For Those in Withdrawals:

I was writing this in my head the other day on one of my walks, and have decided to try and recreate it here, just in the hope that it might be helpful for anyone who stumbles upon it. I must fully disclose that I am not a certified substance abuse counselor, nor a neuroscientist, nor even a psychologist; I also regularly stress the importance of going to someone credentialed (as well as lamenting the lack of such credentialed people available when people are at this point), and continue to do so. However, the advice I got was not generally from anyone with anything close to what would be considered credentialed, and frequently gleaned from their own experiences, and that is exactly how I intend this piece to be taken. 

I am speaking here directly to anyone who is trapped, particularly in terms of opiates, in the withdrawal process. I do not know if this is helpful to someone in withdrawals from alcohol or another substance, but if it applies, go with it! Whether it is the cold turkey withdrawal, the trying to wean down/swinging back and forth from withdrawing to using just a bit to try and stop the symptoms, or someone who has stopped entirely and is suffering in anyway--the main point being, I want to help and this is for someone who is suffering through this:

Calm yourself. The world is not coming to an end, and neither is your life, or your brain. This is tricky; you have been supplying your brain with a substance that is telling you, essentially, that all is fine. Everything is OK--as long as you keep the supply to your brain going. That has probably been your main worry, that the supply will stop, and suddenly this will happen to you, withdrawals. And they don't feel very good, that I realize. But you have decided, on some level, to stop taking opiates, be they heroin, prescription pills, whatever that may be.

Your brain is now reeling, and that is normal, no matter how abnormal it feels. Remember this, what you are going through is normal after the cessation of opiate use. Those "everything is OK" signals are suddenly gone, but remember that they were only signals being interpreted by the receptors in your brain that were flooded with the opiates. That wasn't you, that wasn't your real brain, the perception of it firing correctly (so to speak) was illusion, and you've realized that and have decided to stop the supply. You know your reasons, and should hold to them.

Your brain is not firing correctly at the moment, the process of your brain righting itself has only just begun. Try to categorize the thoughts you are having. Remember that catastrophic thinking is a part of the withdrawals you are experiencing, as is occasional panic. What psychologists call "impending sense of doom" is not uncommon. Set any of these feelings aside, label them as what they are: a product of withdrawal. They are not you, they are not what you would normally be feeling were you not in withdrawal. And they are temporary. They will not last, you will be free in the end. You have chosen a hard road, or at least ended up on one for the time being, and you are strong. You will survive, you will be just as the people you are observing right now, going about their lives, happy, not feeling like they are freezing regardless of summer heat, not obsessing over every moment, not panicking. You will soon be just as healthy and capable. This is temporary.

The urge to try anything to end the withdrawals will occasionally be overwhelming. Do your best to ignore it. One help, though it is the last thing you will want to do, is to get up and get moving (naturally do not do this if a doctor treating you has diagnosed any problem that would cause exercise to bring you harm or worsen a disability, but I am not giving medical advice here). Put on some music you love, try walking, dancing around your home, a treadmill or elliptical, whatever is best for you. Get your heart rate up and keep it up for a bit, everyone's threshold is different, and as I'm writing this as a layman I've decided to not try to add links--so maybe divert your attention for a moment to looking up how long it takes doing some cardio activity to get some endorphins going.

This can be the best aid, though it is also temporary, to your withdrawals. Get moving, get going. The sweats will still be there, perhaps, but once you hit a certain peak your brain will feel somewhat like itself again for some period of time. Focus on how your brain is operating in these moments, when exercise and endorphins have cleared some of the withdrawal symptoms. Sit down and write your goals, your real thoughts. You have a window in these periods after exercise to your more normal, non-withdrawing self. Use it! And remember in these times that before long, you will feel that way on a more permanent basis. (Ignore warnings of "exercise addiction" or "cross addiction" to exercise; the human body was not built to sit still, but to move; what you are doing is millions of years of evolution programmed into your body, and is perfectly normal.)

Trying to stop the obsessive thoughts is not easy, but it gets easier gradually, especially with these "windows" during and after exercise. Try now to think of who you are, who you truly are, and who you want to be. You are not merely an "addict" in withdrawals, you are more than this. Plant into your head who you want to be. Not the status in society you want to attain, but the character you want to be. Know that you'll likely stop being the series of ups and downs you've been while using (or using and running out, having to find more in a panic, using and feeling the effects wearing off....). Focus on the person you want to be, and accept that that future is in your grasp, that you. It simply requires patience, and patience you will gradually start to learn.

Your short term memory may not be at its best right now, you may find yourself misplacing your car keys, your cell phone. This is normal. If your symptoms persist, look into PAWS (post acute withdrawal syndrome), but don't panic over it, it usually doesn't last terribly long. And hopefully, you'll be discovering many positive things to do with yourself while returning to normal. Accept that new normal, the normal that no longer will involve an endless cycle of what has been, or at least turned to, horror. Life will be all right; ignore catastrophic thinking, it is just a symptom. Days won't keep feeling like an eternity, they will normalize. This, too, is just a symptom, just your brain reacting to removing the opiates. It will end. You will have to not use them again for this to end, but remember, this isn't as impossible as it may seem now.

