Deeper and Deeper

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.

Dave Gahan - KINGDOM

Angel of the Morning

All things considering. my teenage daughter and I have a fairly fantastic relationship. I trust her judgment for the most part and feel that she is quite mature for her age. I respect most of her decisions and do my best to be supportive of her endeavors. There certainly have been times when I’ve had unilaterally veto one of her plans but this is the exception rather than the rule.

Now all of this being said, sometimes I find her behavior is more than enough to drive me completely, absolutely certifiably insane. It always seems like it is the little things that end up pushing me over the edge also. Yesterday evening and today would be classic Sara - and Katie - stuff. Before they were able to do anything yesterday, they had to pick up the massive pile of clothes that had been growing on their bedroom floor for the past week and a half. Combined with the clothes was an odd assortment of other crap, so much so that one could no longer see their carpet. I felt that this was a more than reasonable request.

Journals

I have been keeping a journal of some sort on and off since I was about 11, so about 32 years now. I kept one religiously all thru high school and university because it seemed like so much was happening and things were changing so quickly that I was afraid that I would forget stuff and I wanted to remember everything, good or bad. As I settled down into married life in my twenties and then motherhood in my thirties, keeping a journal was the farthest thing from my mind. There just didn't seem to be the time and if seemed as if life had settled into somewhat of a routine. Excitement and change seemed to be a thing of the past. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Five years ago this past June, my father was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away the following March. Towards the end of his life, I picked up pen and put it back to paper in a large part to work thru my emotions while my father was dying and because I was afraid that I might forget something about his last days. Also my writing became a relief in many ways for my mother who was afraid that she would forget some minute detail of my father's final days. It suddenly became extremely important to her that I was able to recite in great detail everything that might have occurred on a specific day or over a specific time period. My journal became her security blanket in many ways. It was definitely a time of change for all of us.

After he passed, I continued to write as an outlet for my emotions. I carry my journal with me everywhere and any time I feel the need, I write something in it. An entry can range anywhere from one word to endless pages. I have found that whenever I am restless, upset, bored, impatient, irritated, you name it, the moment that I start writing I am immediately calmed. Needless to say, my recent journals follow no set form. They range from neat and tidy to tremendously disorganized and messy. I paste pictures in them sometimes. I doodle in them. I make sure that each one is different from the next. I haunt stores looking for unique and different books to use as journals. I have made them all my very own by decorating them in some special way covering many of them in scraps of expensive taffeta and similar fabrics.

About three and a half years ago I was told about livejournal.com. This was my first foray into online journaling. It took me a long time to feel comfortable expressing myself publically, but once I got the hang of it, it became easier and easier. I have liked using livejournal and in fact now have a number of accounts there. Mostly I use them to display and store my art work or to join one of their many communities that have interested me in the past. At first I really liked having my journals there and especially liked the whole "community" mentality but after a bit of time there, I started to want or need something different. I started looking for alternate places where I might be able to share my alternate life, something I had yet to be honest with at livejournal.com.

I also wanted my journal to actually reflect what was really going on in my life but because of my "alternate" life I found that this was near impossible using the identity I had been using, well mine. One day I created an alternate online identity to reflect my alternate life. No one would know that it was me. Hence sickgirl was born, a name that I got from bastardizing a Social Distortion song Sickboy plus the whole addict world of dope sickness.

I've now frequented various places on the net as sickgirl now since about the fall of 2004 so I guess its been about three years now. I'm still not completely honest with the world as for all intents and purposes I'm blogging anonymously but then I guess lots of us are doing just that too. While it would be ideal to be able to be completely forthcoming, I know that this would be impossible because there are other people than myself involved in this endeavour and it wouldn't be fair to them.

sickgirl

Playing With PaintShopPro and my Digital Camera