Journal - My tale of fifteen years of DXM abuse... ...and looking for advice like everyone else

[tyrus568]

Hi. I found this notebook at the park yesterday and thought it was filled with some interesting and horrifying things. Maybe you'd like to read it, I entered the text below.

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I'm 32, live with parents, social outcast, no job, no job experience, little worldly experience, not much college, no degree, no money, no car, no license, no health insurance or anything like that. I get free room and board with my parents and help out around the house - you know, one of the worst kinds of losers. I have avoidant personality disorder with a bunch of anxiety and depressive disorders and actually some other problems I won't get into here.

I was hoping to maybe see what people had to say about what, if anything, I should do, but at least to read my experiences to pass the time or perhaps to sneer at.

I have no money, my parents have some, but I'm not going to be able to do a lot concerning therapy or help really. I don't particularly want to go to NA or AA. I thought maybe about going to see an addiction specialist, but that could be kind of expensive and I have an idea of what he would offer. I also thought about maybe going to see a doctor about getting a heart exam, but I was concerned about explaining to him why I thought there might be damage.... besides , I'm avoidant, the last thing I want to do is to have to talk to professionals about my problem....

As it is, I'm taking it day by day. I haven't done DXM since my last heart episode about 5 weeks ago that scared the hell out of me. Opiates, eh, all I've been doing is buying poppy seeds, but they don't do anything for me (can't buy enough at once here to matter).

I'm committed to not taking DXM again for as long as possible. The opiates, well, I tell myself I'll get more poppy pods in december, if I can possibly wait. Otherwise right now I putter around the house, get some walking exercise, smoke weed and cigarettes, and deal with my post-acute withdrawal stuff.

A week ago I met someone on the net (*gasp* you say, how unlikely!), but seriously, someone I could relate to (not in a romantic way, as a friend). He is not an addict or actually a drug user at all but he grew up with in a dysfunctional family of abusers and knows what drug abuse is like. We talked a whooole lot in the last week about my problems (and his too), mainly my drugs problems, and so I wrote him an autobiography of my life.

Part of the autobiography is detailed below, just all of the parts about DXM abuse (I cut all the sex and other boring stuff out :P ). If it sometimes seems to be disjointed or jump around, it's probably because I redacted something out. Or just my confused disorganized mind :P

If you want the too long; didn't read version: too bad. I tried writing it but it was too long. So you have to read the whole thing.

And oh ya, I don't condone shoplifting.

It starts below.

Websites were beginning to spring up, the world wide web was being born (1994). This was when I began my comprehensive drug education online, reading faqs and forums and exploring what was out there.

This was when I discovered DXM, through William White's pretty excellent and comprehensive DXM faq that was around back then. We now know that there were some erroneous facts in his guide (particularly about Olney's Lesions), but overall it was an excellent resource.

I was probably near the end of my 17th year when I discovered DXM. It was to be the biggest change of my entire life.

Hmm, yeah. So, I thought, hey, this sounds like it could be interesting, and I can use this as research into jaunting, or exploring my inner mind and outer worlds. I can be a psychonaut and really understand my own potential and open my mind.

So I began to experiment with it. Easy enough, you go down to Kroger's and buy one bottle of Robitussin max cough syrup or a pack of Drixorals for xxxx and you take it and see what happens.

Mainly, this is what would happen on an average dose: take an hour to begin after drinking, then shortly afterwards you would "peak" or what I used to call have a mind orgasm, which was what it felt like, and was extremely intense. Usually you would be nauseous from drinking the syrup, so you would smoke a joint right at the peak. Now, it is well known that unlike most drugs, marijuana and DXM have synergistic properties and greatly enhance the other. When I ever did DXM, I pretty much had to have some weed on me to do it, otherwise it was not nearly as fun.

Anyways, so you would peak, smoking a joint. The "trip" would last about eight hours, with up to a 24 hour "glow" afterwards. This WAS a trip, do not mistake me, with opiates, well opiates do act on the central nervous system as well, but they don't have the psychedelic or disassociative properties. Opiates don't take you anywhere, they don't give you a "trip" to another world or anything, they just make you feel good. Take opiates, feel good. It wears off, take more, you feel good again, you know? DXM you would take once and it would fuck you up and send you off into space for at least eight hours, but usually all through the following day. I loved it a lot for just this reason, how it lasted so long and felt so great.

high amount of euphoria, more euphoria than I typically get from opiates (pods). flushing of the skin, your skin all over your body would be hot with heat, with blood flowing close to the surface, all of the pores in your skin all over your body would be dilated as wide as possible, and your skin would be very, very sensitive in a very, very nice way. Extremely pleasurable. Libido would not exist. Some confusion. Your limbs and body would feel so light that you could just jump off the surface of the Earth or something, it was so great. music was unnaturally godlike and awesome. also, disassociation from the world. not understanding things or able to really function.

The most important part of the DXM trip, in my mind, was it being a "trip". It made everything you did feel like you were doing it for the first time ever, in such a good way, I mean, you know, you do something cool like play a video game a few times and it's not quite as fun since you get experienced with it, right, but even if you had played a previously fun game extensively, on DXM you could play it and you would have the reward feeling like it was the first time you had ever played it, even though you hadn't forgot what it was like or how to play it or anything, it was just that feeling like, wow, this game is soooo fun.

Movies, also. Watching a movie on DXM tended to make you really think that you were in the movie and it was really happening, in a total good way. I remember watching The Name of the Rose, set in medieval times about monks and mysteries in an old castle, and I'm saying, I felt like I was back in 1359. I can't explain it to you any more than that; how if you woke up in 1359, you were really there and interacting with everyone and everything, that's what it was like to watch this movie. And thats the way any movie was on DXM. It was beyond fabulous, it was divine. literally utopia, a cosmic mystery, an opening to another universe.

The other thing that was the greatest of all about the trips was this intense feeling of creativity and feelings of insight, very similar to LSD. You felt like you were figuring stuff out, you were finding out answers to the universe and yourself, many of your thoughts felt insightful and even prophetic. You felt like you experienced something from a higher plane, or that God had touched you. Several trips I did feel like I had met God. You felt as if something was revealing the cure to cancer for you, or what the meaning of life was, or how to manipulate reality to create magic, whatever. I mean, though, this was like, you would feel like you were Einstein or something, and then the next day you would look at all the stuff you scribbled down that seemed so important the night before and it would all be gibberish.

So yeah, you just can't fully understand all of the changes this made to my life unless you have lived through it. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Finally I had a way out, I could ignore everything and delve into a world of PC games, Playstation games, and exploring the nether zones of transmogrified, divine, holy, super reality that DXM tinged and soaked my life and mind with.

