The Road To Suboxone....Part I

I have been in 12-step recovery programs for as far back as I can remember. That may have something to do with the black-outs I experienced before the meetings…..

I am, what some call, “A duel addicted alcoholic”. I just find myself addicted to most things that start off feeling/tasting good. And the end result is always the same. Insanity from the latest addiction…

When will I learn? (Like a man), if he/it seems to be too good to be true, it usually IS too good to be true. Yet I still find myself searching…..for the simplest escape route, fastest exit and easier and softer way to live this life of mine.

I found AA at the ripe old age of 29, on August 29th, 1992. Married for 2 years to a “home-town” boy, and trying to mother a 3 year old with a hangover on more days than not.

Although alcoholics have different episodes and dramas in their “alco-log”, we are all bound by the same feelings of one or more of the following:

· Feeling like a square peg in a round hole, never quite fitting in anywhere.
· Surrounded by friends/family, yet always feeling so alone.
· Being the life of the party, only having to rely on the memories of
others because our memories were never “quite” lucid.
· Need to shut our phones off and close all shades/blinds for fear of the outside world.
· Adult children of one or more alcoholics.
· As we are taking our first sip, chug or swig, promising not to blackout…..

only to wake up the following day somewhere we cannot recognize…..

*Please feel free to add/edit the above attempt to explain the life and feelings of at least this before recovery*

So after 7 years in recovery, one divorce behind me, and a second marriage approaching quickly, I decided I no longer needed AA. My life was so perfect at this point, there was no way I could be an alcoholic.

So after giving birth to my second child (10 years after having my first), I once again jumped back on that road to nowhere, the long twisting spiral of my alcoholism. I stayed out there, drinking, and seeming to think I had it all together, for about a year. Until I woke up 2000 miles away, in a hotel, with my 2 children. No memory of how I got there, or why I ended in up in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. at all!
(*note – til this day, I still do not know)

So back into AA I jumped, with both feet. Only it was different the second time around. I no longer had that “hunger” for sobriety. That thirst for knowledge and living sober I had 8 years prior to this point……

But you see, there was a reason for not “wanting” it bad enough….. Honesty.

Although I had stopped drinking, I was still taking these wonderful prescription drugs my doctor had given me. Believe it or not, my obgyn was still prescribing percocet for a c-section I had a year earlier!! Wasn’t that awesome? I was getting a quantity of 120 every 2 weeks for pain from the stitches/staples that I could no longer remember having.

So when that oh! So wonderful doctor left that practice, she forgot to leave me a forwarding addy!! So, like the dope I became, I made an appointment with one of the other doc’s in the same practice. Needless to say, he nearly fell off his chair when I told him why I was there. “I just need my usual script, doc. And I’ll be on my way.”

I left without an Rx, but the insanity was instantaneous! Did I think I could be addicted? I could not have thought about it, because I had no reason to question it. That’s just being honest. As long as I was being a productive human being, not drinking and continuing to take my percocet, I did not even consider the addiction. Why would I? I was getting them legally, right? And they were being paid for by my drug insurance company.
Life was good.

Until that day…when that scumbag doctor decided to cut me off! What was he thinking? Taking me off percocets when my other doctor seemed to know I needed them.

That day began my 4 year battle of opiate addiction. This addiction would take me to the bluest of skies and my happiest of times. But in between those clear and vivid memories of my opiate infused mind came the darkest of days and hottest of hells I would ever know…..Because those in between times came quicker and closer together. Those were the days of stealing, lying, cheating, all for my next pill. And within those days came screams of pain from the withdrawal that I hope to never feel again. My addiction to percocet graduated to good ‘ol oxycontin……quickly. Because oxy’s were just easier to get from the streets.

This journal I am writing is for my own benefit. It is to help my timeline my addictions and the eventual reason I am writing today. Depression. Major Depression. And my willingness, once again, to become teachable. I want to be “cured”. I want to want to live again. Really I do. But with the diagnosis I received today, along with the guilt and fear, came relief. A relief that perhaps I am not a lost cause….. Because today, I am more scared of this “depression” thing than I have ever been afraid of anything. Fearful and hopeful. Can that be?

I am trying so hard to believe.....