My Drug Free Days or How I Escaped the Prescription Mill

Well, after a two year silence, where I was condemned to spend my time in a permanent haze to work while in pain, I have come back to tell the tale.

It's a sad tale, one fraught with confusion, neurological degradation and a landscape littered with upset friends and family.  Associated characters include a somewhat schizo part time contractor, an art collecting gay doctor, two bumbling attorneys and a whole host of pain clinics and treatments.

I begin slowly, as typing appears to not be a great thing to do when not medicated.  My neck has seen many days of pain and abuse, including multiple years of martial arts sparring and at the least, six separate whiplash injuries.  At this time in my life, my spine doesn't have one disk that isn't herniated, from the top of my neck to the base of my tailbone.  As one might imagine, this creates an untenable situation for a person who earns money via a keyboard.  Now to be honest, they are truly paying for my brain power, however it is all delivered on a keyboard and a conference phone.  I spend ALL day instant messaging in a company of a quarter of a million people, answering an average of 250-300 emails daily, writing software development estimates, texting, talking on conference calls, managing an inbox constantly so it doesn't blow up, assisting in debugging software failures and defects and filling out forms, surveys and taking online courses; to name some of my daily activities.  And, of course, it truly doesn't stop when the work bell rings to a close; I continue to text, play scrabble, use my smart phone to look things up I want to know instantly, and manage the work for two college courses.  Typing is non stop from morning till night.

Enter the pain and general anxiety.

It began slowly and then rapidly ramped up to take over every thought and every waking moment of my day.  Rapidly, I felt out of control and incapable of functioning in the way I required to accomplish all the things I do daily.  I went from my normally matter of fact self to a lunatic who couldn't type without excruciating pain and subsequently ceased to be able to think while the pain slowly took me over.  I ended every day, as Pink Floyd would say, tight as a funeral drum, and in tears.  I was so wound up, I couldn't sleep, my activities were all infringed upon and generally I was a pretty sad person.

And onto the stage steps the schizo contractor and quasi friend.  He decides my life would improve if I adopted HIS doctor as mine.  I knew he had an endless supply of pain medication, which I would avail myself of every so often to take the edge off this spiraling condition, so I reasoned, why not?  It would be less expensive than plumping up his SSI budget by paying him for pain meds, so off I went to the doctor in question.  So, that introduces the doctor to this story.  I went to consult with him, and almost immediately ended up on a pain management program administered through his office.  And I was sent to the first of a collection of pain clinics, where I was racking up a pile of bills and spending three days a week getting physical therapy and chiropractic care (my chiropractor didn't want to work with me after the MRI's of my spine appeared) and a pile of exercises and home exercise equipment, blah blah blah.

On this continued, for over two years, until one day, I realized I was taking enough drugs to kill a racehorse on a daily basis, and my mind had melted into a puddle.  I had a massive falling out with the doctor and left his practice.  I was calling around to find someone to take his place, when I had an epiphany.  I didn't want a doctor to hold power over me with a prescription pad, and I truly wanted my mind back.

So I abruptly stopped taking five separate, mind bending, body destroying drugs and entered a month of hell.  Withdrawal was a complete nightmare; I was unable to work, ended up with two in completes for my school semester and dropped 10 pounds in 3 weeks, unable to eat or digest food.  I averaged two hours sleep for a month, until I was about ready to rave myself into insanity.

Then, it started to get better.  I could think, read a novel for the first time in many many moons, my friends were all delighted to be able to actually talk to me, I could stay awake in a movie, and my sleep pattern finally adjusted itself.  I can eat, but here we are 8 weeks later, and it's still a sketchy thing.  I trust it will improve.

The pain?  Oddly enough, it's way better than it was in the beginning of this saga, but I am well aware that it lurks there in the background.  I opted for the month of hell rather than checking into a detox clinic because I didn't want any palliative treatment for the withdrawal symptoms but rather wanted to feel every bit of the agony it took to cease that treatment.  So I am not inclined to take anything more than an aspirin to deal with the pain, and when it gets to be too much, I just take a nap.  I won't go back down that road unless I am in an end of life situation; I will just deal with this and alleviate as best I can with exercise and stretching.

So I'm back assembling the broken pieces I created while dealing with this train wreck.  I feel reasonably positive and actually happy and content sometimes, and I am ready to take on new challenges while I clear the decks of the things I left behind while fixing this mess.

Time to publish this.  I hope someone benefits from this story.