Your mind is reeling, and is beginning to start righting itself, healing. The process early on just doesn't feel that way. Find one thing (or more, whatever works for you) that you have always loved, that has the ability to absorb your thoughts. A musician, an instrument, a foreign language, working on a car, working with programming on a computer, reading; whatever is absorbing enough to engage your mind and keep your focus off of the obsessive thoughts common to withdrawal (remembering that those thoughts are temporary and due to withdrawal). If meeting with like people in a self-help group appeals to you, find one near you and go. If AA/NA doesn't appeal to you, know that that is OK, many recover with either no group or with non-12 step options (SMART, SOS, WFS/Women for Sobriety, etc.), many available online (all links here are to online options).

If a good friend is available to talk to (and will not shame you, but help you and bring you comfort), seek them out. Shut out anyone who would potentially drag you off course or offer you drugs, especially if your use was social. If you prefer to be alone, know that it is fine to be alone, and that being alone is not always loneliness. You are not abandoned, and however broken you may feel or have felt, you are not broken. You are strong, and on the road to becoming stronger.

You are strong, stronger than you realize. You are worthy of love, and of your own love. You are your own best friend. Find compassion in yourself for you, and accept it. You are learning now to depend on yourself; you are learning that you have worth; you have decided to stop destroying yourself--take all of that in and find comfort in it. Learn to trust yourself, learn to be your own true friend. You are discovering empowerment.

Remember again that your suffering at this time is a result of mixed up signals, and remember that there are good signals leading you to the right path. Ignore the ones, best you can, coming from the withdrawals. They are merely illusion, though they feel real, and they will subside. Remain strong. Keep moving, and treasure how it feels in the moments when you feel good. You are becoming free, and no longer will a substance (or substances) be dictating your life to you, you are on the path to freedom. All will be well, perhaps much sooner than you think. You are learning who you are, you are starting the rest of your life now. You will be the person, very soon, that you want to be. Remember this, because you are worth it. And even if you don't believe it now, know that the person writing this does.

(This is from my heart and my experiences. Naturally, if you are able to work with a doctor or are in a detox or treatment center, take the medical help available to you. Make sure that, if possible, you have medical supervision, and choose the course you feel best suited to you in terms of that care and pharmaceuticals, if offered or available. You'll likely have many emotions surfacing that have been suppressed by the drugs, and they should be addressed, if possible, by someone trained to help you with them. Many doctors may be able to help sleep problems with pharmaceuticals, just make sure you ask which may have depressant effects or worsen short term memory problems associated with withdrawals. If opiate replacement therapy (ORT) is an option you might want to take, seek local resources, and you should find some availability.

It is my personal opinion that if you have trauma or abuse issues that you should seek out a professional trained specifically to deal with those issues, not simply someone who is trained only in substance abuse, but that is just my opinion and I will hopefully be adding some links to this that may be helpful soon. I must also note that, despite the links above to online meetings, I myself am not a member of any recovery group nor do I necessarily endorse any of them.

I just wanted to post this in hopes that someone out there who may be suffering will be helped in some way by reading it.)

Tiptoe.....

Ahhh.....Spring.....Nothing better. Freedom.

Burning Tree Ranch Coverage, Confrontational Treatment, and a Way to Speak Out

After a review, or rather an investigative report, of a Kaufman, Texas rehab called Burning Tree over at TheFix, the debate has begun again, at least in certain parts of the web, on the efficacy of confrontational tactics in addiction treatment. It was clear in the comments from the article from April 2, 2013, that plenty of former clients of the rehab had answered some call to head over and chime in about their experiences, about how this center saved either their life or that of a loved one. Many people, however, also showed up to share their experiences at either this center or similarly based centers, and how the results were not quite so pleasant.

While anonymous comments on the web cannot be taken completely at face value, nor are anecdotes proof of any kind, the things I have read have been rather shocking. For one thing, Burning Tree has some staff in common with a now defunct Synanon associated center, Gateway Academy. One commenter who credits this center with his survival certainly exhibited the Synanon-type behavior of regarding all addicted people as "manipulative" and "lying", and the center's CEO, Brian Percox, echoed the same sentiment in the interview. Writer Hunter R. Slaton describes Percox as being "surprisingly forthcoming", though I've found that in most interviews advocates of this type of treatment (which includes shaming tactics, confrontation, extreme control over clients, etc.) and those who work in centers such as these are usually more than forthcoming. They feel absolutely justified in taking the actions they do with those who are paying good money for treatment, even and especially when someone questions the effects on patients. See the executive director of SAFE, Loretta Parrish in this interview, for just one example.

Luckily, TheFix allowed Maia Szalavitz to respond to the "controversy" and add her thoughts on confrontational treatment the following week, and I highly recommend her article to anyone who seriously doubts that clients being treated for addiction to drugs or alcohol should be held by a different standard of care as others:

The executive director of Burning Tree acknowledged that the program was confrontational and seemed to see nothing wrong with calling the its patient population “classic manipulators.” He admitted that its techniques include making patients wear clothing inside out—supposedly in order to show them that they are putting on a front—refusing to allow patients to speak for days at a time, and only permitting them timed phone calls of five minutes, once a week, with family.

A former therapist who worked with Burning Tree said that the program attempts to “break [clients] down mentally”—even those who have a mental illness diagnosis. 

But for anyone looking for effective treatment, that should immediately foreclose Burning Tree as a viable option. Why? Because the scientific research on addiction treatment is clear. As The Fixreported, a major 2007 review of the data by William Miller, PhD, and William White, MA, concluded, “Four decades of research have failed to yield a single clinical trial showing efficacy of confrontational counseling, whereas a number have documented harmful effects, particularly for more vulnerable populations." 

Not a single positive study in 40 years of research. If confrontation were a medication, the FDA would have pulled it from the shelves years ago.