Tolerance rises fairly rapidly with frequent DXM use, and during this period (17-19) I was using it once a week, always on fridays. Adam had found other friends and was always gone all friday, saturday, and sunday, and my parents left me alone. It was a time where my bedroom door was always shut, I came out for dinner and ate it back in my room, there was no contact at all and no talking about anything, everyone was off doing their own shit. My mom was doing a bit better after the ECT treatments but was only partially there. Over time I was moving to higher doses to achieve my medium-level effects. Low-level doses only make you feel like your drunk but you're still sober and can talk and everything, so I liked medium level doses for ALL the good effects and a few bad ones, seeing straight could be difficult or recognizing objects. But the majority of everything was so close to my heart, I wanted to do this always, for the rest of my life, I couldn't live without it. It was a fantastic, prolonged dream. These were the good years of my DXM abuse.

So, this happened in like 1995, right when I turned 18. My parents were letting me take a year off before I started college, so I had tons of free time. I was still gaming with my roleplaying group and everything. no job or anything and no obligations, at all.

There is a game and a music cd that define my early DXM use and were so enhanced they were basically the holy grail for me, especially you know, when I was all fucked up. That was Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol II, and the Playstation game Final Fantasy Tactics. I had picked it up on a whim when I was wandering around Sears, of all places, seeing hey, it's final fantasy, I adore that stuff anyways but I didn't know anything about FFT when I bought it. I thought it was going to be a role playing game. For me it was the best game ever made for the Playstation, no question. I probably played a thousand hours on that game, playing it through again and again, raising everyone's skills to as many classes as possible, attaining all the secrets, but anyways it wasn't just that it's one of the best games ever made; it was during the best times of my DXM use, when everything was so good and perfect, and it enhanced it to something that is not reproducible again for me. It was a once in a lifetime event. No other drug could do this. I just recently played through the game again on an emulator on my PC and it was fun, but not anywhere near the same, and made me melancholic and wistful for old times. I only played it about halfway through.

OK, so everything was so glorious. If I could have stopped here, it would have been so great, because everything pretty much goes downhill from here. To let you know, I started using DXM when I was 17 and the last time I used it was last month (at the age of 32).

So 18-20 or so. Had all this money from the inheritence, always high and fucked up on DXM,
having a great time.

All that was over, then my parents decided to start a small business. It was mainly to help my Mom really become herself again. So they started this little store at a flea market that mostly sold kid's toys, junk toys, knock-off stuff. They would leave on saturday mornings and be gone all day, and the same on sunday mornings, so this left me completely alone for the entire weekend with money, weekend after weekend I would wait til they left early in the morning and immediately walk the 2 miles along the freeway down to the Kroger's and buy DXM, then trip on drugs all day while they were gone, then sometimes do it on Sunday, too. My usage of DXM was increasing in both amount and frequency... I was doing it 2-3 times a week, usually every
three days or so, but always on saturday during the day. I had so much money at the time, with no costs at all, I'd buy all kinds of candy and magazines and books and stuff from kroger's and randall's.

So by the time I was 21-22, my gaming group had fallen apart. Near the end, Alvin was gone, so it was just me, bob, dave and chad, and sometimes guests. It was an hour's drive to get to dave's house from mine, and bob lived pretty close to me; chad lived about in between. So bob was assigned to drive, he would pick me and chad up for the game, we would game all night, then bob would drive us home, dropping off chad, then me. he also worked on the same day we gamed, so he was very tired, and it was always VERY scary on the last leg of the way home, after we had dropped off chad and it was just me and him. He would constantly fall asleep while driving, and I would be struggling the whole way to keep him alert. Pretty scary stuff, happened every
weekend....

So... then there's this incident. My local Kroger's, I had stolen DXM from there a couple of times. One weekend, Bob was taking me home from the AD&D game at 5 in the morning, and I told him to just drop me off
at the Krogers, and that I would walk home. I went into the Krogers and attempted to shoplift some DXM. I had my backpack with all my gaming books with me, but I stuffed the DXM into my back pocket, two boxes of pills so about xxxx worth which I had the money for but for some reason wanted to steal it to save the money. I bought some other stuff at the register and I was walking out, the store manager grabbed me by the backpack and told me to stay. I squirmed out of my pack and ran out the front doors, terrified, not knowing what to do and scared as hell. I came out into the parking lot and there was already a sheriff's cruiser in the lot, lights flashing. I thought about just running, there was a bayou that ran alongside the store, with
residences on the other side, so I almost did. I was crying hysterically and panicking. So I stopped in the parking lot and went back into the store.

They basically bitched at me, made me pay for the DXM, which I could afford thankfully, told me to never come into the store again, the sheriff took my ID and wrote my name and ID number down. I walked out with the sheriff and he searched my backpack and I had a very small amount of marijuana stashed in there with some zigzag rolling papers. He made me take the papers and weed and throw them into the trashcan. (I had plenty of weed at home so wasn't worried about that; I was totally relieved that not only did I not get arrested for shoplifting but no arrest or fine for the marijuana, either.) I think it was because I looked so young and I was crying and earnestly sorry. So he told me to walk straight home and he didn't want to see me again.

So. 6 AM, hafta walk two miles home, I have the DXM, take the dxm while walking home, but it hadn't affected me yet. I mean, that's all I cared about, I was so glad they let me buy it. Almost home, think, well, I have no rolling papers at home so I should stop in the 24hr convenience store and buy some. I go in, buy some zigzags, as I'm walking out, who do I see but the same damn sheriff, and he looked pissed. He was like, I thought I told you to go straight home! And I'm like, I live in this neighborhood, I had to come this way, I
promise, I'm going straight home. Thankfully, he didn't see the rolling papers in my hand that I had just bought. He would have been furious.

So I went home, got all fucked up, and tried to forget about what happened...

I avoided that Krogers for a couple years after that, but there was the Randalls right across the street from the Krogers, so it didn't stop my access to DXM. They had these really great DXM sucrets you could buy really cheap, (they don't really put dxm in sucrets cough drops any more (at least around here) for abuse reasons) and I would buy 2-3 bags of sucrets and crunch them all on the walk home. Man, I love DXM. I wish I could
still do it. I wish I was back there and then again.

My second phase of DXM abuse had started. I was taking it more often, it was my second year in the community college and I was beginning to skip all my classes, and I was beginning to feel the long-term affects
of always using DXM, the fatigue and lack of any sobriety, how some of the good effects I used to get were disappearing, and the other great effects were not as intense or "there" as they should be. It was
tolerance and the heavy experience, I was burning out on it. I began skipping all of my classes in earnest, lying baldly to my mom and dad about how good each class was or what happened that day. I took evening classes, so I had like one class a day, from like 6:30 pm to 9:30 or so, and so I would skip the class that night and walk down away from the college to the HEB store and buy DXM and take it and go to the K-mart and buy music cds and stuff, listening to my walkman.

