[thunderbear]

Last week, I found my Vicodin my husband hid from me. so i took 3 of them. I swore off of them but i gave in. i have 9 months of clean time with alcohol why can't have clean time with pain pills? It's like when I know I have them i get all paniky and anxious. Ugh. I even went without taking any xanxs for my panic disorder just to take that damn stupid vicodin. Now I am ashamed. I have overcome meth, coke, alcohol, and acid. Why not pain pills? I mean if i can get addicted on pain meds then why not xanax? I don't even like to take them.Sometimes a month script of xanax willo last me longer than a month. But if I was getting 60 vicodon a month they would be gone in less than a week. WHY? I guess when I think about it I like the feelings of pain meds. I don't have all the pain in my neck from my injury and i feel energetic. xanax makes me tired and sleepy.

[knothead]

Hi Thunderbear

You slipped up -- that's not so bad. You just have to start over again. Pain pills are so freaking evil. I bet if you hadn't found where your husband had hid them you never would have even thought about them. Coming across them the way you did almost made it a delightful little gift, of course you slipped. I hope you managed to toss or flush the others... you did, right? You're gonna be just fine because you're a strong woman.
Please don't be too hard on yourself!

[Catherine2]

Thunderbear,
It took courage for you to admit this, and I admire you for doing it.
Please don't beat yourself up. You had a slip, you've posted openly about it, and now you can get back on track.

[thunderbear]

hi knothead. I did'nt flush them there was only one left and i dont bother withone. But damn do i feel awful. I tell myself allthe time i am not gonna do it again but then i do.

[knothead]

Thunderbear, I think your confession in your post shows that you're taking responsibility for your actions and you should be applauded. The fact that you slipped a little and now feel bad about it shows how much you've grown. Please, don't beat yourself up about it, you're only human. And seriously, pain pills are so hard to resist!!

[Beholden]

Hey, I'm not one to know much about addiction, but I slip up with other things...and when I'm feeling "healthy", I use my anger, my "I'm really pissed at myself" to motivate me into doing the responsibile thing.

Start over again that's the great part. If one pill isn't enough to bother with, then get really mad at 2 pills or 3 pills for coming into your life, because they aren't worth bothering about either. You deserve to be free of them!

You know what you need to do when temtation hits, you've done it before. I believe you will do it again.

[leslierater]

