#opioids tw

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

I really wish there were options to safely get sober without being required to enroll in a treatment program. I know exactly the pathway I want to follow to alcohol sobriety (or, in my case, controlled use) because I've done it with opioids before successfully but one of the major factors stopping me with alcohol is the medically significant withdrawal symptoms. All the programs where I am require agreement to further treatment when all I need is medical supervision during the worst of it. I hate how once you're labelled an addict, you don't get control over your sobriety.

(Even if this were an option, sobriety is still out of reach for me because I don't have access to the medical care I need to handle the symptoms alcohol and opioids treat but that's something I know how to fight and which are technically available if not in practice)

I am so angry about the way even professionals refuse to actually engage with an addicts reasons to use, and the role substances play in making their life tolerable. We could help so many more people if we were willing to listen to them about what's realistic and what's desirable. But instead we insist on forcefully shoving every addict into the "full abstinence forever" box, and if they don't fit in there we refuse to work with them.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

One thing I hate about antipsych movement is honestly using physically disabled people as a gotcha. Everything that happens to psychriatrised people also happens to physically ill people. Misdiagnosed and turns out your medications were making you worse all this time? Happens. Doctors fuck you up and then won't take accountability for their mistakes - either about surgical intervention or medication mishandling? Happens. Can't either hate or like your medication too much? Happens - people who hate opioid pain medications are given them all the time even though they just don't work for some people, and people with chronic pain who want them are denied. Gaslighting and abuse? Happens - just look up "pain management" programs, especially at clinics like Mayo - abuse in those institutions is comparable to what happens at psych wards. The idea of non-compliance? They call it "doctor shopping" for us. And neither of these groups can have any meaningful leverage against people who can ruin their lives - doctors and psych industry.

While medicine has more basis in science than psychiatry does, it's not actually that meaningful of a difference. We still don't know what causes autoimmune disorders, migraines, neuropathic pain, autonomic disorders, endometriosis, etc - all accounting for the majority of chronic pain causes. And that's not even touching on the ER abuse that happens even to people with visible injuries. And then we have the psychiatrisation of chronically ill people - anxiety, bpd, depression diagnoses, ssris instead of actual pain relief, no informed consent about the abovesaid... The pushing of "central sensitivisation syndrome" to push people into CBT for chronic pain... Etc...

I'm sick of the "psychiatry isn't a healthcare industry because Real healthcare doesn't treat people this way". It can, and it does, and it will. We're not at all different in that way and antipsych people should try to not throw chronically ill people under the bus, unless making a group of marginalized people feel alienated by their movement is the goal.

I have absolutely no patience for any type of "mental health advocacy" which acts like ableism against physically disabled people is over/less serious and less socially acceptable, when in reality physically disabled and chronically ill people face at least just as much violence, discrimination, inaccessibility, ableism and abuse as psychiatrized people do. Which these "activists" would know if they had spent literally any amount of time actually listening to physically disabled people... The fucking arrogance of assuming that physically disabled people are fine actually to a degree where you make zero effort to actually engage with that community of marginalized people before you make your bold statements about how "no one would ever say that to someone in a wheelchair" makes me extremely angry.

[only-knives]

well i am deep enough into opioid addiction to no longer experience the warm fuzzy euphoria so that's. incredibly disappointing. i'm out now and tomorrow i am either going to end up buying for that day, or calling the mobile crisis unit to start suboxone

i tried calling once before but i got sent to voicemail. it honestly made me angry cause how are you running a crisis unit that sends someone to voicemail. like logically i understand it can happen if they're busy but. emotionally i just.

sigh.

i love the warm fuzzy blanket feeling but i cant get it anymore and the high is honestly just miserable now because i need it to feel normal and my normal fucking sucks

today was a better day though. i went grocery shopping with my mom so now i have food. and flynn is adorable as always.

con is that i took 120mg of this stuff just to feel contently normal for 1-2 hours & miserably normal for the rest, when 7.5mg used to get me beautifully high.

