I’m feeling better today. And whenever that happens, it means that it’s about time to taper my dose down again. This fact is confirmed by my tapering calculator, which has me me scheduled to reduce to 1mg tomorrow. It’s so interesting to me how tapering from 12mg to 2mg over the course of 10 days can feel just as bad as tapering from 2mg to 1.5mg over 7 days. This is probably because the medication has such a long half life and I was taking it for so long that it had built up in my system. So as it slowly leaves my system, I have days where I feel worse. And also, days where I’m feeling more awakened than I have in years because I don’t have a depressant in my system. Those moments are the best and most gratifying.
I’ve learned a lot about acceptance, patience, and willpower over the last 24 days. And also over the last year. I have learned to accept the fact that I’m just going to feel bad some days. That does not mean that I have to go back up on my Suboxone dose, it just means that I’ll feel better tomorrow. And that I need to accept how I am currently feeling and be patient. Patience is key, and it inevitably leads to a powerful exercise in willpower (a trait that drug addicts and alcoholics are tragically lacking in). Over the last 24 days, the willpower to accept how I’m feeling, not take more Suboxone, and wait it out has bled into other areas of my life in an incredible way.
I am, just like every other addict on the planet, a compulsive and impulsive person. Impulsivity is defined as “actions that are poorly conceived, prematurely expressed, unduly risky, or inappropriate to the situation and that often result in undesirable outcomes,”. Wow, talk about hitting the proverbial nail on the head. This is a perfect description of how I behave with drugs, alcohol, money, and pretty much any other thing that makes me feel good or changes my current state of mind in a seemingly positive way. I don’t like how I’m feeling, so I do something to change it without considering the potential consequences.
I am also, just like every other drug addict, a compulsive person. Compulsivity can be defined as “a tendency to repeat the same, often purposeless acts, which are sometimes associated with undesirable consequences”. So, where my impulsivity covers the nature of my inappropriate responses to stressful situations, the compulsivity reflects the repetitive nature of said actions. There is also an obsession worked in there, particularly with opiates for me. But if opiates are taken away, I will abuse any other thing that can make me feel good.
Suboxone, by nature, does not treat the obsessive-compulsive nature of my addiction. It just stops me from injecting heroin. And, when I first moved to Iowa and got sober, I needed to stop injecting heroin above all else. I had just come from living on the streets and was in no mental or physical state to deal with the obsessive-compulsive nature of my mental illness. So Suboxone got heroin out of the picture and allowed me to center myself over the course of many years. But that alone was not enough to treat my addiction. Over the course of those years, I stayed away from mind altering substances, but my obsessive-compulsive mental illness still bled into other areas of my life. I racked up credit card and student loan debt so I could buy a lot of useless shit that was later thrown away. I gained 70 pounds from overeating anything that made me feel good. And every attempt to taper off of Suboxone during this time was a failure, go figure. Because as soon as I started feeling any semblance of withdrawal, I impulsively went back up higher and higher on my Suboxone dose to change my state of mind. I eventually went all the way up to 12mg, which for me is a super high dose.
But something changed over the last year. Scratch that. A few things changed. I saw where my overeating had gotten me: Into a size of jeans that was about 6 inches bigger than I wanted to be. During this time I was moving about as quickly as an elderly sloth with a broken hip. I also saw where my overspending had gotten me: To a place where I have a shitload of debts to pay off. All for the sake of getting that positive brain response when I swiped the credit card and came home with a bag full of brand new stuff. And finally, I saw where my addiction to energy drinks and caffeine had gotten me: To a place where my social anxiety was worse than it had ever been and I couldn’t go into a meeting at work without feeling like I was having a mental breakdown.
I was fed up and completely out of fast and easy answers. I was sick of feeling overweight, tired, stressed, and anxious. Suboxone had kept me off of illicit drugs, but I was just replacing the illicit drugs with other things that were less harmful. So I started working out, eating better, and treating my body like a temple instead of a dumpster. Subsequently, I lost 50 pounds, started saving money and doing a budget, and finally got in a place where I’m semi-stable financially (that part isn’t completely sorted out yet, but it’s on the right track. This exercise will inevitably be about playing the slow and steady game). I laid off the caffeine consumption and started practicing meditation and breathing exercises. I was finally treating the disease (mental illness) and not just the symptoms (my illicit drug use).