This was all I did.

By the time I was 23 (in 2000), it started being apparent that there was a problem to my family. I kept withdrawing from my classes, I was a wreck, I had left my facial growth to grow out on its own and it had,
I had not bothered with my hair, so I looked like a wild man. I was playing Nethack and ADoM (like nethack) 24-7 and always fucked up. There were episodes. I had been stealing money from my parents, just a dollar here or there out of the purse or whatnot, and my mom had coffee cans full of change in her closet, and over time these coffee cans began to empty more and more as I pilfered from them. One time I had overdosed on antihistamines, basically I took 800 milligrams of diphenhydramine, aka sominex or benadryl, when the normal dose is 25-50 mgs. I did this because I was totally bored and wanted something interesting to happen. I knew what the possible effects would be by doing research. I did it with DXM at the same time. Anyway, I had a
psychotic episode, basically, well, it was like I was blacked out (I had never been "blacked out" before or really since), almost like sleepwalking and doing really weird shit like putting toothpaste in the kitchen sink and losing my glasses in the trash and crap, and talking all kinds of crazy stuff that didn't make any sense. My parents were concerned and after everything wore off later that day they decided to have me start seeing somebody. I had already been to see therapists in the past, and had been on antidepressants at various
points, and the whole thing began again. The therapist had no idea what to do with me and the psychiatrist put me on more drugs. I promised to never overdose on antihistamines again, and I haven't. Believe me, it was no fun at all, there is very little recreational potential in antihistamines (for me). It was more like being poisoned into a sick-flu delirium type deal, like having a fever and being delirious. it sucked.

anyways, life went on for a bit until July of the year 2000, when my parents really began to discover how ground in I was and how severely this tar baby had gotten stuck to me. I ordered a bag of 100 grams of
pure DXM (you only need about a half gram for a trip, so that would've been around 200 trips worth). It is not illegal to order pure DXM, even in 2000 though before the company would sell it to me for "research purposes" they made me record a voice recording of me saying I wouldn't use it for any unauthorized purpose, etc. Anyway, they sent it to me. I managed, barely, to intercept the package as it arrived at the house, but everybody knew something was going on and were suspicious. The next day Final Fantasy IX also came in the mail, everybody was gone, I was taking DXM powder without having any idea of how much I was taking, and I basically became an emotional wreck and was all fucked up while playing final fantasy IX in the living room
when my parents came home, and they were just like, hand over your stash, this is over. And I handed over a nearly 100 gram bag of pure DXM. And they confiscated it and later dumped it. I bitterly regret losing that bag and I still daydream about having it. Man, what a waste! Only to save my life! Why couldn't they have not taken it and let me rot with it forever.

So, I had a big emotional type breakdown and cried for a few days, trying to recover from my self-induced 5 year coma. There was gum in my hair and my teeth were a mess and damaged. I got my hair cut, my beard shaved off (the only time I've ever had a beard was during those few years), tried to straighten things out. I continued doing DXM on the sly, waiting for everyone to go to sleep then sneaking out the window, walking all the way up to the store, all the way back, sometimes in very bad weather, every time the walk was exhausting and impossible to continue to do but I did it because I had to have my DXM. I flew under the radar. No one really noticed. I wasn't going to college anymore, at 25 I guess, I started working at Kroger's, but it
wasn't the local one I got busted at, it was a bit further away and was a bigger, Signature store. I worked there a full year at just above minimum wage and I never got the raise they promised me. We were graveyard shift stockers and it was a very difficult, manual labor job. Many times would my shirt be wet through from the sweat and during this year I managed to fuck up my back. I wasn't friends with my co workers, but they accepted me as a fringe outsider. Still, they all went for drinks after work (which would be 8 in the morning, lol) but I was never invited. The manager who controlled us often came in drunk. Everybody was pretty wild but got along.

While working at that Kroger's I was making real money for the first time basically ever, and that was a lot of freedom as I had been broke a while. Mainly it was MY money. So of course, all the time while I
worked there I'd buy DXM after work and take it as soon as I got home, working then tripping on dxm than going back to work the next night without any sleep. I was pushing my body to the breaking point.

So, about DXM again. There were many brands, that changed over the years, although the Robotussin was a constant brand, the others changed a lot. Eventually a brand called Coricidin: Cough (for high
blood pressure) came out about this time. It is still stocked today. (This was during 2001 & 2002 though.) The problem is that not only did I have very low blood pressure already, but Coricidin has this really
weird antihistamine in it designed for people with high blood pressure. Of course, they don't expect you to take 40 pills, either, which I did, frequently, every few days, for the DXM, but the antihistamine that was combined with the DXM was very bad for me. People have died from doing what I did, there have been several
fatalities, so, it could have killed me, considering I was doing it ALL the time.

So I was mainly taking the Coricidin, and it was changing the nature of my DXM trips in very weird ways. I had already long been taking higher doses of DXM to get the same effects that I used to, except
instead of the same effects I tended to dose too high, where you wouldn't really get euphoria and instead you just get really confused. So, I spent a lot of days in a state of severe confusion, disorientation, and short term memory loss so bad that I'd cry in frustration looking for that joint I put down 15 seconds ago and now
couldn't find where it is, search for an hour for it and finally find it, weeping with relief that I could go smoke my joint now. All of this was the way it was when I started taking Coricidin.

I started having really weird full-blown hallucinations while taking
my dangerous Coricidin trips, like that I was floating up in a
satellite in orbit with the Earth spread below, and that it was this
super-advanced satellite that Earth didn't know about and it was used
to control all reality on earth, you could move the controls around to
see anywhere on earth at any time, into the past or future, and all
the major prophets and stuff were up there controlling and observing
the Earth. Really weird. Once I saw the end of the world, where Russia
attacked and nuked Israel and a nuclear war started and it was all
really detailed and like I was seeing it like it was a movie. A lot of
this was some weird fucked up delirium from the antihistamines
reacting with the DXM.

Then I had my first heart episode thingy, because of the stupid
Coricidin. I was having some hallucination while tripping, it's hard
to explain, but it was like I was seeing this giant glowing flower
that was opening up, and it was right near me, and I was trying to put
my hands or arms around it, and as it was opening it was pulsing in a
regular rhythm, and I began to realize the pulsing was growing more
intense and that it was my heartbeat, and I tried to draw back from
the flower but it was all sticky and it took a great amount of effort
to do, anyways, somehow I had gotten into a feedback loop concerning
my heart beating and it was pretty intense, I thought I was going to
have a heart attack, but I was OK.

