Last fall, I found myself stuck between new adverse reactions to my opiate painkillers (oxycodone), and the pain. I was in withdrawal, despite a stable dose. I was stuck between the pain of the pain, and the pain of withdrawal. It's called Downhill Spiral Syndrome, and down I went. I had to do full withdrawal on my own, despite the pain itself. And the blackness of my mood was without parallel. I was able to find anecdotal accounts on the Internet which precisely paralleled my experience, or I'd have thought I had gone insane.

At the time this all happened, I was in a pain rehab program, which was designed to expand functioning by pushing the boundaries gradually. Good on paper, but it came at a bad time, what with this other thing going on. I collapsed.

The pain rehab people got me referred to a psychologist who only deals with pain. He's a Buddhist, and he has his own slant on meditation. It happened to coincide very well with my own perceptions. His meditation centres on breathing. You always are breathing, despite anything else you may be doing/feeling/thinking. It's an excellent "home" concept, bringing you back to the simple tidal flow of air. I don't know what you mean by saying that your breathing is horrendous right now, but my own asthma has reduced since I started meditating this way.

The biofeedback was added in after he was assured that my meditation was up to par. The first time he hooked me up to skin conductance and temp sensors, and I began to meditate, the charts of those variables showed dramatic changes. It gave me a concrete experience of what I could only have intuitively grasped about mindfulness itself. By the third session, I could raise my skin temp while engaged in spirited conversation. I got my finger tips up to 96.3 F. He'd never seen anybody do that before. I'm in to see him again tomorrow, and I'll ask about breathing......if there's something more you'd like to add, so I understand more clearly?

Lar