Written by When I fell into a deep depression at about 40 years old, I began to drink more than I had in the past, and I enjoyed taking my Vicodin for back pain perhaps a little too much. As my dosage increased on the pain medication, I found that it rescued me from the horrors of my nightmarish depression, which left me hating life much of the time.
Eventually I added cocaine to the mix to try and get me going from being so tired from the opiates. And the more of this deadly mix I took, the worse the depression actually got. Soon, I realized I needed help because I had begun to fantasize about stronger drugs and I was thinking about injecting myself with something — anything — to feel better. Having always hated needles, that thought helped me realize how sick I really had become. I was a master at disguising the pain, however, and was eventually diagnosed as a “smiling Depressive”. These are among the worst kind because nobody suspects anything is wrong so nobody offers help and you don’t want to ask for any either.
Skip ahead 3 or 4 years after treatment, when life had gotten good again and I was self-employed. One of the things that had depressed me was my wife got cancer when we were married and had to have a hysterectomy. 2 months earlier she had been pregnant with our first children — twins we had seen on the ultrasound. The cancer caused her to lose the babies, and now she was barren. Her anger after making it through the cancer was pretty unbearable because she felt pretty ripped off by life. She had only wanted children in life. One thing they allow I found, was that cancer patients basically have carte blanche to all the drugs and pain meds they want — and my wife wanted alot of them.
They are so effective at killing pain they kill emotional pain, too — so these worked well for her, but they slowly changed her into a different person and our friendship and marriage could not survive it. We did remain good friends again a bit later though.
I would get a hankering for a pill once in a while, and knowing she had mountains of them and was always willing to sell a few, I would take a few pills now and then if my depression kicked up. The problem was, once I took a few, I always wanted a few more as even after a few days I would have to go through withdrawals.
I told my doctor all about this, and he recommended that I take a very low 2-4 mg dose of Suboxone. The drug has Naloxone in it, unlike its cousin Subutex, so you can’t abuse it easily. The Suboxone has successfully helped me remain totally clean of all opiates for many years now with no relapses — nor even thoughts of relapse on my part. It is really great.
The only downside is my doctor told me it is possible to get addicted to the suboxone. I thought you needed to be on much higher levels, and there are days when I miss doses and do not even notice it, but he says that is because the 1/2 life for this drug is something like 5 days.
Like everything else in life, there is always a trade-off. Personally, methadone maintenance seems an awful lot like shooying the drug heroin itself, but i have no experience in that area. I do know many heroin addicts who were chronic relapsers before Suboxone, who on Suboxone are under control it would appear.
To me it all boils down to a quality of life issue. If you can get off ALL the drugs, power to you. But if your life is going to be punctuated with regular intervals where you relapse and perhaps must go to the hospital, and your whole family is worried and your reputation is shot and nobody trusts you because you cannot stop relapsing — I’d opt for Suboxone. It works.
Does anyone know any halfway houses in north Florida or in N.C. that allow residents to be on suboxone.? Have been in Delray and theres just too many drugs there. I know its up to me to say no but most people in the halfway houses are using. Thanks for any info. Kent
Hi Kent:
There are two ways to get an answer for your question. Our site has most sober livings in the country listed, so you could do a geographical search and though we dont have alot of phone numbers in yet you can just call me as I am listed in the contact areas until the house signs up — and i can give you any numbers and managers you want.
Another way to go about it that is more efficient if you luck out and find helpful counselors, which you usually can, is to call the local treatment centers in the area you want to go to, ask the operator to connect you with the counselor (s) who help patients with exit strategies, and you will find they know everything about the local market and can probably answer your question. Along those same lines there are probably only 3 or 4 Suboxone licensed docs in that area. You can call them and ask them where they send their Suboxone patients. To find the docs all you need to do is Google “suboxone city name” and the docs who dispense it come up because they have to have a special license. Hope those ideas help. Thanks for stopping by the blog. Come on back and drop another comment or two, they are good for everybody! Tell us how you did it if you succeed (or don’t).
Best regards,