Times had changed. This was in around 2001-2002. I had already gone
through the primary phase of my addiction and was thoroughly in the
burnout stage. I still used DXM regularly, every three days or so,
sometimes back to back days. I had long been scrounging for money and
I was just a mess after giving up the 100 gram bag of DXM. I was
taking anti-depressants again and I was rotated over time onto
different ones, being on each one probably six months. I wound up on a
medication called Cymbalta.

I was on Cymbalta perhaps four years, like 2004-2008, had been on
antidepressants for many of the years preceding.

The problem with this is that during all my years of seeing therapists
and getting antidepressants I was using high levels of DXM. There is a
chance for serotonin syndrome if you combine abuse-level dosages of
DXM and regular dosages of SSRIs or MAOIs. I probably did go through
some of that; also, the antidepressants tended to inhibit the potency
of the DXM. Yet, you can't just stop taking your antidepressants - you
have to taper, and even tapering can be horrible. So I continued to
take them even thought they weren't helping me, either from chance or
more likely because I was fucking with my neurotransmitters with DXM
at the same time.

Sometime during this period was when I got "caught" shoplifting again.
AGAIN, my second time for trying to steal DXM, my third time being
nabbed on ANY shoplifting, and all three times I was nabbed I wasn't
charged and was just let go. Thankfully!

Basically it was the same Kroger's I had been caught shoplifting 4-5
years before, how stupid of me. They had banned me from going in when
I was originally caught, but over the years I started going back in
just to buy regular stuff again and had no problems, management had
changed. I went into the kroger's with a shitload of change, nipped
from my parents' changejars, with the intention of buying some dxm,
and stealing some more dxm. I poured all the change into the CoinStar
machine and it added it all up and gave me a little coupon thing that
you turn in at the register for the credit. Then I went and stole some
dxm by getting a cart and walking throughout the store picking up
stuff in the cart so I wouldn't look suspicious. Anyways someone
noticed and while I was in line he told me to hand it over, so I gave
him the DXM. He kinda looked like a plains clothes or maybe just store
security but he seemed on the professional side, in either case. He
told me to leave, and I was like, fuck, I have $10 on the CoinStar
coupon that has to be cashed the SAME DAY and it was night already so
I basically lost the money on it AND had no DXM! That sucked....

That was actually probably pre-2001 right there. In 2001 I think it
was (I have a hard time with the order and dates of when things have
happened) was when I started working at the other Kroger's, the
signature store on Normandy Drive. That was hard, it was the only real
job I've ever kept. I worked there for a year and they worked me like
a dog for $7.50/hr. Some weeks I would work 50-60 hours, and this is
all manual labor stuff, stocking shelves, crushing boxes and stuff.
Pain in the ass, but my obsessive/compulsive side that loved to sort
was ALL into it. I already talked about this job some... but I did
steal DXM all the time at this store too. Sometimes I bought it, but
most of the time since we worked graveyard shift I would wait until
about five in the morning and go get a shopping cart and go through
all the aisles picking up all the leftover crap and I would head to
the pharmacy side and drop some dxm in with the trash and leftover
stuff in the cart, then wheel it to the back and steal the dxm.
Anyways, I did that a bunch of times, at least ten times, stealing it,
I mean.

I had long since stopped taking the damaging combination of drugs in
Coricidin, once I read about them online. I probably took Coricidin
for 4-6 months. Then it was just the Robotussin cough syrup, a
somewhat foul thick liquid that tasted pretty nasty/sweet, but I had
grown to love the taste over the years and could just chug it 4 oz
down in one or two gulps without any chaser or anything. Plus it had
lots of alcohol and other additives and stuff in it like thickeners
and stuff that just really made your digestive system active. Is that
the right word?

So finally they came out with the Robotussin CoughGels that were just
pills of liquid gels of DXM, and you only had to take 20-40 of them to
get high..... a lot of pills, but no bad taste, and I got used to
swallowing three gel pills at a time, knock all the pills out in ten
minutes. Very practiced at my profession, yes I am.

This was a time when my parents were worried, I was seeing people for
help, I was on the antidepressants, my brother had stopped going out
all the time and was staying home as much as he could to watch over me
like a hawk. Many times would I be patiently waiting for him to go to
bed, waiting until I was sure I could leave, sneaking out, getting
dxm, then coming home and finding adam or worse my dad waiting for me.
I always made sure to take the dxm on the way home after they
confiscated it once.
I was doing everything I could to keep taking it, no matter how many
betrayals or lies it took.... I mean, I wouldn't like steal a credit
card, or anything like that, but just small amounts of money that
wouldn't go noticed. Over time they began picking up on this, making
sure the purse isn't being left out of their bedroom at night, etc.

Lots of suspicion and paranoia and nobody could figure out how to stop
me from doing what I was doing, besides kicking me out or something,
and they weren't going to do that. Eventually Adam began honing his
instincts towards my intoxication. I was to the point where I was
taking very low doses of DXM all the time and it would leave me in a
somewhat drunken, slightly-slurring, slightly intoxicated state, and
he got to the point where he could ALWAYS tell when I'd been using.


So, up to this point, circa 2007, I had never done opiates in my life.
I think I might have had 1 script of vicodin once, but it didn't make
too much of an impression, I mean, I wasn't going to go out looking
for pills, you know? I had my DXM.

So while Adam and I were alone in the old house, I was continuing to
struggle with frequent DXM abuse and Adam kept catching me doing it.
Things were getting hairy. Adam was very strung-out over all my
problems and how I kept betraying him and sneaking around and always
doing it.

My teeth had basically fallen apart, a lot of them, and I got a
realllly bad infection in one of them. I had been getting dental
infections for quite some time. Sometimes they would go away.
Sometimes I had antibiotics and I would kill it off without going to
the dentist. This time I tried to hope it would go away, used all the
home remedies I knew of, and it kept getting worse. The pain was
excruciating, unbearable. The swelling grew up my cheek and began
pooling into my eye socket. I knew I had to go see someone.

I went to some random dentist. (I've gone through many dentists and
most were horrible. I've also never had a GP since I was like 10). The
dentist checked me out and told me he couldn't do anything for me; he
advised me to go to the emergency room. I didn't say it, I should
have, but I was like, what the fuck, you know I am in a shitload of
pain, a huge amount of pain, and you won't even help with antibiotics
or painkillers. ESPECIALLY the painkillers, he knew I must have been
in a huge amount of pain, AND he knew I would have to go to the
emergency room where I would have to wait at least 6-8 hours for any
pain relief. But he didn't do a damn thing, he let me walk out and
sent me on my way. Damn him.

So I had to go to the fucking emergency room. I sat in a lobby for a
long time before they even saw me, then they talked to me, and I had
to go sit and wait again. I had no insurance. I waited about 8 hours
before they FINALLY gave me 2 vicodin, which only helped a bit. Those
8 hours were really horrible. Then I had to wait another 2 hours and
they finally gave me a prescription for 20 vicodin and said to come
back the next day. No antibiotics.