 I have added the link from Szalavitz's article to my sidebar as well, as it is a great resource for anyone looking for the rationale, history and lack of evidence for efficacy of confrontational tactics in this field, and that study was one of my first lessons in how I (we) were treated at the center I was at. I wanted to add something else here, however.

Many states do not have adequate ways of reporting or filing complaints against treatment centers, and after reading the comments of people who claim to have been at Burning Tree and had negative experiences, I decided to look into avenues for help in this regard. Many of Burning Tree's staff, as they list themselves here, are LCDCs (Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselors). I am assuming that this will go for any other treatment centers in the state of Texas as well, and the state does offer quite a bit of information on the Texas Department of State Health Services site about LCDCs as well as a link for information on how to file a complaint against them.

If you feel you have been mistreated in a treatment center in Texas, please click on one of the above links for information on how to register a complaint with this state department. Wounds from bad treatment center experiences can linger and keep hurting people as long as wounds from the addictive process/experience. However, you can speak out against these abuses and have employees of these centers held accountable when they are in the wrong. Remember, they may be "the bosses" when you're in treatment, they may be able to forbid you from speaking or calling family members on the phone, make you wear crazy signs or encourage other patients to heap verbal abuse on you. Or worse. However, they are not your boss in any way anymore. They aren't in charge of your life now, and they can (and should, if they were in the wrong or did anything questionable) be made to answer for their actions.

I cannot say how well this process works, and am not a resident of Texas. I also have no firsthand experience of Burning Tree nor with any of its staff, and am simply writing this based on the articles and comments over at TheFix. I am, however, writing it in the hopes of giving people who may have been mistreated or feel that they have been wronged some avenue or sliver of hope in fighting back against any and every abusive treatment industry wrong they have suffered. Remember, you were a consumer, paying for a service, not a "lying manipulator" sent to be reprogramed, though that is the nature of the packaging. You were a consumer, and have every right to speak up for yourself.

Take care, stay strong, and thank you.

Patrick's Story (Part 2)

The idea of finishing this story in one piece was a bit much to bear, and writing this last bit is a daunting prospect. Nevertheless, I will pick up where I left off with Patrick and I meeting up to encourage each other after our release from the treatment center.

While he quickly slipped back into the social scene, ever on the lookout for the ladies, I was the one more isolated. We were both dealing with PAWS, and nothing could quell the anxiety of it. I had decided to just grit my teeth and bear it, because I'd been through it before, and finally had read a bit about it, and figured it couldn't be permanent. Eventually it would end, or I would just die. I was terribly underweight and shook like a Parkinson's patient by this time, which naturally made everyone think I was on drugs much more than they had when I'd actually been on them.

Patrick* decided to smoke weed to handle the symptoms. To this day, I don't see how this is a problem. Certainly marijuana is no more mind numbing than the anti-psychotic medications they had put him on in treatment (and I'm not sure if he was still on by the end), and is now legal in a few states for medical usage. However, for those involved in his aftercare and to his family, this was a gigantic problem. At this point, he also just expected to get blamed for everything, another by-product for how he was handled in treatment.

He was staying temporarily with another person from treatment, and when she was caught with some weed after clumsily making a joint, she blamed it on Patrick. He shrugged and said, "I'd never use weed with stems and seeds in it", but knew he'd take the full blame. This caused him to end up homeless again, or leaning on family who'd been told to kick him out if he showed any signs of using anything and not attending meetings. He ended up caught between a rock and a hard place. I took him to a job interview, which was successful, and also helped buy him some clothes appropriate for this job, as his own were all ratty and not really up to the dress code. He was excited and happy about this prospect, about earning an honest living, all while being off of the heroin he'd been addicted to. Other than a little weed, he was clean and sober.

Then, apparently, some decision was made to make him "hit bottom". Before he started his job, he was kicked out by family for not adhering to the program designed by the treatment center. Perhaps they were told to use "tough love", though  my attempt is not to malign his family here, they were being scared more than Patrick was by these "addiction specialists". Though he had a place to stay, he started calling me suddenly, in tears and full on panic attacks, saying he was going to die. They had all told him he was going to die, and there was no way out. He needed psychiatric help to help with this anxiety, he needed the love his family did in fact have for him, not the brand of love they were told to give him.

One night, he called again, desperately crying that he wasn't going to be OK, that there was no hope for him. I told him to get a cab to my house. He cried that he had no money, so I told him cab fare is paid on destination, and I'd take care of it. He promised to explain what had happened that was making him freak out so much when he got to my place. He told me he'd call me back, but the call never came. Instead of taking that cab, he walked to the apartment of a relapsing heroin addict who'd been kicked out of treatment and shot himself up with a dose he surely knew was lethal. This was no accidental overdose, he knew what he was doing. He was ending the misery, living up to the worst hopes that had been placed on him by all the wrong people. I woke up with the phone in my hand, still waiting for his return call saying he'd be over soon.

Patrick was buried before the tox screen was even back, with no investigation, buried as a relapsing addict. Actually, he was buried under the belief based on what the girl whose apartment he died in had told the police, that he had stolen her new prescription of 60 Xanax and taken all of them. Apparently she and her friend had hidden the needle and heroin, not calling police for over 12 hours. His entire life was chalked up to the idea, so socially entrenched, that once addicted, always addicted. Relapse inevitable. There was no discussion of the post acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS) that was making his life a living hell (though he tried to keep smiling through it all), nor of the fact that no one would let him find his own path to living "in sobriety". No discussion of how he had been purposely psychologically abused for 30 days in a treatment center, abuse by other patients encouraged by the employees. No discussion that he was purposely broken down because he refused to go the 12 step route, merely statements of, "there but for the grace of God go I...." and "I guess the disease was just too strong".

