Decided to post a slightly edited version of something I posted on a forum a few months ago. . .
As some here might know, I was addicted to oxycodone for a while, and then switched to kratom when I became fed up with my oxy addiction. I started out taking Enhanced Bali every 4 hours and now only take it twice a day, 1/4 tsp each time. I’ve been off oxy and have been using kratom for three months now. Right now I’m doing the maintenance thing, but I’ll eventually get off completely when I’m ready. Some people say you’re never ready, but that’s also what they told me when I said I’d eventually be ready to quit my 30 mg per 3 hours habit of oxy.
I have a success story from this morning I’d like to share.
Recently my father-in-law has gotten himself addicted to oxy. Actually more specifically, he uses kratom, sniffs oxy, and eats vicodin. All at once. Anyway I imagine he feels somewhat alone in his addiction, as we all do sometimes, and maybe wanted someone to use with, or to feel like it’s okay because other people do opiates too. Whatever the case may be, he talks about oxy *all the time* and almost nothing else except how much his life sucks and how they mistreat him at work (and he works 80 hours a week doing physical labour so I understand it sucks), etc.
So all this talk of one’s drug of choice when one is recently enough off it obviously makes it very hard to stay off. I’ve told him it’s really hard for me to hear about it all the time but he doesn’t seem to care much.
Last night he hands me a half of a razored-in-half OC40. The 40 mg oxys are the ones I got when I first started, so it was nostalgic as hell. He says I don’t have to do it with him, but that if I ever wanted any, I now have some. I’m not going to lie, my adrenalin was pumping and I felt dizzy as hell when he handed it to me. I just really wanted that oxy in me so bad.
So I waited about 18 hours from my last burn (overnight — only got 5 hours of sleep though), and snuck out of bed so my girlfriend wouldn’t wake up and stop me and went to the bathroom. Crushing up and accurately measuring a dose of oxy takes a bit of preparation, so I had some time to think.
I started scraping the yellow coating off with my thumb nail and just like the way music brings you back to the last place you heard it (if you haven’t heard that song in a while), I was back to when I first started non-medically using oxy. I was on the car going across the country drinking a crushed up 40 in a bottle of water. I was in the car in the middle of the desert doing a line before going shooting with my girlfriend. I was walking down the streets of New York City with a smile on my face because I just railed another 10 mg. I was at work doing it off my manager’s desk as a big “fuck you” after he went home early for the millionth time in a row. All the good memories flooding back, all the good feelings, just as I was scraping the coating off.
I start crushing the pill up. I fold the dollar bill in half, and then in thirds the other way, so nothing flies out as I hammer it into dust. Just like the thousands of other times I’ve done it. Now some bad memories start to come to me. It’s winter, I’m alone in the bathroom in the basement at work — cold, laying on the floor feeling depressed because oxy doesn’t really make me feel good any more. Spending hours in the bathroom, but I don’t get fired or even confronted because I’m the best and brightest employee they have. Pacing the same bathroom trying to stay awake because I think I just overdosed, again. The guilt I felt last night when my girlfriend of 4 years smiled at me so lovingly and with so much trust, yet I knew I was about to go behind her back with this.
Finally I’m done prepping the dose. Four neat, even lines. I remembered why I liked 40s so much now. They have the highest oxy to binder ratio, so the lines are beautiful and there’s not a whole lot of mess like with the others. I examine my work. 15 minutes goes by. The rolled up $1 is still between my pointer and middle finger, balanced on my thumb. A war is being waged in my mind. I want it so bad. Just once. I’ll flush the rest, I just want 5 mg, just enough to get the same relief as burning 1/4 tsp of EB. It’s been like 18 hours and I’m in pain. I know I’ll get that rush — that I’ll have that sickly orgasmic feeling that my face is melting away and like I’m totally going to die and dissolve into the universe and be one with everything. That beautiful death. The feeling that I’m in love with everyone and everything. The desire to hug the world, no, the universe. I know it’ll be just absolutely fucking awesome. But I can’t do it. It’s not just a foot away, it’s a whole foot away. So much effort to draw myself close enough to fuck up my last 3 months of struggles. Lucky I’m so exhausted, so lazy feeling.
But how little effort it would take to scrape it off the hardcover book I cut it on, interestingly enough titled The Abyss, and into the toilet. Even though it requires more motions, more mechanics, it seems easier for some reason.
I weigh it out in my head. Reasons not to do it: the better I feel on opiates (this only happened after being addicted for several months), the worse and more restless I feel an hour after the feeling wears off. Because I am afraid that I won’t be able to stop if I do. Or if I do stop, that even if I don’t do oxy for 20 years, that when I have the chance to do it 20 years later I will say yes, and then not be able to stop because I don’t think about it. I want the inertia of “no” rather than the inertia of “yes.” Because I will be giving up everything else I’ve been working so hard at all over again. I’ll lose 3 months of hard work in lowering my tolerance and recovering from oxy addiction. Reason to do it: feel good for an hour tops. Wait let’s rereason this. Why? Because you’re missing the point. You’ll never know if addiction is a disease or just a lack of control unless you let yourself dose and see what it’s like to refuse yourself after this one. That’s valuable information! . . .and a million other excuses. That’s what keeps opiate addiction alive — excuses, rationale, justification.
Better make your choice before she wakes up. If you’re going to do it, she’s going to stop you. If you’re not, she’s going to make you feel like it wasn’t your decision, and like you’re just some addict who can’t say no. Do it do it do it. Here goes. No fuck you, I’m not doing it. Dude just do it and toss the rest seriously you pussy. Fuck off.
An hour passes. A toilet flushes. One fewer dragon to worry about, and one knight with high self esteem emerges victoriously from the basement.
