My Body In Revolt

My body is not happy with me, and hasn’t been for the past several days. I have been in a constant state of low-grade withdrawal symptoms, basically freezing sweats, body pain, running nose and a little bit of cramping. It’s been uncomfortable most of the time, to be sure, but tolerable. I even went to my IOP class on Wednesday although I was pretty miserable for the full three hours until I got home and it was time to take a small-dose morphine pill I’ve been prescribed to take up to twice daily for when the w/d’s get to be too difficult.

Yesterday was pure hell. I have been sleeping a lot less than I normally do because of the w/d’s; and the night before was really hard with my getting, maybe, two hours of sleep… and that total was not gotten all at one time, either. It was more like, fifteen minutes here, twenty-five minutes there, fifteen again, a half-hour… you get the idea. So I was exhausted, and have been. I was also having a really difficult time because the w/d symptoms were really amped. I don’t know why that is, since I’ve not lowered the dose for over two weeks. I mean, sure… three days or so after can find the worst of the w/d symptoms. But three weeks? I had spoken to my doctor about this when I had my appointment with her on Tuesday. It seems I may have hit “the wall” they have told me about. It is, simply, when one gets to the lowest level of opiate the body can tolerate, one goes into a hard w/d because the brain is absolutely freaked out that it doesn’t have enough of the drug it wants. So it creates even MORE pain in order to try to get the drug. Wow, huh? Our bodies/brains are so amazing. And the brain is trying to trick me, its “owner,” into giving it more drugs!

Anyway, the small-dose instant release I take twice daily to help curb a lot of the w/d symptoms did absolutely nothing to help me, and as the morning wore on I got worse and worse. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it there so I begged off on my class attendance. No problem… it will be excused. The worst part (he said, half-jokingly) was that I didn’t feel I could safely drive to get my tankard filled with Diet Pepsi, so I had to go without yesterday. I’m sure I was in some kind of w/d for that, too!

So as the day progressed I got worse and worse. I didn’t want to take the other prescribed instant release morphine because then I wouldn’t have anything for the evening/overnight. “Luckily,” my body was done, was tired beyond anything else, and I had no choice but to sleep for a while. That “while” turned into several hours, partly due to my sheer exhaustion; but moreso due to it going deeper into w/d. When I awoke late in the evening I was so, so very sick. That happens to me when I go into w/d when I’m sleeping, sort of a double-edged sword thing. I’ll be sleeping really hard from being so tired. That will add itself to the disturbed, unrestful sleep one falls into (occasionally) with w/d, causing the w/d symptoms to go out of control. (This, by the way, may not be how it works for everyone; it’s just my own experiences from dealing with this shit over the years.) The doubly-forced sleep is the sleep of death, and practically nothing can wake me up from it. But when I do finally wake up, I’m sicker, sicker, sicker, the w/d symptoms going from “just” the cold sweats and a little achiness with a runny nose to all of those times ten, plus tremors, extreme headache, hot flashes that go on and on (interspersed with the freezing cold feelings), watering eyes, throbbing head and veins and body cramping and pain that is just out of this world. Plus, me being me, when that happens to me I go from my usual flat-on-my-back sleeping position into a fetal one, unfortunately now onto my right side, my right shoulder that is still recovering from rotator cuff surgery, causing it to flair up and have stabbing and throbbing pain. Double-whammy on the shoulder, in other words, that can take a day or more to go away, to get back to normal.

I ended up getting caught up on the meds I had missed when sleeping so hard, especially the morphine, gave myself my insulin shot, took the other low-dose instant-release morphine. It helped some, at least to the point where I was able to sit totally upright instead of hunched over from the severe lower back cramping. A good deal of the cold sweats and hot flashes went away, although not totally. My head stopped screaming, going back down to the constant low-grade headache I have now… and so on. In other words, I went back to what I call “mild” withdrawal. I watched TV and did crossword puzzles for a while, then went back to bed. I tried to read but was asleep again almost immediately. So I awoke a couple of hours later with the light and my glasses still on, and the book lying on my face. Attractive, no? Since it was almost time to start the medications all over again I got up, much to Popcorn’s delight, and putzed around for a little bit until time to take the morning medication, eat a little bit (I have to with my morning meds), and then try to sleep a little more. I did, for about another hour.

And now I am up, ready to face the day. I am going to get my tankard refilled first thing, then pick up groceries and come home to put them away and walk Popcorn up and down the hallway outside my door. I really need to get her to the vet for a nail trim, so that may happen as well. Or maybe I’ll wait until Monday morning when they won’t be so busy. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. As for other plans for the day, I’ll be playing things by ear, as they say. I’m in low-grade w/d’s, of course, which hopefully won’t get any worse. Maybe I should just go ahead and take the low-dose as prophylaxis against the symptoms increasing. Yeah, that’s a good plan. I hope to get some stuff done around the apartment, too, stuff that I’ve been putting off so much, and for so long. We’ll see on that stuff. The key for me is to be kind to myself even if I get absolutely nothing done. I’m going through a very tough drug withdrawal. My life has already changed, mostly for the better, since I’ve taken myself down from (prescribed) 280mg of morphine per day to 105mg. That’s HUGE, and I am giving myself a lot of credit for doing it. I hope that’s not wrong of me, to be prideful of what I’ve accomplished so far. I guess, unless one has been through this or is close to someone who has, one could never know how truly difficult it is to get off of hard drugs, prescribed or not. Think of any movie you’ve seen where one of the characters is in w/d from heroin. That’s what I’m dealing with; heroin and morphine are basically the same exact thing. So yeah, well… wrong or not I’m proud of myself for how far I’ve come in this long, long journey. I’m already reaping the benefits, too, such as better concentration and memory, retaining again what I read and hear, better ability to focus mentally on tasks… and so on.

I hope you’re proud of me, too. I’m doing this basically on my own, as one normally has to do it, with minimal support and kudos. I’m not doing any of this for the praises, but to get my life back after over a decade of being doped up, of not being fully myself. If it

IS wrong of me to be proud of myself, I’ll just let you be proud of me, for me.