His funeral was a pathetic mish-mash of these sort of statements, with everyone ignoring the elephant in the room, that he had not relapsed but willingly taken his own life. I miss my friend, and all that he could've become, had he only been given a chance to succeed on his own terms, not those dictated by others whose expertise (in the case of this treatment center) has a most certainly high rate of failure. I miss his jokes, I even miss his youthful obnoxiousness. But I miss as well the life that was taken from everyone who cared about him due to the fact that he couldn't get the help he needed. I'm devastated that I could meet someone so incredibly unique, so beyond words to even describe in his wonderful personality and creative spirit, someone so inimitable and talented, someone who could really touch people and leave a mark--and that he could be gone in such a flash. He deserved so much more.

I miss you, friend, and the pact still stands.

*not his real name

Patrick's Story (Part 1)

I cannot write further, I don't think, without telling the story of the friend I made in my treatment center whose pain I shared, and with whom I made a pact to keep fighting for each other. This pact still stands, and in telling his story I hope to shed more light on what is wrong with addiction treatment in this country. He is certainly one of the main reasons I continue to be involved with this issue.

I met Patrick* on my fourth day of residential treatment, a very tall, very exuberant 20 year old man, there for heroin addiction and alcohol abuse. He was from the West Coast, and had been rather involved in the drug culture; street smart, using expressions unfamiliar with the majority of patients at this facility (which is in a small town not on the West Coast, and frequently populated by small town clientele). Patrick was one of those types of people who, while extremely creative and brilliantly talented in the visual arts, was extremely intelligent--and keen on taking pains to hide that fact. In morning lecture a count would be asked by the leading counselor, and he would take one glance around the room and report back an absolutely accurate count within seconds. Mathematically brilliant, but without his high school diploma (due to his drug use).

We met on one of the van rides over to the local hospital where the standard blood draws and samples were taken on intake. I was sent back due to a clerical error on the part of the detox and the rehab, causing them to think I was still taking benzos, which I wasn't, Patrick was new to it all. He was hilarious, joking the entire time despite being in withdrawals to some degree (he had actually quit heroin for the most part a month before this, but his family had insisted on a 30 day rehab due to other factors). When they asked which arm to draw the blood from, he threw out his arm and told the nurse to use "old faithful", his favored vein for injecting himself. Later that day, we ran around the town's WalMart together, joking and giggling through the blessed time away from the facility. Later, he shaved his curly longish hair and bleached it out, one more thing that set him apart from the more mainstream patients typical of this center at that time. It added to his tattooed, slang-ridden overall demeanor, which was constantly peppered with rebellious and sacrilegious statements. In short, he was young, and still looking to shock. Unfortunately, in this alternate universe of the treatment industry, these qualities didn't endear him to most people, they were seen as a dangerous rebelliousness that needed to be broken down and destroyed.

What most people didn't see was that Patrick wasn't the sort to let others see his troubles, but he would sneak off behind the bushes in the recreation yard and cry his eyes out when he needed to. He was an atheist, or as he would bluntly put it, "I'm not a fucking Christian", and took quite a few opportunities to proclaim that AA was a "cult". While we quickly became sort of the outlandish comedy team of the center, we also became close friends, that strange sort of close that bonding in treatment can lead to. I found his acerbic with and iconoclasm refreshing in this environment, and with a few other patients, we leaned on each other to try and keep ourselves sane in this environment that none of us really wanted to be in.

Unfortunately, this facility leaned heavily on "group therapy" as well as group reinforcement, in other words, sanctioned bullying by other patients heaped onto those who were less submissive, or who just wanted to do their own thing. I was older, and less inclined to broadcast my thoughts on the process there to everyone; Patrick was not. He would openly mock religion, though usually in witty hilarious ways that left little ability for response, as well as the 12 steps. I told him to just keep his head down and make it through, that we would rely on each other for the support the "group" was supposed to give us. Naturally, Patrick was reassigned to a "small group" that none of our group of friends was in, as we were labeled "enablers".

As the month wore on, and Patrick became more and more vocal about his resistance to "submitting to a higher power", as well as refusing to say the Lord's Prayer (which was said after every major assembly with everyone holding hands in a circle), the decision to make him "hit bottom" was apparently made. His family members were brought in and given more instructions in how to refuse to help him after his release, told he would most certainly end up relapsing and dying of an overdose. He was told that he wouldn't make it, all because he wouldn't go the 12 step route. His trips to hide and cry became more frequent and his constant humor was swallowed up in a morose anxiety he could no longer hide. He would sit for hours alone, just staring, and when he would talk with me it was all tearful tales of how many times he'd been told that he was doomed to die of heroin overdose. It became his all encompassing fear, his nightmare, and in the enclosed world we were in there, everyone was told what chance they would have upon leaving. Patrick was told that his chance was zero.

I wasn't allowed to go to his "hot seat" session, for fear that I'd "enable" him. It was seen as imperative by the staff that he be broken down by this point. Hot seat was done a few days before release, a list being read from anonymous papers listing a patient's pros and cons dropped in a bucket at morning assembly by an assigned counselor later that day. His was, by all accounts, the worst anyone who attended had seen. One comment after another stating that he'd die in no time, that he was never going to make it, terribly abusive things that no licensed counselor should ever be allowed to say to someone in such a vulnerable state. The exuberant young man I'd met less than 30 days before was now an anxious, hopeless mess.

