5 Years. Today.
Today it has been 5 years since I touched an Oxycontin. /deep breath/
I never thought I would last this long. I never thought I would stay away from the temptation, but I also never thought that physically I wouldn’t end up needing something by now. Needing Oxy by now. I am stunned and joyed by this day.
It has been a rough year. During the bronchitis last winter that collided with my grandfather passing away, I ended up in the ER taking Norco - a pain killer - because I had been laid up for so many weeks from the illness and could barely move. I also went home with a script for a muscle relaxer and some Xanax and that has been the struggle this year. While Oxy was my poison of choice, I would never turn down other things, if I had them, which I often did. I slipped a little with the Xanax. Something, perhaps my referral to the pain specialist, had me anxious and then The Canadians surprise visited for a week and I was taking the Xanax to stay calm about all of those things - one each night before bed - and for about a week after they left, I kept taking it. There was always a reason, an excuse. It was the one pill before bed and it took me a week to stop. I found out right after that it had spiked my liver levels, so I have to watch myself hard on that end. It is a fine line to walk, between what I need and what I want. Between legitimate reasons that I take something and always finding that excuse to do it more. Having the Flexeril and Xanax back in the house is a hard thing, having it right there next to my bed, temptation sitting so close.
But I did it. I didn’t fall back into the oblivion where everything floats, including myself, floating away. That’s what happened to me. I floated away and lost myself. I’ve never talked much about how bad it was during that last year, how close I came to death so many times. Taking my weight in milligrams in one day, half my weight in one sitting, mixing things that should never be mixed. How much of myself was gone, how altered my personality was, how I was too gone to even notice I was missing myself. It felt wonderful to live like that, but it was only afterwards that I realized I wasn’t living, that I realized how close I had come to not living at all.
And here I am, 5 years later, making this post. Alive, functioning, living. As a kid I was told a lot of ‘be prepared things’ and one of them was that I probably wouldn’t live past 30. With the drugs, I almost made that a reality. But now I have lived past all of that and far beyond what the naysayers said I would and though there is so much more pain and regret to this story than I have shared here, there is also joy and love and support and triumph, and for today - for today, I am proud.
I never thought I would last this long. I never thought I would stay away from the temptation, but I also never thought that physically I wouldn’t end up needing something by now. Needing Oxy by now. I am stunned and joyed by this day.
It has been a rough year. During the bronchitis last winter that collided with my grandfather passing away, I ended up in the ER taking Norco - a pain killer - because I had been laid up for so many weeks from the illness and could barely move. I also went home with a script for a muscle relaxer and some Xanax and that has been the struggle this year. While Oxy was my poison of choice, I would never turn down other things, if I had them, which I often did. I slipped a little with the Xanax. Something, perhaps my referral to the pain specialist, had me anxious and then The Canadians surprise visited for a week and I was taking the Xanax to stay calm about all of those things - one each night before bed - and for about a week after they left, I kept taking it. There was always a reason, an excuse. It was the one pill before bed and it took me a week to stop. I found out right after that it had spiked my liver levels, so I have to watch myself hard on that end. It is a fine line to walk, between what I need and what I want. Between legitimate reasons that I take something and always finding that excuse to do it more. Having the Flexeril and Xanax back in the house is a hard thing, having it right there next to my bed, temptation sitting so close.
But I did it. I didn’t fall back into the oblivion where everything floats, including myself, floating away. That’s what happened to me. I floated away and lost myself. I’ve never talked much about how bad it was during that last year, how close I came to death so many times. Taking my weight in milligrams in one day, half my weight in one sitting, mixing things that should never be mixed. How much of myself was gone, how altered my personality was, how I was too gone to even notice I was missing myself. It felt wonderful to live like that, but it was only afterwards that I realized I wasn’t living, that I realized how close I had come to not living at all.
And here I am, 5 years later, making this post. Alive, functioning, living. As a kid I was told a lot of ‘be prepared things’ and one of them was that I probably wouldn’t live past 30. With the drugs, I almost made that a reality. But now I have lived past all of that and far beyond what the naysayers said I would and though there is so much more pain and regret to this story than I have shared here, there is also joy and love and support and triumph, and for today - for today, I am proud.