So I was OK that night from the painkillers but I had to take quite a
few to help. (had never really used vicodin before; had no opiates
problem yet, only the DXM). I went back the next day at like 8 in the
morning, had to wait like 3-4 more hours. Finally they call me in and
say they are extracting. I'm like, uh, I have swelling into my eye,
this is going to be painful. Well, it was. It's not family dentist or
anyone who actually CARED about my pain. The stupid guy was on a
schedule. he gave me one or two shots and didn't even wait for them to
really take effect and he tried to pull it. I was basically screaming
and he's just like, relax, but damn, that was one of the most painful
things I've ever experienced when he pulled that tooth. It was my left
canine. The torment was unbelievable and I was on like five vicodin I
had taken, it cut through everything and smacked me sober. I was
crying when I walked out, crying hard.

So they gave me another prescription of Vicodin and that was it. That
adventure was over.... but never get an infected tooth pulled in the
emergency room. Besides, they charged me like 1,500-2000 for
everything.. when the dentist could have done it for almost a tenth
the cost; but he was too scared because of how bad the infection was.

So after that happened then we moved here, where my parents had
already been getting everything all home-like and everything. I told
Adam, I'm going to try to stop the DXM, moving to a new house is a
fresh start, I'll try to change. Of course I tried; it didn't work.

So it wasn't long before I was sneaking out at night and walking to
the Randall's (2 miles each way) and buying more cough syrup. I kept
getting caught. I remember one of the times I was walking home at 2 am
and rain started pouring down. I came home and I was soaked to the
bone and freezing and Adam and my Mom were awake. The stupid dog had
woke them up and they couldn't find me. They were so mad.

Another time during this period (May-August 2007) I walked at 2am down
to the Randall's but before I could get there Adam pulled up next to
me in the car. I was so pissed that I hadn't got the DXM first... -_-

So Adam's pulling his hair out, he's done everything he could try and
I still won't stop.

We had been working on a system where I could use DXM every 2 weeks or
so as long as he supervised me and I promised not to do it elsewhere.
This didn't last long; I kept sneaking around. But there was another
incident. Another heart incident.

It was pretty traumatic for me AND Adam. It was an "authorized" dose
so I was allowed to do it, I was so excited to be able to do it with
his permission; him, he was willing to try anything to get me to slow
down, not use so much, etc.

So I took a fairly large dose and everything was alright but weird
until I peaked. Usually you peak on DXM about 2 hours after you take
it, and like I said I always smoke a joint around the same time to
maximize the peak. Adam was on my computer played Civ 4 I think, and I
was on his computer (since his puter didn't have civ 4 he had to play
on mine). Anyway, I guess I was peaking and laying down on my stomach
on the ground (his monitor was on the floor, he's crazy that way) and
I suddenly felt like my heart had stopped beating, or something had
happened with my heart. Actually at the time I was convinced that a
heart valve had gotten stuck and I was about to die. It sounds weird
and I guess it was the drugs; but remember, I had had another heart
episode a few years before with the Coricidin, the beating sticky
heart-flower thing that somehow I had gotten into an internal feedback
loop with my heart, etc.

So this was the second heart incident, and I got up shouting and
hitting my chest with my fist and I came running in to see Adam and I
was screaming My heart, My heart, I'm dying, and I was totally flipped
out off the wall manic apeshit crazy. And he was hugging me and saying
goodbye pretty much and I was in such a manic state I licked up into
his ear, gross as it sounds, because I was doing anything to be able
to touch my brother while I was dying, I was convinced I was dying.
And then it was over, I sank to the ground in his arms, and nothing
happened. Life continued.

This hurt Adam a lot. It was almost torture for him, because he
believed as well as I did that I was dying, and afterwards he just got
really angry and hurt and upset, and I don't blame him. Anyway the
rest of the night was fine but we decided that I wasn't going to do
DXM any more.

Then I see this article on the internet. About this guy who got into
poppies. And that gave me an idea.

- THE POPPY SEASON -

I started thinking, well, I can use the poppies instead of the DXM. I
mean, you're not supposed to abuse DXM more then every month or two AT
MOST and I had been using it for over a decade, every three days or
so. I was a wreck, totally burned out, heart problems, teeth
destroyed, life destroyed, just everything fubar. All my energy levels
were depleted and I was having a hard time (basically the way I am
now).

I talked to Adam about it and he reluctantly agreed. I set up a
schedule of when I could take poppies to combat my DXM addiction. Then
I began ordering poppy pods.

It didn't take long before I was doing it all behind Adam's back, and
for a few months it was pretty great. Then it started to suck as I had
to use it to prevent getting sick. This was all of 2008.

I would run out of poppies, order more. I was eating it all the time,
no longer making tea except every once in a while; instead I was just
swallowing the powder by the spoonful. All the time, every day, just
to keep from getting sick, occasionally using more than I needed, so I
could get high sometimes. I would basically be up for 2 days then
crash and sleep 18 hours. This cycle went on for a long time.

This was about the time I kicked Cymbalta. I knew a lot about it
through research and decided I was fucking done with antidepressants,
possibly forever. There's so many bad things about them. I know they
do a lot of good things for my Mom (who is also on Cymbalta, among
other things like Abilify) but they have fucked me up. So I was like,
OK, I know how bad it's going to be, but I'm going cold-turkey off
Cymbalta without seeing my psychiatrist.

Man, this sucked... really bad. It's funny how the drug manufacturers
fight so hard to be able to legally say, ANTIDEPRESSANTS ARE NOT
ADDICTIVE, but by all major medical definitions of the word
'addiction', they are. They cause withdrawals when you stop taking
them. They don't call this withdrawal, even though it is. they call it
"sudden discontinuation syndrome".

You get LOTS of bad things happen to you when you stop taking
Cymbalta: dysphoric mood, irritability, agitation, dizziness, sensory
disturbances (e.g., paresthesias such as electric shock sensations),
anxiety, confusion, headache, lethargy, emotional lability, insomnia,
hypomania, tinnitus, and possible seizures. These symptoms are
generally self-limiting but have been known to be severe.

The worst was the electric shock sensations through your limbs ALL the
time, it was really shitty. Also, brain zaps: they suck so bad,
especially when you move your head or turn your head even just a
little bit then you'd get electric zaps through your brain and down
your body, it was really bad.

So I went through this for a couple of weeks of increasingly severe
symptoms to the point where I was in agony, couldn't function, and
desperate. I finally went and saw my psychiatrist, and he put me on
wellbutrin right away. I begged for some anxiolitics, something like
xanax or something just for a few days during the transition, but he
refused, So i had to suffer for a few more days until the wellbutrin
brought all my levels back up again. Heartless bastard, not knowing
what it was like, fuck him!!