Desperately afraid that he'd not only be rejected by family and friends (and a significant other) but that he would relapse and die; but worse, he was beaten down by people determined to break him, to tell him he was worthless and would amount to nothing. I talked with him about how we were going to get him his GED (high school equivalence diploma) and how he was going to go on to great things, about how talented he was, how intelligent. He needed to believe in himself, and to be allowed to believe in himself. But everyone involved, whether because they were annoyed with him personally or because they believed he needed to be broken down completely, thought he shouldn't be allowed to believe in himself at all. He needed to believe in AA/NA, and if he did not, as was often proclaimed, he would die. Why this was done, I will never understand. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I will get to in the second part of Patrick's story.

I was released several days before Patrick, but we quickly started talking and leaning on each other for support after we were released. He started off on a very good note, and what would eventually happen to him, all too soon, was hardly to be believed at that point.....

(to be continued in Part 2)

*not his real name

Where is the Treatment?

I came to realize, extremely early on in my opiate addiction, that my main goal in taking them was staving off the horrors of withdrawal. Few people withdraw the same, and in terms of opiate withdrawal, some people are fine after three weeks or so, while others can barely move for that period of time and suffer months of post-acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS). PAWS can hit alcoholics in equal measure, yet it is rarely discussed and many in the treatment industry know little or nothing about it--or worse, chalk it up to someone simply wanting to use again. For me, it was horrible. Months of extreme anxiety and catastrophic thinking, pain beyond belief, all until the last time around when I finally came to understand that this was not a permanent state, merely the symptoms of my brain righting itself after being so used to being on opiates for so long. Once I realized this, and also got rid of the antidepressant I'd been given to "help" these symptoms (in many who don't suffer from chemical depression, SSRIs can have the effect of capping the ability of the brain to fully feel happiness....I wish I could put this into more scientific terminology, but for now I will express it that way, as my own experience) I just let it all occur, even harnessing the anxiety to use in positive ways, happy ways, as I wrote of here.

What will probably always bother me is that I couldn't find the treatment I needed to simply get me off of a medication. The substance abuse treatment industry is so separated from the rest of the medical system that it becomes an exercise in futility to find the treatment that is right for you. I preferred the idea of 30 day treatment, because I was that utterly weak. Fortunately, I also had the insurance and money to allow for this. Regardless, I couldn't find a single center that would wean me off of the opiates I was on, because weaning myself off was the one thing I found I couldn't do. Such was my fear of the slightest withdrawal symptom, and such was the addictive response once a small dose got into my system, as anyone who has suffered from addiction well knows ("what the hell, I'll take more today and start the weaning more seriously tomorrow"--a tomorrow we all know never comes).

Why on earth was this so difficult? I've since then met one woman who was weaned down in detox using prescription opiates (for heroin addiction) as well as suboxone, but these centers are so numerous and difficult to locate, and there is no network known to me to find the proper facility for your own needs. I called several in that state, and was told I needed as much "tough love" as I could get, and that the "boot camp" aspects of their facilities would help me stop being so "selfish" and "would make me grow up". I was sick from the opiates, down to 93 lbs. I could barely eat in withdrawal, much less make my own food (as these centers I called in Florida insisted their clients do). I wanted to pay not to be "babied", but for decent medical care for something I considered to be a medical problem.

I couldn't find this treatment. In the end, utterly defeated, I went to a local facility that is part of a rather large rehab chain that is very 12 step oriented, actually very AA even for those there for non-alcohol problems, and which is entrenched in the old-school methods of confrontation such as "hot seat" (in which other clients/patients list your pros and cons anonymously to be typed up by your assigned counselor and read to you in your own special session, in which the other clients can weigh in and personally attack you). I don't even remember my own hot seat, I had basically decided, after a week in an even more abusive detox, that I wasn't going to let this place touch me. I'd let it skim over me. I had no choice. What I do remember was everyone else's "hot seat", and how it broke everyone down into mounds of tears while what amounted to personal gripes were read out to them--by licensed addiction counselors. "Group therapy" amounted to a bunch of detoxing patients attacking others they didn't like, those who were different, those who were resistant to the 12 steps, etc., all with the encouragement of the overseeing licensed addiction counselor. It was watching others abused in this way as well as being told to participate myself (I was punished a bit for refusing to do so, and labeled an "enabler") that left the deepest scars, especially with the young man who suffered the worst abuse and took his own life little over one month after leaving this center, too scarred by the experience. (I will be writing his story later here.)

But, I digress. The question at hand is why it is so difficult, if not impossible, to find a treatment center that will simply help you get off of the substance you're seeking help in getting off of? Why, instead, do people typically encounter facilities in which the prevailing attitude is that if you suffer enough, the suffering ("suffer to sobriety!") will keep you from relapsing? People and their families are the ones paying for treatment, so why is the treatment so often not tailored to the needs of the client? I was actually told, by a licensed addiction counselor, after I was left to have myoclonic seizures (and a few other minor seizures) in the common room, that "it was better to suffer brain damage in getting clean than to suffer from continued use of drugs". This was once I complained that seizures were a form of brain damage, which seemed a valid complaint in my opinion, especially at the rates I was paying. I even asked for help in finding a facility more tailored to my own needs, and was met with blank stares.