time to smoke weed i guess

[only-knives]

i may have relapsed on this grey market opioid again but today i also -tried to get $10 to be able to afford 4g of weed as harm reduction (god damn order minimums) -got a cannoli !! at my favorite bakery !! finally :) -bought snacks. childhood favorites. pizza xtreme goldfish, cosmic brownies, and chewy chocolate chip cookies -showered <3 i hate showering. but it was ok today even tho i dont really remember it so i guess Matt probably did that (he does that) -set a boundary to not go over to my parents' tomorrow since my dad is home recovering from surgery and told my mom that it wouldnt be good mentally for me (which is a major step up from pretending everything's ok) -did surveys and got $10 that i can still put towards dispensary weed delivery (only $20 for 3.5g + a one hitter, so I only need $10 more) -let a trauma holder do what we're calling "scribing" where we use passive influence and micro-fronting (simply controlling the hand and eyes) to communicate. and did my best to believe her -wrote all this down in a journal to remind myself that me using again doesnt mean i failed today. i did my best it's not about the drugs, not mainly. what matters more than me being sober is me trying to treat myself compassionately. the grief of not seeing my mom/sister/cat tomorrow and fear of them not believing me (i'm at my wits end keeping the SA a secret) was just. too much. too much. i am caught in so many double binds and honestly the fact i didn't buy alcohol (i was going to) and instead bought this (it doesnt activate the beta-arrestin pathway so it wont kill me from respiratory depression on its own) ... which, although not great because i used money my mom gave me to get it (again...)... i can't really afford to moralize this. i want to make it up to my mom. i really really fucking do. i just need DSS to give me my damn payments and my landlord to reimburse me for the locksmith and i will give her every penny back i will be ok. i will be ok. i am going to be ok. this may hurt and not be healthy but i am still in a massive improvement drug use wise compared to 2 yrs ago. i am not borderline OD'ing anymore. not even close. i was doing that frequently this time 2 yrs ago. and you know what. i'm not putting a cut on this one. this is my online journal that i use to have a Voice and not be alone. i dont need to make myself smaller. i am worth fighting for.

[only-knives]

harm reduction update: i did just take more opis but i took 3.75mg and plan to take another 3.75mg in an hour b4 calling it a night. but maybe not even that. on the first day i relapsed i took 30mg in 30 mins! and this is a substance that is um... 14-22x as potent as morphine when it comes to how it binds to the mu-opioid receptor.

so this is a good win! god-willing it'll be a 75%-87.5% decrease in use. my recovery doesn't have to be perfect abstinence. any progress is good progress!

[only-knives]

practicing harm reduction today by using weed instead of opioids !! my radiculopathy is flaring up bad today :< not sure why

[only-knives]

So I don't really know who else to ask for help and I know you have opioid experience, so um sorry in advance if this is triggering or upsetting to ask about.

Basically I took some vicodin yesterday and the day before, both times around like noon, to see how well it would help with my pain because it has been really bad, and it did help a lot+I kind of enjoyed the high I got from it. Problem is it seems to be giving me really really bad nightmares and I'm afraid to fall back asleep, I was able for force myself to stay up for awhile but when I did crash the nightmares only seemed to get worse now that I've connected them in my brain to the vicodin. I guess my question is do you know any good ways to make myself calm the fuck down until the drugs are out of my system or should I just wait it out? How will I know when it's out of my system and it's safe to sleep again?

I don't know how late I am to answering this (I was just out of commission for like 12 hours, sleep is brutal), but as far as advice goes, I can't give much since I'm not a doctor. I can only share my experience.

Which, I don't have that much experience with traditional opioids. But other drugs definitely put me in a position where I couldn't sleep safely (Kratom being one, fuck that shit btw).

I pretty much white knuckled it, just let it pass. There was no real way for me to know when I could sleep. It was all guesswork based on how I felt, and the halflife of the substances - which was dangerous given I took seroquel to sleep. There were definitely times I should have called 911 instead.

I'd just stay up listening to music, texting people, watching Yotube, and going insane. For me, I don't think there's an easy way out of that kind of situation. It's a consequence I took on whenever I used a substance. Despite how severe my pain is now, the mental anguish and risk of death from substances isn't worth the temporary mental and physical relief.

I will say though, the last time I was in a situation like that, I called a friend and they suggested to ride it out and accept that it was going to feel bad for a while - but it would pass. That helped me calm down enough to not go totally crazy, cause accepting it was all I could really do. Working myself up about it made it worse, as unfair as that is.

So yeah, I don't know if that helps but I hope you're alright. ♡ Thank you for confiding in me about this.

[only-knives]

i do not have healthy thoughts about the possibility of doing heroin someday. kinda worried i'm not gonna be done until i start using it.

also realizing i never used so i could accomplish anything. i never had a time where it made me functional. i only used substances to feel good and do nothing, or i used them to feel nothing and do nothing. i literally only ever wanted to simply exist high/drunk out of my mind. oblivion, which, i've been told is the sickest reason to use of all.

like i hear people talk about how they "reached a point" where they couldn't function without substances anymore and i just. i was never functioning to begin with. i couldn't exist without substances. i just can't get over how fast i deteriorated; it's probably because substances never made me functional.

so. that's one thing about me, i guess. blessing and a curse, huh.