So I was on wellbutrin for another 6-8 months and then I quit it cold
turkey. It was not nearly as bad, but it still sucked. And I haven't
seen my psychiatrist or any other therapist since, and haven't been on
antidepressants again. This was late 2007.


In the fall of 2008, about a year ago, I began getting these heart
issues. I'm not sure exactly what it is, I'd have to look it up again,
but it's not fluttering, or murmurs. You know how, sometimes, like
once in a blue moon, you'll feel your heart stop for a second, you'll
hold your breath, and then it'll continue pumping with an extra-hard
beat? That's normal. It happens to everyone every once in a while. But
I started getting these attacks of them. Some evenings I would get the
"missing beat" feeling like every 3-5 minutes for a couple of hours or
longer. It would bother me before going to sleep.

I think part of this heart thing was wear from the DXM, but the
codeine/morphine was antagonizing it from the lower blood pressure and
general depressed respiration.

I got these heart episodes mainly through the fall of 2008, then it
stopped and hasn't noticeably happened in 2009. This is a relief to
me, but I'm still very concerned about my heart and the drug abuse.

I guess we may as well get into the last heart incident.

So, I've had all these heart issues. I had NOT USED DXM for almost 2
years except for just 3 or 4 small slips. HUGE DIFFERENCE compared to
the every 2-3 days regimen I'd been keeping for over a decade. So I
was basically OFF THE DXM but now I was totally addicted to opiates -
in their natural form (which means codeine and morphine, but lots of
weird other substances in the poppies, like thebaine). I had been
spending more and eating more poppies and it was getting ridiculous as
my tolerance increased.

And of course Adam and I tried more schedules with the poppies and it
didn't work, I kept getting around it and getting my fix instead of
following the 'rules'.

Finally Adam persuades me to kick in June of 2009. It was really bad,
I've already gone over it with you before. It was horrible, really
really bad. I basically didn't sleep for over a week and I'd hate to
have to go through ALL the bad SYMPTOMS and HORRIBLE WITHDRAWALS like
I did those 2 weeks. NOTHING would comfort.

FINALLY kicked the opiates for 13 days. Started using again. Told
myself it would be once a week, twice at most, knowing I was going to
fail. Then Alvin and Dale come over, and they INSIST I go with them to
their place for 2-3 days. I bring all my opiates of course, and pig
out on them, and then when I got back home later, I was back in the
daily habit again. Of course, it wasn't their fault, it was my fault,
but it was a trigger to set me off. Anything would have done it, it
wasn't realistic for me to expect that an addict could chip once a
week and hope not to get addicted (with poppies, 1 time a week is
pretty much guaranteed not to give you dependence; the thing is,
sticking to once a week, lol.).

OK so I was struggling with the opiates again, eating them all the time.

As you know, I walk down to Kroger's almost every day for cigarettes.
One of these days I walked past the cough/cold aisle, just looking,
yeah right, and they were DISCONTINUING the Robotussin COUGHGELS from
Kroger's and they were on sale for half price. Well of course, I
started buying them, and bought a bunch. Then I saw they had the ZICAM
MAX COUGH MIST SPRAY they normally you would use to spray a little DXM
in your mouth to treat your cough, but what abusers do is take the lid
off the spray bottle and just drink the contents: it's extremely
concentrated DXM. It was also being discontinued and was half price.

So my temptations gave way, I began fantasizing about DXM. I bought
and tried some and it was just OK.

One of the reasons why I had quit the DXM 2 years previous was also
because of the tolerance. Over my decade of use most of the effects
now were non-existent; I could drink a 4oz bottle of syrup (for a
naive person would be a strong moderate dose of fucked up tripiness)
and I would basically get like a marijuana type high with nothing
else, it really sucked. It's called "losing the magic" and happens
especially with DXM, opiates, and ecstasy. Actually with ecstasy and
DXM abusers refer to the idea as the '50 trip limit', as in once you
take that many doses then that's it, the magic is gone and you won't
get it back. In actuality, it's the '50 trip limit' because anyone
doing it that much doesn't wait long enough between doses (should wait
at least 2-4 weeks between trips), and their tolerance slowly rises.

So anyways, the whole point is, my "magic" (remember my Golden Years,
how I raved about how good they were?) had long been gone with DXM and
I was just kind of using it to not feel shitty, which of course the
DXM use itself is what fucked up my brain to feel shitty to begin with
(besides my natural depression and other problems).

When all this DXM went on sale at Kroger's, I tried it once and it was
just OK. Then I tried a higher dose and it brought me to a higher
plateau (there are four plateaus when taking DXM; each one has very
different effects). The magic had come back because I was hitting the
upper second plateau again. I got all the old effects, almost to their
old potency. The intense euphoria and all the other effects (insight,
feeling of genius, other world, movies being real, etc) were there. I
was playing Diablo 2 and I have played hundreds of hours on that game
and last month when I took DXM Diablo 2 was, seriously, like a whole
other game. It's hard to explain, but it was awesome.

So I was having a great time with the magic having come back, and I
was doing it like twice a week or so. The thing is, NOBODY COULD
NOTICE that I was doing it because I was taking second-plateau sized
doses, and Adam's HAIR TRIGGER where he could always tell I was fucked
up, it wasn't working, because he was trying to sense me on first
plateau doses. For example, slurring. I would not slur on these higher
doses so it did not give me away. NO ONE HAD ANY IDEA I was doing it
again, ON TOP of the opiates, too.

So I played around with this stuff for like two months until about
four weeks ago (around August 20th 2009). Then the next heart incident
happened.

This part, like a lot of my autobiography, is difficult for me to
write about. First, it's impossible for me to convey to you how
traumatic this experience was for me. In many ways it resembled some
sort of heart attack. This was NOT psychological in any way; it was
very physical. I did NOT overreact, or anything like that. It was very
REAL and scared the living shit out of me and I thought I was going to
die, for real. I just can't explain how devastating it was. Secondly,
this just happened about five weeks ago and it's very fresh on my mind
and I'm still really traumatized by it. Still, however I describe it,
you can't know what it was like without experiencing it yourself.

I had taken a fairly large dose of DXM, probably my 12th or so time
since I had relapsed the month before. I took 680 mg, a rather extreme
dose in a DXM-naive individual but a moderate dose for me, enough to
get upper 2nd plateau effects. Again, it happened when I was peaking,
about 2 hours after ingestion. I had just smoked a joint and come into
the house and I was curling up on my chair and beginning to continue
my Diablo 2 game.