In their eyes, my views were not valid. I would continue to relapse, not due to the effects of PAWS or the physical symptoms, but because a "switch had been turned on in my brain", and I now was in the category: "addict". Read, chronic, lifelong "disease" that I could only keep at bay by accepting their particular dogma about having a "spiritual malady" and surrendering my will to a "higher power". I write this not to bash the 12 step method gratuitously, but because it was no help to me whatsoever. I'm happy for those for whom this method works, but when it was clear that it was not for me (not to mention other clients there), why keep insisting on it and try to "break someone down" instead of finding them something that will help them? It makes no sense, and is akin to stepping into an alternate universe of sorts.

I kept using opiates because the withdrawals were too horrendous and the PAWS unbearable. I think that a slow 30 day wean down, rather than a 30 day session of 12 step based treatment with even the medical doctor this center had contracted out for one intake appointment per patient claiming that I needed more intense medical help--but being unaware himself of where to even send me--would've done so much more good! Why are these centers blind to the needs of people seeking help? Why is there no network to help people find the help they need, a program tailored to their own needs? Why are so many employees in the treatment industry so entrenched in their own limited view of addiction treatment that they cannot see the forest for the 12 labeled trees clouding their view? Why could I not get the help I needed, which would've ended the agony I had suffered by at least a year?

These questions, and others, will have me writing and researching this subject for probably quite a while, so I will continue to write these tales of woe, as well as the tales of happiness I have found, for quite some time in the future.

Next: Patrick's Story--how a promising young man was "broken down" to the point that he took his own life. 

Not Really "Bad Recovery" At All!

It's a bit strange to me now to see the title and headers for the blog I created a few years ago. My original intent was to discuss the negative aspects of the meetings and treatment I had gotten for my struggle with opiate painkillers, as well as to be able to tell my story in one spot online once I had started commenting on various recovery related sites. By a certain point, I found that having such personal stories posted here was not well suited to me (I had written of the "recovery vultures" who had preyed on me and ID thefted me, among various other crimes and borderline criminal issues I encountered when thrust into that world).

Now, as I look back, while my "recovery" in terms of the official aspects of it (meetings and treatment) was most definitely a bad experience, my actual recovery from the events as well as the addiction has been most definitely a positive one. I created this blog still considering myself some sort of "recovery heretic", considering that "recovery" consisted (and it does in the minds of many) of all things 12 step. I have long since realized that this is a limited view, at best, and that I am not alone in considering it a limited view, and one which not everyone who battles addiction accepts. Or needs to!

If AA/NA etc. was or is a good method for you personally, then I am glad you found it, but I still consider it to have been disastrous and almost deadly to me personally. I don't, however, feel the animosity I once felt for these programs as far as including in my comments fields warnings to AA/NA members that their comments will be deleted, as I do welcome discussion on this blog. Please bear with me while I fix these details here.

My focus is the treatment industry, the pervasive stereotypes of it that lead to abuse and humiliating confrontational tactics that frequently do more harm than good. That AA/NA does play a role in this is not exactly something that can be ignored, but I do realize that many members of these programs disagree with the treatment industry version of it almost as much as I do. I would like to take this opportunity to mention a fabulous new book, Inside Rehab by Anne M. Fletcher, and introduce readers to her works. Her book and the interviews and columns she has written on the subject of the treatment industry are invaluable to those wanting to understand how treatment works in the U.S. (and frankly, the rest of the Anglosphere, though she focuses on American facilities).

I hope to be adding to this blog much more in the future, as well as starting a new site involving treatment centers and reviews of them, or at least to try and help connect the public to the necessary resources for finding and choosing (as well as being able to review) substance abuse treatment facilities.  Until that time, however, I must say that my true "recovery" (the going on with my life as a well person) has been one of the best experiences of my life, and this is in large part due to the fact that what I did took the focus off of my addiction and onto positive things I could do with my life. I live a very full life now, and am not shackled to substances or to the chronic pain that led me to be prescribed them in the first place. I live a goal oriented life now, fairly free from the anxiety that plagued me previously, and not focused on "the problem".

So, while my "recovery" in that sense was a bad experience, the true experience of going on with my life has not been a "bad recovery" at all! So please excuse the misnomer, and please pardon some of the dust while I rearrange this blog to better suit my current views and goals, and make today a good day for yourself!

I Took A Walk Today (A Few Notes on Empowerment)

Wow, "I took a walk today" would not be an especially important sentence on most days for me to write. Usually, it would be, "I took my usual walk today", or more likely, "I took my usual two walks today, and trained". Unfortunately, I've been down with a bout of illness of the sinus variety for well over a month now, and the fatigue and head pain had me all but given up, not to mention the nauseating courses of antibiotics. Slowly, a sense of powerlessness started to creep back in.

I often say that my life has become a prolonged argument against powerlessness, and felt too much in its clutches for quite a bit of my life. Perhaps that's why I reacted so strongly to the word when I encountered it in 12 step circles, and why I decided I was going to become empowered instead of submitting to some kind of defeat. I'm the kind of person who tends to stand up and fight, not step back and surrender, and it usually serves me well. It certainly has since I got off of opiate painkillers a few years back--until this bout of illness that has just knocked me silly.

