag so bad as I do now. I just want to be so numb, to not feel anything. Lately, it seems all I feel is the pain of others, and my own heartache. I want to be high, to go and use right now. I won't. But, damn, I really want to. I am so sick of all of this damn life. It is too hard for me, and when I look around, why are my arms the only one's open for everyone else? No one is there, with their arms open for me?

Before the Fall

Sometimes I wonder if my inability to remember large tracts of my past is due to the alcohol and drugs, or just a subconscious self defense measure. Regardless of the reason, I do have a hard time recalling certain portions of my life before my slip into total dependence. I am most curious about what my state of mind was as my alcohol abuse slowly phased into alcoholism because it is this time in my life I think is most important to my current recovery. Other than the memories of pain and misery serving as a visceral reminder, the hard core alcoholism portion of my life has very little instructive value. I drank to live and lived to drink… everything else that occurred was just a means to this end. It is this time right before the fall, when I was still a person instead of an alcoholic that I am most interested in.

I guess one of the main things that I can recall about this time frame is my almost total disconnect from the world around me. I do not mean in the same way an alcoholic retreats from others when he can no longer hide his disease, but more in the sense of being on the outside looking in through a window. I still participated and interacted with others, but never felt like I belonged in the scene. It was as if it was my point of reference that Hopper painted his the famous Nighthawks, I was the lonely guy out in the dark, empty street of the city.

Eventually this disconnect became real because of my own actions. I started to neglect things such as work, family, and commitments because I had become detached. It seemed the only time I got feedback out of life, was through the effect of alcohol. I began to depend on my drinking for the stimulus of all things. I needed to drink if I was going to a wedding, just as I would need to drink to go to a funeral. It got to where I would not participate in anything if I could not drink, often avoiding everything altogether by simply sleeping through them. By the time I was avoiding the real world through sleep, I was dependent on the alcohol in my time awake to construct a satisfactory world.

The thing is, I don’t think this “outside looking in” syndrome was anything special to my situation. I think that most people have times in their lives that they feel insignificant or a loss of control. My problem was the alcohol abuse. Even though I was not yet physically dependent on the alcohol, I had begun to rely upon it both as a reward in life and as coping agent for things less pleasant. My drinking was no longer the problem; it was my inability to function with out drinking that became the problem… before the fall.

Cross Posted at The Discovering Alcoholic

Guess who's back, back again? Married to an Ex is back, tell a friend.

I love everyone here, you know I do but I am having a helluva time keeping up with the reading and posting. I want you to know that I am reading but maybe not posting. I feel like collective blogs are the best of both worlds, us still connecting and letting each other know we are alive. This is the codependent part of me that needs to reassure that I am still here and don't want you to feel angry with me for some reason for not reading your stuff or that you don't forget about me. Being codependent is exhausting sometimes!
At any rate I want everyone to know how much these posts (EJ and Scout for the last posts) mean to me. It really helps open me up to a subject that is too painful to remember. It helps ease that pain. I am finally getting some understanding into the nightmare of addiction and am getting a better grip on my own issues. I feel very blessed to know you, even though most of these connections are online (I feel like you could be family!). It is hard to part with some of these feelings and desires and shameful memories so thank you for reading and posting. This is really awesome and a big help to those with meeting issues.
So, now I am off to bed to get ready for another day at the grind stone. Fun times working on Saturday, fo sho.