I began getting a weird sensation, actually it was hearing-based and I
was like, what was that sound? Then I started having these weird
internal reactions in my head, almost like a buzzing electric shock
that was extended, amplified, whatever. This happened for a few
minutes and after it ended I was like, wow, I think I just had a
seizure, which I think is what it was. I had had minor ones with DXM
use in the past that I maybe had not recognized as small seizures.
Anyway, this seemed like a real seizure.

Shortly after this happened, my heart got all fucked up. I don't know
how to explain it. It almost felt like a burst, or like something held
in place let go. It was almost like a bubble had formed outside the
heart and blood was pulsing into the bubble. My heart was _sloshing_
in long, loud rhythms that were deafening in my ears, and I had a lot
of pain in my upper chest. My left arm felt swollen and was extended
out a bit from my body. I can't explain it more than that. I was
freaked out, gonzo, this had never happened before and it was
unmistakable that something had gone seriously wrong. I was walking
all fucked up and I knew I was having some sort of episode.

So I managed to get downstairs and I went and had a cigarette and that
only helped a slight bit but I was a wreck. It wasn't that my heart
was beating really fast, or anything like that, it was sloshing in an
extended beat that was unlike anything else ever. It felt like my
heart was coming out of my chest with every beat and it was painful
and more than alarming, I was up in arms, I was totally freaking out.

So I thought about it a while and debated and wanted to call 911 and
wondered if I was going to die. This went on for about 20 minutes. I
wanted to wake my parents up and see what to do. I kept going to their
bedroom but hesitating at the door. Finally I opened it, but then I
shut it again. After deliberating I went in and woke them up. The way
they woke up and everything that transpired at that time caused me
much shame and embarrassment, how they woke up and had no idea what
was going on and how I had to explain everything about the DXM use I'd
gotten back into and what was going on.

My dad being a nurse, he checked me out, basically said, you haven't
fallen over dead yet and it would have happened already if it was
going to. He totally believed me and agreed that it wasn't just some
psychological panic attack, it was very real and very similar to a
heart attack. My mom went back to bed after we decided I would wait it
out.

I was afraid to sit down for two more hours because of the condition
I was in. Near the end (the whole episode lasted about 3 hours), I was
getting a very strange feeling, vast electric shocks going through the
nervous system from my brain down into my right leg, down to the toes.
It was horrible, it felt like dying. My heart also changed what it was
doing and began to... vibrate. It was very scary for me.

Then all that stuff stopped, and I was back to just tripping on DXM.
So my Dad stayed with me the whole time and we talked very frankly for
like six hours straight (helped that I was all at ease with no
inhibitions since I was high on DXM). We worked out a lot of things, I
was very honest with him and it opened up a lot of social barriers
that had been interfering with our relationship.

At that point I had to face my reality that I could not and should not
ever do DXM again. I know I probably will, but I'm determined not to
for as long as possible, hopefully for a number of years. This makes
me very sad and angry. I know I had long since had all that I deserved
from this drug but I want to be able to go back to the DXM universe
(the 'dextroverse') more in the future, and that door has been shut
against me because of my actions. So, yeah, it sucks.

Since then (five weeks ago) I also kicked the opiates again, although
it was very "mild" (ha!) this time, and now I've been dealing with all
the post-acute withdrawals stuff, and determined not to buy more DXM.
It's right there, at the store, right now, and I want to buy it right
now. Five bucks, I can go get kind of fucked up. But it could KILL ME
and I don't want to go through ANY MORE HEART EPISODES it scared the
living shit out of me.

I know you will say, well, maybe it taught me a lesson. But addiction
tends not to teach lessons, it just grabs your heart with its inky
black fist and squeezes until you die!!!

tyrus568 added 58 Minutes and 7 Seconds later...

Oh, yeah... this was my friend's reply:

"Obviously, you know you have a problem... a critically serious problem, which will kill you if you continue to engage in it. It scared you enough to get you to stop, but you know you'll get urges again. In fact, you're still feeding your addictions with the poppy seeds [you bought 10 oz you've been eating] even though you know you shouldn't be doing it. You need to encapsulate your feelings that you have about dying right now... Get it all written down. On a piece of paper that will fit in your wallet or anything else that you carry on you all the time, write down the words "If I use again, I am going to die." When you get the urge, remind yourself of that.

Your family knows you have a problem and they're deeply concerned about you. None of them want to lose you. They go out of their way to try to support you, because they know if left unchecked to your urges, you ARE
going to die. Maybe even on your next flirtation with DXM. They're all making sacrifices, trying to give you strength. Lean on them, they'd rather have you ruin their day or week than have you die. Tell them that they need to go to the store with you, or you will be tempted and you will relapse.

Get yourself into a NA support group. Yes, it goes against your avoidant grain. Everyone there is fucked up, just like you. Nobody is going to look down on you for being timid or an addict. Get your chip and start counting your sobriety. It is paramount to your continued existence that you remain sober. They don't give a damn about the [redacted] thing and it doesn't need to be brought up. You use because it is an escape from the anxiety and fear you carry as an avoidant.

You're getting arrhythmia, it's only a matter of time before your heart gives out if you continue to use. Chances are, the nerves are already damaged. You may need a pacemaker before you hit 40 to make sure your heart stays in rhythm.

You need to get better... again, you NEED to get better. This isn't something you can put off. You can be avoidant your whole life and still get by. Your body simply can't continue with the way you've already abused it if you continue to abuse it in the future. See about filing for medicaid, you should qualify given that you have no income. Unlike unemployment, they aren't going to try to force you to get a job, they'll just verify that you can't support yourself currently. You'll need to contact your county department of social services for that. Once you get that, get yourself a physician. Tell him about your abuse, leave out the opiates if you want, so you can continue to get pain killers in the future since you're worried about that. You need a physical and a cardiac exam pronto. The doctor isn't going to turn you into the cops for your drug abuse, he's going to try to assess the damage done to your body and get you the help you need to correct and/or live with it."

--------
And my reply to him....

First, it's humid as hell out here and I was sweating a lot walking to
the store because it's 80 degrees (at 11:30 at night) with 95%
humidity.. the walk is only like a half mile each way though. there
was hardly anybody outside, which is pretty unusual. Didn't buy any
cans of poppy seeds or anything like that; you'll know if I fuck up...
I'm not going to lie by omission... but fuck up I'm sure I will. -_-



It's not like I haven't been involved already in trying to understand
my addiction and whether I should quit. I don't wanna quit. That's the
problem, I'm very unhappy obviously, but I can't face the fact of
quitting. My dad says that he thinks about me a lot everyday and has
dreamed that maybe someday I'll just be struck like paul on the way to
damascus and have some kind of spiritual conversion. He just doesn't
want me to be unhappy and distressed.

