John left for Germany and I laid out my vast array of tablets for the week. When you end up taking 10 different tablets just to get some sleep that surely indicated something wasn’t in balance. In the morning, taking an almost lethal cocktail just to enable my body to feel less pain so I could get up, indicated that everything was out of balance. So at this point I realised that I wasn’t going to have enough Morphine Sulphate to last the full week thinking ‘this is it’ I had to give it a go. By Sunday I was really running out of morphine sulphate and it was closer to the pinch point. I slowly reduced the dose until by Sunday I was ready. John was back and I could really give it a go in safety.
I went to see the doctor on Tuesday afternoon to make sure I was doing things correctly. He asked me if I wanted more so I could detox slowly. I didn’t see the point of playing at it so I opted for a complete ‘cold turkey’ approach. I was by this time into day 2 and I was buzzing but not much else. By the time we had got back home I had been sneezing and was really cold. Putting this down to a chill I went to bed to warm up. By that evening I was well into the detox and when they say it is painful, they really mean it. I felt as if all the blood and marrow had drained out of my right hand side and was really uncomfortable. You know that feeling you get after spending the night sleeping on your arm and shoulder and just after releasing but before the ‘pins and needles’…..that pain? Well amplify that and you get the picture. It was so painful that it kept me up all night. I was determined to not give in and just get through it. I can understand why heroin addicts cannot detox. It is painful and your mind keeps telling you to take some more, anything to get rid of the pain! It was Wednesday…
Day 3 I felt so ill that I didn’t get up out of bed. I shivered and then was too hot then sneezing, watery eyes and generally felt really rough. The goose bumps from shivering are in fact the reason it’s called ‘cold turkey’, something I didn’t really associate the detox with. That graving for the morphine was now getting stronger but I am so much stronger than that so didn’t give in to it. At night the pain increased and man was it painful. My brain had been busy during the day but now had nothing much to do but remind me of the most dreadful pain you can imagine. Well ladies I understand childbirth is more painful but you get the picture.
At last it was day 4. This day seemed to be the most sever. I wasn’t prepared for it really. I gritted my teeth; I was not going to give in now. I had come through the bad days now just had to get through the worst 2 days and I would be fine. I was so wrong! I didn’t know where to put my right arm. Up above my head, straight up, hanging down, chopping it off! That would have helped but wasn’t an option. Boy was it so painful. It was a pain I couldn’t explain, it was just there. The best I could do was explaining it as before, all blood and marrow out of the arm, just before ‘pins and needles’. My phantom cold got worse; I couldn’t stop yawing and my teary eyes? Well that was just a nuisance. All I kept saying to myself was ‘patience girl, patience’. By the end of that evening the pain was so strong I had to take a pain killer… ah that worked not so bad now and in any case it was finally day 5.
Detoxing from a drug which essentially is heroin is no easy task. Day 5 brought with it its own problems. I was really ill. I had what amounted to a severe cold with a head that ached. Nothing can prepare you for the pain. The day past without much movement from the bed. Day 6 was just as bad. Slowly but steadily the pain diminished. Nausea was replaced by not much interest in food. John said It was a good thing because I wouldn’t die of starvation…cheeky monkey! Day after day things improved but the sneezing and cold just wouldn’t go away. Headaches were replaced with sinus problems. What next I thought? I knew that it would take a little more time to get over the worst. By this time it was day 7.
On day 8 there was a remarkable change. I had to eat. I wasn’t hungry but wanted to devour everything in sight. The munchies had arrived. I was really happy that the change had occurred because I knew that the worst was over. Day 9 and 10 were pretty much the same. Eating everything in sight. It was so difficult to moderate the eating but I did try really hard and failed! Day 11 was a bummer, the cold was back. Apatite was gone and patience was at its worst. That was the famous relapse that was mentioned in the withdrawal notes. If I could get through the next 2 days I would be well on the way to kicking the habit, so to speak! At this time I was down to 10mg every other day of the detox from the anti-depressant too. It was a difficult decision to run the 2 detoxes in parallel but it was the only way to shake off the drugs that were causing so much harm to my body. I was warned that by day 10 I would slide into a low level depression. That did happen but I knew I had to do it in order that I come out the other side feeling like a person not a pain ridden, puffy, shadow of myself.
By the time the 3rd week had ended I was really feeling better. I had been taking the anti-inflammatory for 3 weeks and the pain had reduced enough that I could do a few things around the home. I wasn’t so well cured that I could walk, run and jump but I was sufficiently pain free that I could go into my workshop and really work on the commissions I had received. If people had faith in me I could have faith in me too! By the end of the 4th week I had stopped the anti-depressants and the morphine sulphate and things looked good.