getting free

More than a few bloggers have been talking about the change of season recently. It's been one more reminder for me of how very much we are the same, more than we are different. It's almost Fall and I, like so many others, experience this season emotionally and physically.
It has a subtle beginning, this season. I first notice it in the angle of the sun. The way it shines on my chair has changed so very, very slightly. Then I begin to notice the intensity of the light. It has a filtered look to me -- like colors and shapes have been muted and rounded. They are softer somehow and slightly out of focus. And that is precisely when I begin to feel it.
Loneliness.
I can't even begin to tell how lonely of a kid I was coming up for fear I'll tap some darkness with which I am not fully prepared to handle. I am the youngest of four girls by many, many years. Combine that with the fact that we attended a private, boarding school for prep, and one can easily see that I was, essentially, an only child. I was an only child who lost her beloved father to divorce and child support wars and her mother to endless hours of work to spend time with a married colleague and a congregation that was more important to her than spending time with her last remaining child. To put it more bluntly, she "forgot" she was a mother.
I spent ages 9 to 14 totally alone; just me, my cat, and Boones Farm wine when I could get a "buyer."
Fall symbolizes the time my mother would be working in even more of a frenzy than usual. She was a campus pastor. Thus, the school year meant more people in the congregation. Fall was the time I would begin to live almost totally on my own. I could literally go for several days without even seeing my mother unless I went to her job. She was gone when I got up for school and I was in bed when she got home from work. I ate cereal or spaghettios or toast unless I went to her job.
They were tough years for both of us, my mother and I. I left her when I was 14 to go to prep school about 80 miles away from home. I never moved back home again. Her best was horrible but it was her best at the time. My mother is a outwardly cold, but inwardly kind woman; a loner by nature. She didn't mean to neglect me in the way she did. She didn't know what else to do at the time. I love my mother. I should hope to be as fine of a woman as she is. But she definitely left me with a legacy of the loner and a feeling of loneliness to accompany it.
Two years ago at about this same time I was three months deep into a $60/day habit of tar heroin (a rather lengthy relapse, so to speak.) It wasn't much in comparison to my once $200/day habit, but it was significant nonetheless. Let's face it, one still has to "get well" several times a day, whether the habit is $20 or $200. I had just fucked up a convention for my job that I was required to attend by ending up in the horrors of withdrawal with two days to go before I could get home to more dope. I had brought enough with me to last for a week, but had shot it all up in 5 days. So, there I was in Houston fucking Texas in the best hotel in town, kicking dope like a lil' bitch.
The alone-ness of that incident almost killed me. Still I used as soon as I got off the plane in Minneapolis and could get to my office where I had a stash of cottons I could squeeze until the morning hours when Hector decided it was time to get his ass out of bed and sell dope to the nagging junkys. It took another month for me to give it up completely.
It was October 18, 2005, and I sat in my car in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Minneapolis trying not to spill tar on the leather seat while I shot dope in the last remaining vein I had in my foot. The sun was shining through the sun roof in the same way it is shining today. I was alone. I was totally strung out. I was afraid of myself. I was afraid of everyone else.
The next day I got one of my old colleagues, who had started her own clinic by that time, to pull some strings and get me on Buprenorphine immediately. I had nearly been consumed by my own loneliness, but it in the end it was that very loneliness that set me free.
The picture above is from North Dakota. I grew up in that State; in those wide open spaces where its flat enough to watch a sunset for hours.
Kind of lonely, isn't it.

A blog I like

This is a perticularly good share that I enjoyed and thought I might pass it along.

http://twodogsbarking.blogspot.com/2007/09/get-in-middle-of-pack.html

countless vain attempts get old and so do I

The last time I came that close I just jumped right in the bag. I had 14 years clean, living with my ex-husband, who had terminal cancer and was shooting a piece every couple of weeks. I was coping for him. I guess that must be the height of co-dependency or what ever the term is for that kind of ass hole love this week.

that lasted about 6 months and loooooog story short I fixed, and fixed again, and wondered if the next slam would the one that would make me die. I really didn't care one way or another. maybe it was the anti-depressants my Dr. put me on when I came into her office 7 months or so ago and started crying.

I'm not sure why she did that accept that's what Dr.'s do. But I had just gotten a divorce, just had been told my hep-c-liver was in dire need of interferon or the cirrhosis was gonna kill me, and my crazy ex-husband who wouldn't move out and had relapsed a few months before, now had 6 months to a year to live. Oh ya, I had just bought a business the year before on wish and a promise and a $30,000.00 dept. It was doing well as long as I tended to it 7 days a week.

Oh ya, I was taking a couple of 400 level Art Theory at the University. I probably should have taken business classes considering Mr CPA now had cancer. Follow your passion I always say. or some shit like that when I'm running on alot of self will and arrogance.

Then I just decided to shoot dope. I didn't care. I didn't not care. It didn't matter really. After the third time(?) I guess I went to bed. I don't remember. But I do remember waking up in the ER and some bitch nurse trying to find an artery for blood gases. I told her to just let me fucking die in piece if my life depended on blood gases. And please pass me the puck bowl so I didn't mess my jammies.

Thank God my Doctor Friend showed up to figure out that I hadn't OD'd but had somehow stopped my heart. And then my good friend, the Methadone Man showed up and gaffled up my Ex and gave him a few options. What a damn circus it all was. I had a business to run and 2 A's that needed some love and I was in the ICU. They wouldn't let me even make a phone call. Worse then County fuckn' jail.

What an arrogant shit head I was to these kind people trying to save my live. But three days with my feet elevated above my head, and no visitors gave me plenty of time to reflect. I did get to make some phone calls. First, to Chatty Cathy... I wanted everyone to now what I had done before I decided to just call it a heart attack and then to that old hard ass NA woman I really didn't much care for and asked her to be my sponsor.

When I got out of the hospital I wondered if I had taken leave of my senses. I just had to let go of the crap I like to feed my brain. The fantasy that somehow I am really ok when I'm really not. And that is where I find the people who might be able to help. The power of one addict sharing with another addict. It always works for me and yet some days I just don't care. And that's the day I hope for the miracle to catch me again.

So that was in 2000. Wouldn't you think I learned something? But no, in 2004, I had a one night stand with 10 of my own percodans. The bottle said take one every 6 hours for pain, not 10 all at once to sleep. And thats another vain attemt at bending the rules to suit me. Way to long for this blog. But, I really believe that the only thing we can do wrong in this 12 step program is to not come back.