I write this in the hope that it will help someone out there who may be in "early recovery", or struggling with the panicky feelings associated with it, or feeling as if they should give up and give in. I remember, in those early days of giving up powerlessness along with prescription medications (any substances really, though those were the only ones I ever used), that I would get up and do something productive every single time the sense of powerlessness started creeping in. It didn't really matter what it was, though I do like walking with my headphones on the most. Sometimes I'd go to one of the bathrooms in the house and just clean out the cabinets, clean the rest of the room up. Or go through a closet and take a few boxes up to Goodwill. Clean out the filing cabinets, etc.

But whatever I did, it was always something that by the end of the process had accomplished something that needed to be done. Which also gave me a sense of accomplishment, a sense of being a useful and productive person, someone who wasn't going to just sit and wallow in misery or anxiety, but was going to get up off my butt and do something about it! I will admit, too, this was a rather huge change for me (not that I was a hoarder or anything before....haha), as reading a book, watching a TV program or worse, taking something and going to sleep had been my status quo for a few years.

Never again, I said. I started a list, with those words at the top. I have read on Dr. Marc Lewis' blog that he wrote these same words in regards to his addiction, but for me the old self and the addiction were part of the same powerless package. I meant "never again" to all of it. Today, it seemed to be slowly taking a bit of a hold again, as it has been for weeks. A sense of powerlessness, of frantic need to address my physical needs and coddle myself; to call the doctor on call, to just lie down and wrap myself in a blanket. I don't like these feelings, and they're not the person I have become, regardless of how sick I have been.

So, today, I took a walk instead.....and I haven't felt this good in a while.

(Yes, I also showered, put on some makeup, dressed myself in normal non-invalid clothes, and now will go off to find something else I can do to make myself feel even better, but I just had to share!)

P.S. walking really does relieve a lot of anxiety, and also calms the brain, with the same results in many as meditation. I cannot share enough how just getting the body up and going can wash away any obsessive (especially for those in early recovery) or negative thoughts, put life back into perspective, and keep the brain on an even keel. It's also natural to the human body, we are ambulatory not sedentary creatures. So, if you're able and haven't tried this, give it a shot! Start slow, and just go with your body, and while it might not feel like anything at first, after that first mile or so, the change in thinking can be enormous!

Hope this helps someone, and keep staying strong out there, everyone! Cheers!

UPDATE: I took two walks today;)

OK, Security Issues Resolved

And the cyber stalking weirdo is pretty inconsequential, so back to business!

Trial By Ordeal: Trying to Still Get the High or to Escape the Horror?

Sometimes recent events bring up those unpleasant memories of late addiction, treatment, the early days of being clean. I must admit, I'm usually spared many of these due to the neurological trauma I experienced in that period, but more on that later. What struck me yesterday was how by the end of my addiction to prescription opiates I had no desire to still be on the things. I didn't want to get high, and considering the tolerance I'd built up (even massive amounts of Demerol in a hospital procedure failed to put me under enough) it would've taken switching to near fatal amounts of heroin to even have achieved a high. Which, by the way, should be another indication of just how much I was absolutely not prepared to keep coddling this addiction. What I was trying to either avoid or alleviate was the ever present post-acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS) that hit me like a sledgehammer the second the acute withdrawals ended.

I suppose I should add that I have, or at least had, some form of familial muscle spasms that have baffled doctors in every case presented by any members of my family, none of the rest of whom have ever become addicted to anything. I noticed that the cessation of opiate use caused a pile up of these full body spasms after my first month of being placed on prescription opiates (oddly enough, prescribed initially to help that exact condition). It hurt like hell, but that I had those symptoms simply proved to the people I called at the time that I was in fact "an addict".

Regardless of that brief encounter initially, I did end up prescribed huge amounts of opiates once I suffered a nerve injury in my face, to the trigeminal nerve. Prior to being diagnosed and sent to a neurologist and neurosurgeon, neither of whom had ever seen a case of injury induced trigeminal neuralgia, I was prescribed 240 vicoprofen per month, oxycontin (20s), fentanyl patches, and another specially compounded hydrocodone prescription without any added anti-inflammatory. All by one family doctor, all with good intentions, and all to alleviate what felt like a face on fire. I'm not including this inventory to brag nor to excuse the fact that I somehow could've avoided becoming addicted, because I became addicted due to the fact that I didn't mind taking these huge amounts of euphoria inducing drugs, especially when brain dulling seizure meds were finally added to the mix (the drugs that actually can stop nerve pain).

The trouble came with trying to get off of these drugs. I was vomiting every single day, miserable, not "high" (I even returned the almost full prescription of oxycontin to the pharmacy to be destroyed because they had just made me feel sicker, which earned me plenty of laughs from kids in rehab who mocked me for not having snorted them). For this particular detox, I flew to a hospital program in which I was detoxed under anesthesia, and even there the staff was baffled by the spasms that left me writing on the bed despite as many IV drugs to combat them as was safe under those conditions. In that case, of course, the rapid detox (flush of naltrexone) was the cause of such extreme spasms. But after a few days, the ordeal was supposedly over with and I was supposed to get to move on, rise like the phoenix, and all of the other goofy metaphors people apply to those trapped in addiction who are now "free".

Except that I wasn't free. I was anxious, crawling out of my skin, just like I had been after more traditional detoxes (tried under medical supervision, i.e. wean downs) back home. I was in constant pain, and still very out of it, considering I was still being given medications to control the nerve pain that weren't opiates. In the end, they got the nerve pain under control as the injury healed. However, the PAWS continued, no matter what I seemed to do, no matter what I was put on to try and control it. I was told by the ever-pessimistic people in the local recovery community that this was what I now had to live with, that this was the "consequence" of my addiction. And thus began my period of relapse, driven by the extremely poor decision making abilities of PAWS (and the meds I was given to help it) and the desire to end my suffering.