I'm having a hard time living from day to day. I can only try to focus
on the day I'm in yet I'm having a hard time. I can't look to the
future at all because then I'm looking at that commitment to quit. I'm
pretty committed to stopping using DXM for as long as possible, but I
doubt it will be the rest of my life. Quitting DXM isn't so bad as
long as I have something else, i.e. opiates, sure. But quitting
opiates too I have a hard time dealing with, even though I know they
aren't the best thing for me. So I can only tell myself that I'm
taking a break for a couple months, and that I'm going to get some
poppies in december maybe. So if I can stop taking the poppy seeds and
not have anything until december then, shit, that's good progress.

Yep. even though the poppy seeds don't do shit for me but make me
slightly less uncomfortable. and then slightly more uncomfortable a
few days later. I shouldn't be doing them at all.. I am not going to
do them anymore as far as I can help it.

The main thing I want for me is not doing DXM. The opiates, well, I
don't know, all 3 heart episodes were when I was peaking on large
doses of DXM. Then I had all the heart arrhythmia episodes during the
fall of last year, which all those episodes I was not using any DXM
and I was on the opiates, so it seems like the opiates are, at the
minimum, not helping with my health and could be contributing danger
to my heart. Don't know for sure. The DXM I am very committed to not
using for as long as I can.

Another thing I wanted to say was that I'm considering posting on the
drugs-forum.com part of the epic Saga, just the parts relating to the
drug abuse, and see what various people have to say. with a tl;dr
version. :P

I don't think I can do this [referring to keeping a card in my wallet saying I will die if I do DXM]. I hate myself, why would I believe
anything I wrote to myself. I can't depend on myself to do anything.
Thank you for the advice, but to tell the truth it just seems cheesy
to me, it's the same thing with AA and NA, I have a hard time
tolerating it. I've been to AA for my problem, I know what goes on
there. It doesn't seem to help me. I don't want to do the 12 steps. I
have to work it out by trying to find support down different avenues.

I relapse all the time. Once you realize the fact of relapse, then
every time you use anything you also receive a complimentary large
does of guilt. Because you know now that you can never, ever, just
have it for fun anymore, with innocence; instead you are just
deepening the dependence, digging a little deeper into your shallow
grave. Recovery is rife with relapse.

My family does do a lot of things for me. We've gone through all kinds
of my shit because of my addiction, for a long time, and for a long
time I lost a lot of trust they had in me, but things have gotten
better. I know they love me. My parents love me unconditionally as far
as I can tell. My brother loves me but he's also gotten jaded and
resentful towards me in the last few years... understandably, but he
has thawed a bit lately, still, he's been hurt a lot from my actions,
so I can't blame him.

I don't know how to lean on them beyond a certain extent. I've tried
various ways, but I can't betray myself, I can't be like yesterday,
going to kroger's, adam wants me to go in and get book of stamps and
gives me a debit card, I can't tell him to come in with me. He would
be so mad, but mainly it's: I made the decision I wanted to get them [poppy seeds],
I can't then betray myself. Sometimes I have in the past, sabotaged
myself so I can't get drugs, but rarely. (my heart literally skipped a
beat here, wtf... hopefully an anomaly)

I doubt I would go to NA, as they can be breeding grounds for drug
contacts. I have been to AA, but admittedly only one time..

My equivalent right now is the drugs-forum.com. There's a lot of good
support there, just no face-to-face contact...

I don't need the chip. I know it's a physical symbol, but I can count
my own sobriety, if I was crazy enough to be dedicated to hard-line
sobriety. I don't plan to stay sober. If worst came to worst I would
drink alcohol to relieve myself, but weed is a better alternative. I
couldn't take life sober. Fuck, I would probably do something drastic.
But even if I didn't then my life would be full of boredom and misery,
you know, kinda like yours. Which I know isn't fair for me to say....
-_-

Sure, I'm miserable now, but if I was sober I'd be more aware of how
miserable I am, and life would be a little emptier. People have to
have a release valve, you say I should never take any drugs
recreationally again, yet you know I am a troubled emotionally
arrested [redacted] confined to his house 95% of the time with all these
avoidance and anxiety issues. What else am I supposed to do? I've
looked at a lot of options. I'm too comfortable where I'm at. I need
to make small changes to really influence my life.

[Referring to heart failure] Sure, it's always possible, but you're no doctor. At least it's not
the heart fluttering; people who have that heart problem, when the
heart flutters, that's how it creates clots that eventually years
later release and cause embolisms in the brain. But I don't get the
heart fluttering; my heart was just skipping a beat more frequently
then it should be, which I guess is arrhythmia.

[Referring to getting help NOW] Of course I could put it off. Then I would probably get another heart
incident, and if it was anything like the last one it would be really
terrifying and nasty. It could or couldn't kill me, it could just
damage me to where I would really regret it.

I'm committed to not using DXM for as long as I can. I'm interested in
possibly getting more support and help for my opiates problem, but I'm
not sure what to do about that yet.

[Referring to getting Medicaid] See, but I can't force myself to do it. It's too hard and confusing,
and awkward and everything else. I'm not sure if I qualify for
medicaid, living with my family and being above poverty level. My dad
still files me as a dependent on his taxes.

I feel so bad. I feel like such a dick. See, I go through and tell you
all this stuff, all my problems, and then I ask you for advice, and
then when you tell me what to do, I whine, "but that actually involved
work!" and just want to run back into my room and close the door.

"need to contact your county department of social services for that"


and that, I just don't know if I can do that... how to do that, if
it's by phone that sounds like it could be hard phone conversation to
have.... I don't know...

About the doctor, I just don't have any money. My parents do, but just
letting me see the dentist is pretty expensive when it's all cash no
insurance.... I think it was 250 last week and we were lucky since
they didn't charge us for the nitrous (75) or the x-ray they took
(prob 25 or so).

My dad has mentioned something about a Gold Card for east texas. Which
I have no idea what it is, I don't think it's medicaid, but I need to
look into that too as that could help me find a doctor we could
afford. I don't know, I need a cardiac exam. I don't know about doing
this part, though, because even mentioning the DXM abuse, I'm
reluctant to do that.... I don't know.....

Well like I said I may make a long post on the drugs-forum and just
kind of see what people say; some of them are really good at what they
do, and I'll weigh it all together.

Getting help is the problem, deciding what help is the best for
me.... I have to want to quit. That's what it comes down to..

[friend has not replied to this message yet.]

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Honest, insightful post. Excellent harm reduction post, warns of everything that could happen.
	Very honest warning about drug addiction on OTC medicines. Useful advice to others.
	holy shit. what an incredible, cathartic post. thank you so much for sharing and i wish you the best of luck to recover ...
	An amazing biographical insight into the ups and downs of someone's life on the drug. Unparalleled.
	Thanks for sharing the story with the boards! Very detailed too
	Brutally honest and compelling. Anyone with an interest in drugs should read this!