please dont beat yerself up! I was addicted to pain meds for over 5 years. it started when i had a headache and a friend gave me a hydro... it made me feel as if the world was ok and easy to face. i would ask her for a couple every few days. but then it went to me working at a drs office and stealing the script pads to prescribe oxys and hydrocodone to myself. I would use the mail in pharmacies so the local ones wouldnt question why a psychiatrist (the dr i workd for) was prescribing pain killers. After that didnt satisfy my cravings i used my jaw pain TMJ as an excuse to look for a place to give me pills. it wasnt hard. I filled out the paperwork saying i had headahces and blah blah blah anything to sound good,....by this time i had also become a certified pharmacy tech just to know the lingo knowing if i ever worked in a pharm id go to the Pen. because i wouldnt b able to control myself. I convinced this dr to give me 180 lortabs 10 mg monthly and duragesic patches ( a pain patch) when the patches stopd givng me the high they gave me morphine and that didnt give me a buzz so i would complain again always being careful to watch my freq. of complaining going a few months "trying it out" to pacify the dr and look less like a pill shopper. The last thing they gave me was methadone and all of the sched 3 meds.. morph. duragesic patch were given along with the 180 lortabs. The methadone worked, not knowing that it counteracts the lortabs.... but i didnt crave the lortabs. I was up to 5 to 10 lortabs at a time id use a whole monthly script in a week or two. the methadone helped the craving. but i too got used to the methadone and started to take more and eventually runing out of that early and dealing with withdrawls for the next two weeks till my refils were avail. I had even filed a false police report once to get my refills again even tho i had just used them all before time was up. all of this was a ritual month after month waking up to a pill and if that pill wasnt there my kids didnt matter my home didnt matter my job could wait...and then the worst thing that could happen to an addict who gets a month script at a time happend. The clinic i was going to started sched refil appointments with the nurses a few days before the medicine prescribed would be completely out. And they required a pill count to make sure the patients wernt doing what i was doing. I had tried giving a trustd friend just enuff to satisfy the nurse when shed count but id always beg during my time of withdrawl. I managed to forget my bottles a couple of times once even used dif pills that were sim to the prescribed ones to try and fool them. And then i get a new nurse.. who wasnt taking any bs. I told her i had left my bottles at my moms who lives 30 min away cos i visit her alot and would only have the pills i needed on me till the next time id see her, since the month before i had "falseified a police report" so i told her i cant trust to keep my meds at home. She said she wanted to talk to the dr, she comes back and says they will fill my scripts this time but i would have to take a drug test... to i assume check the medication levels to make sure i was at recom. dose. welp i am sure the hydrocodone would be completely outa my sys by the time i took the drug test and the methadone would be higher than prescribed considering the life of methadone is much longer lasting in your system. and to top it off to help my withdrawl symp. i would and had the day before used cocaine and meth. so that was a guarantee that they would cut me off. after 4 years of going to them they were going to throw me to the wolves addicted and desperate. So i found a dr that was known to hand out pills, i didnt play any pain games i was honest and said i was addicted and the clinic that was fuleing my addiction had "fired" me. He was awesome and had told me that he had a med called soboxine but he was leary because he said the govt has a database set up that anyone prescribed it would be put on a list and he didnt want to label me. He told me he wouldnt prescribe methadone but did write me a script for 180 lortabs. and told me about a treatment clinic in my redneck bible belt city in texas that helps opiate addiction with methadone. i was shocked i wouldnt have struggled for so long if i had known they were avail. they were able to get me in on a monday i called on a friday. they dosed me with a small dose of methadone and ive been going there ever since a year and a half later i am on 90 mg of methadone see a drug councelor weekly and dont feel so alone. they too do monthly drug screens, the very first drug screen i had to do i knew i would fail because i had used meth a day before, so i snuck some pee in, thinking that because they said methadone doesnt show up as an opiate that as long as they saw a clean opiate panel id b ok, not knowing they do a specific screen for methadone metabolites. learned a lesson. I had gone almost a year when i messed up and failed one... it wasnt for opiates i can say i havent had a lortab in over a year. but it was for pills a bad one to take with methadone... xanax. My point to this extreemly long story is.... when i failed that test i was so hard on myself i felt like i was at sq. one and a pill head for life., i felt that all i had worked on was now gone and id have to start over at day one. well apparently Thunderbear listen to this! even according to the big book of NA it is part of recovery to relapse the councelor said i wouldnt be progressing if there wasnt fear of relapse. The brain we have so luckily been given the kind that loves to love a drug never forgets that drug and altho it may convince us that after a certain amt of time we are now completly disconected from our drug of choice and it no longer pulls at us like before. u could have it in yer hand and not care so yer brain lies to you. But thats the prob, the brain doesnt tell us about the part that yearns for it, the reward part of our brain who at birth learned that apple juice was better than water also learned that hydrocodone is better than any other pill. It is perm. ettched in the cells of our brain to like pain meds. After a period of time that we dont use we auto. think we can control our useage even tho we cldnt at one time. That when we are actually put in front of the drug of choice its normal and natural for the reward center to fire off seritonin and create the uncontrolable desire to use again. So dont do this to yerself, it will only excuse the will to do it one more time and one more after that. If you can admit you are powerless against your addiction then and only then will you continue on your journey of sobriety. be proud of yourself, expecially if you did it cold turkey with no help. I couldnt do it. and worry about when and if i ever detox off of methadone. relapse is a part of recovery without it we wouldnt understand the powerlessness we have.