All of this may seem like a huge digression, but it circles right back to my so-far-successful tapering off of Suboxone. The mac daddy. The grand puba. The thing that I have tried time and time again over the last 5 or 6 years to get off of. Not going back up on my dose has been the largest practice in willpower that I have done in my entire life. The fact that I have made it 24 days without breaking my tapering plan is unprecedented. I have never made it more than 3 or 4 days before without going back up. And I now find myself having urges to go shopping, to eat bad shit, to drink a ton of caffeine, just to fill the void. But because of the legwork that I did for years before this taper and because I have successfully made it 24 days without succumbing to the urge to take more Suboxone, I find myself on stronger ground than I have ever been. I feel like I’ve finally made it. I’m not cutting corners. I’m not taking shortcuts. I’m going straight through my problems like a locomotive plowing through a brick wall. And this train isn’t stopping until it’s reached it’s destination: life without Suboxone.
I guess the summation of todays post, for anyone that it reading this and thinking about getting off of Suboxone, is to ask yourself how you’re treating your disease. Have you built healthy habits? Or have you just found new unhealthy habits to replace the old ones? I know Suboxone is a really controversial treatment for opioid dependance. Many doctors will say it just replaces one opiate addiction with another. My response to that is: It can be bad. But it can also be good. It’s a tool for recovery, just like every other tool for recovery. A screwdriver can be used to repair something. It can also be used to stab somebody in the neck. 12-step meetings can be a great thing. They can also be a place to meet people that will later get drugs for you. I could say that 12-step meetings are bad just because I’ve abused them in the past. But that wouldn’t be true, it just means that it wasn’t the style of recovery I needed at the time. People aren’t all the same. One-size-fits-all is great for hats. Not so much for recovery. Everyone is different and some people need Suboxone to stay off of drugs. Again, it’s a tool. And it’s really up to the addict to decide how that tool will be used.
If Suboxone is used in the proper and constructive way and under the close eye of a good doctor, it can be incredibly effective. It was for me, and I will always be grateful to Suboxone for that. But if it’s used just to get an opiate addict through the times when they’re feeling dope-sick just so they can use again in 2 weeks, then it’s not going to work as a tool of recovery. (Side-note: I’ve been in that place before a few times). Suboxone by itself is not enough to treat mental illness. Other work has to be put in. It’s not always a linear process. It’s not always pretty. And it rarely works on the first, second, or third tries. No matter how many times I failed, I always came back to the puzzle and tried to figure it out again. I never lost faith that, no matter how bad things got, I could pick up the pieces and figure out how to put them back together.
So if you’re not feeling ready to get off Suboxone, trust me, I’ve been there. That is completely fine and it probably means that you’re not ready. Don’t ever let anyone force you into thinking that you are ready. Some people will never be ready to get off of Suboxone. And if that stops them from using drugs, then that is just fine. It's better than fine, it's amazing. But if you do have a desire to someday get off of the meds and out from under the weight of that burden, don’t do it without asking yourself some truly difficult questions first. Really ask yourself how you’re treating your obsessiveness, your compulsivity, and your impulsivity. And make little changes, one at a time. Some days it will be painful, and that’s good. As with every other muscle in your body, growth for the brain is painful. But it is through that pain that real and beautiful change happens. And, as drug addicts that have recovered, we become mentally stronger than most people will ever be in their entire lives. We accomplish things that others will never have the mental fortitude to accomplish. Because, if we can get through this battle and win it, we will be incredibly strong. Like, Superman had a baby with Wonder Woman strong, mentally speaking.
Today, I’m grateful for the times where I feel terrible. Truly terrible. For the struggle, for the pain, and for the challenges. On those days, I’m staring at my addictive nature dead in the eyes as it throws down the gauntlet and says to me “I’m going to make you feel like shit over the next few months. The odds are against you. And you’re going to buckle”. On those days, I don’t flinch. I don’t blink or bat an eye. I just stare right back at the beast and reply with four short words:
“Bring it on, bitch.”
More tomorrow. Stay strong.
<3 - B