Thus also began the endless debate with the local "specialists" family members had given me over to. I wasn't, in their view, trying to use opiates again to end the suffering (after all, they were prescribed in the first place by caring doctors to alleviate my suffering) I was enduring, I was an addict desperate to get high. When I would try to get more opiates after a week of writhing in my bed instead of sleeping, it wasn't because they were the only thing that made it stop, it was because I was determined to get high. When I broke my hand and the surgeon refused to do the reparative surgery without opiates of some kind, it was (according to both family and the counsellors they had gotten me to) not a matter of medical necessity (the surgeon was aware of my history), it was drug seeking, and in the end I ended up coerced by everyone but the surgeon, broken hand and all, into 30 days of residential rehab followed by a weeklong stint in one of the most abusive detoxes imaginable.

I have been hounded a bit online by people in other states (in the U.S.) who swear up and down that it's not legal to force opiate addicts to go "cold turkey" and that a suboxone or methadone taper is always offered. I add this only as a disclaimer lest one of these people shows back up here attempting to negate what actually happened, which was, I was given a small taper for the benzodiazepine I was on (not allowed, even with my neurologist advocating for it, at rehab or detox) but nothing for the opiates.

Which brings me back to the sort of "trial by ordeal" aspect of the treatment I faced, in which any answer you gave was absolutely wrong--and further proof that you were an addict in denial. I wanted medications to alleviate the withdrawals? Proof positive that I was a drug seeking addict. I asked repeatedly for a taper of an ORT (opiate replacement drug)? Damned if you do, damned if you don't, that just further showed that I was trying to get high. It was frustrating, to say the least. I didn't want to be on opiates anymore, not even long term ORT. I wanted to not have horrible withdrawals, and the desire to avoid the one doesn't equal the desire for the other except in an upside down world in which the inmates run the asylum.

By their logic, my desire to medicate my symptoms would've made my agreement to take heavy duty seizure drugs (tegretol, dilantin, trileptal), which were rather the opposite of euphoric, to escape physical agony further proof of my drug seeking and addiction. I'm perfectly aware that I was heavily addicted to the opiates I was prescribed, and was perfectly willing to switch from sticking to my prescriptions to abusing them--then willing beyond that to doctor shop to get additional ones. That's on me, and I never once denied it. But that end stage, that had little to do with that desire to get "high". That had nothing to do with anything other than a primal instinct of a brain twisted beyond recognition by substances to keep from suffering even worse than I already was. When I went into small seizures and even smaller myoclonic seizures, I was "assured" by rehab staff members (I won't protect the name of the innocent here, though I don't know her last name, it was mainly "Kandi", no M.D., no PhD), when I went to them in a panic explaining that these were (as had been explained to me by the anesthesiologist who detoxed me initially) actually causing me brain damage, that it was better to suffer brain damage getting off of drugs than by continuing to abuse them!

It made no difference, in the end, that I no longer wanted to use. That I no longer even wanted to "relapse" even to stave off PAWS, that I had made up my mind to stick through it even if it killed me. The expectation of humane treatment in being taken off of these medications was greeted with what demands for humane treatment are always treated with in situations in which people have managed to revert to their less civilized and unregulated nature. Trial by ordeal. Just world theory. "Self-will run riot". Any excuse they could find to pigeon hole me (and anyone else) not wanting to "suffer to sobriety" into the stereotype of the addict still desperate for their substance, and in wanting it solely because "we" were supposedly incapable of controlling our desire to get high, and no one willing to listen to the fact that if there existed a humane way to segue from opiate addicted to not opiate addicted, most of us were seeking that and not another high. But we were damned if we did, damned if we didn't. All of us. After all, we're all the "same", in many treatment circles.

I didn't want to use anymore, didn't want to get high. I just wanted to survive and see if my brain could recover. Luckily, it did. Others I detoxed with weren't so lucky, mainly due to this mistaken identification of trying to alleviate PAWS being one and the same as continuation of the addiction. I still don't want to get high, nor do I want (as I wrote in my previous post) to keep reliving the now distanced (with the help of those brain damaging seizures!) part of me that ever did with meetings or doing anything more than continuing to write about my experiences--because they make me angry. They don't keep me angry, but if I weren't angry even occasionally at having been sold this bad bill of goods, I'd not be the person I am, and that's all I ever really want to be. Me, flaws and all.

*** Just a post-script to add, I realize that in writing about my experiences with addiction, I am also writing about a self that no longer exists--a self that was physically very unwell! I am physically in very good shape these days, and oddly enough, pain free for the most part. I stay very active, and give my muscles what they really needed for years prior to the injuries and the worst of the spasms. I exercise, and I love it! I walk, run, do martial arts, fight training and weight lifting. I'm just, like the rest of my family (not another addict/alcoholic in the bunch, just by the way), someone who needs a lot of exercise, but also someone who is generally very, very happy. As I wrote somewhere when I created this blog, I don't spend much time thinking about this unpleasantness that I lived through. This blog (and the comments sections I haunt) are for that other small percentage of time that I feel a bit too irritated. I also consider that anger completely justified, and certainly not a "character defect"! 

Just had to add that in, I would hate to think that people reading this blog about an invalid would think that I was still disabled and doubled over somewhere suffering. Aside from an unfortunate cold, I'm a healthy person--I just had to learn that I could become a healthy person!