Day 217

A better day.

Today I felt mostly normal although I'm still prone to weeping and had a couple intervals of stomach pain. These past couple days were just awful; I totally understand why people keep taking opioids. Three weeks of light daily use gave me a day of complete uselessness and another day of mostly useless so I dread to think what six weeks of steady use would do - let alone six months. I wish I had been warned ahead of time. Maybe something as simple as "make sure your last dose is on aThursday so you have the weekend to get back to feeling yourself" or better still "no matter how carefully you take those any dose that kills the pain is also going to give you some side effects when you stop taking it. This happens to everyone and doesn't mean you took too much just that these are powerful drugs." Being told in advance 1) this will happen and 2) it doesn't mean you are a bad person or abuser/addict would have helped.

And damned if I didn't hear an ad this evening for a prescription drug "designed for my opioid-induced constipation." Seriously! I was stunned. I assume this means enough people are on chronic narcotic pain relievers that it is worth buying air time to hawk some super-pooper-pill. Wow.

But this isn't a narcotics blog; this is a staying sober from booze blog and today I am really happy to be off the holiday alcohol merry go round. For once I don't even -know- which liquor store has which special holiday hours because it just doesn't matter in my life this year. Not only am I not drinking - which I wasn't last winter either - but I'm not buying for anyone else either. That feels pretty damned good.