Journal - Oxycodone - The Monkey On My Back

[theswimmer]

Everything I write below here are lies:

I've got a serious problem with OxyContin as you've read in my other thread. That thread got closed because I'm also a retarded moron who posted a link to a study instead of copying/pasting it here.

So I've made this thread just to blabber in and hopefully get my life back on track.

I just want to type out my story, read it or not I don't mind.

It all started with Emtec-30 (Tylenol #3 without the caffeine)

I'm 23 years old (24 soon), and have terrible knees from hockey that blow out once in a while and are always achey and painy. About a year ago I started to get these terrible headaches every day.

A relative had a refillable prescription of ratio Emtec-30 pills, and was happy to give them to me whenever I wanted them. Well, after a while I was taking 6-8 a day, sometimes helping myself to 25-30 for a CWE. Eventually she told me to go to the doctor and get my own prescription because I was going through way too many of hers (I still get a couple from her now and then if really needed)

I really liked how the pills made me feel, I've always been depressed and they kind of took away the sadness that constantly surrounded me. I wasn't addicted at this point.

Eventually, I was reading online and discovered Poppy Seed Tea. I went down to Superstore and voila they had a bulk bin of poppy seeds. I purchased a bulk bag of 450grams which seeemd to be a sensible starter dose and went home to try my experiement!

It worked, those seeds knocked me on my fucking ASS. I was amazed that I could get this high for about 4 dollars. I decided I would take this concoction every 3 days so I wouldn't get badly addicted. This continued for several months.

I was again reading online (damn internet is too good for this sort of thing) and discovered poppy pods and was interested in trying the Pod tea as by this point I was requiring a 25 dollar bag of poppy seeds in order to get my fix, the pods were a much cheaper alternative.

The pods came in the mail and I ground 5 up and put them in grapefruit juice and chugged the whole thing down, it worked very well I felt great. For some stupid reason I started doing this every morning instead of the three day rule. I noticed I started to get kind of sick near the end of the day if I didn't dose again.

This continued for several months, but was still financially viable. I worried that I was going to get some sort of disease eating all these poppy pods. I was addicted at this point, and was terrified. I could not believe I had gotten myself addicted to poppy pods, fucking POPPY PODS.

I was still a curious little moron researching away on the internet reading extensively on OxyContin as I heard through a friend that several of my friends were hardcore addicted to it. I talked with this friend like "yeah I don't get why anybody would do that, it's too addicting" but really I was thinking "I NEED to find this master drug"

Eventually I found my own source for OxyContin that none of my friends new about. To this day not one person on this earth besides this forum knows this story. My father who I live with knows I'm a pod addict but is unaware I've switched to pills.

Well I finally achieved the pills and sniffed 40mg as a good starter dose since I already had an opiate tolerance from the damn pods.

I loved it. I loved it more than any feeling I had ever felt in my entire existence. I thought I could never be without my sweet white cure.

I started off sniffing 40mg twice a day. Once in the morning and once after I got home from work. I noticed I was starting to get sick by the end of the day at work and people were wondering if I had the flu or something. I then started packing another 40mg to bring to work every day to enjoy during lunch.

This continued for a little while until the dosage became 80 3 times a day, then eventually I just spiralled out of control completely draining my bank account sniffing sometimes 10-15 80mg pills a day. My record is 23 80mg pills in one day. I hate myself.

I no longer have the finances to continue on like this. I tried to taper down a bit and was successful for a few days and then got 100 80s and just went wild. I have 80 20s now that I am going to try to taper down again and this time not be a fucking moron.

I really can not stand w/d and would rather blow my brains out than go through it, even waitingi n the morning sometimes if I don't have any pills is really becoming a problem because I can't do anything except sit on the computer sweating but freezing cold and stomach pains and god you guys know what it's like. I find myself pacing around the house screaming WHY WHY WHY.

I miss work sometimes and I have an awesome job (that I got promoted to while on the pills so obviously they didn't do much negative to me besides drain my wallet)

I really don't know what to do because I can't just keep buying as many as I'd like now, and I can't miss work to go through the terribly long withdrawal process.

I'm seriously considering going to the family doctor and explaining the situation (maybe leaving out the poppy seeds/pods and just saying I went from T3->Oxy because the pods/seeds are pretty embarassing) and telling him that I have a HUGE habit and printing off/bringing in this writeup on buprenorphine in Canada that I found on the web.

I've asked this question on other threads but I'm going to ask it again in my main thread.

Does anybody have any experience with buprenorphine in Canada, it seems according to the writeup that I found that regular doctors can prescribe it without a special license or training? Has anyone ever had luck getting it from a regular doctor? Can the doctor cut me loose as a patient if he dosen't want to treat me since I'm a scum of the earth junkie asshole?

Here is the writeup I found, my old thread got deleted because I pasted the link instead of the writeup:

New opioid addiction med hits Canada
Buprenorphine offers alternative to methadone, reduces OD risk
By Sabrina Hariri


Addiction specialists are delighted that the opioid dependence drug buprenorphine finally became available last month after getting the green light from Health Canada in May. The drug, hailed by some as a potential replacement for methadone, is a sublingual pill with milder side effects that can be prescribed by GPs.
"The availability of buprenorphine in Canada is a part of a long-awaited solution to our need for a new treatment option for our patients," said Vancouver addiction doctor David Marsh. "It's important to have a new choice, and arming physicians with another weapon to fight opioid dependence will only serve to help patients manage this disease."
In the US, where the drug has been available since 2000, buprenorphine has already become the most frequently prescribed therapy for opioid addiction. But the drug can cost up to ten times more than methadone. In Canada, the drug won't be covered on provincial formularies for a while. Dr Marsh told The Province it's as yet only available to BC patients who can afford it, which leaves most addicts out in the cold.
THE BUPE ADVANTAGE
Unlike methadone, buprenorphine is a partial opioid receptor agonist, so it gives less of a high to patients. This also slashes the risk of overdose, according to a Swedish study in May's American Journal of Psychiatry. The study compared buprenorphine and methadone as first line options and found the success rate was very similar. But buprenorphine has a slew of safety features that gives it an edge as first line treatment, concluded study authors. For one, the tablet combines buprenorphine with naloxone, a chemical that causes severe withdrawal symptoms if it's misused. In other words, when patients take the pill under the tongue as they're supposed to, naloxone gets broken down in the GI tract and nothing happens. But if they try to mash the pill and inject it, they'll be hit with withdrawal symptoms like tremors.
Another advantage of buprenorphine is its long-lasting effects. It allows doctors to adjust the dosage so patients can take it every two or three days, as opposed to the daily dosing necessary with methadone. Patients can also eventually take home doses of buprenorphine, something unheard of in methadone treatments.
But perhaps the most significant benefit of buprenorphine is that it gives patients greater access to treatment, without having to go to specialized clinics as required with methadone, which are rare outside large cities and often have long waiting lists. Doctors can prescribe the drug in-office, without a Health Canada exemption. A recommended CME course, accredited by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, is already available (call 1-800-463-5442 or visit (link edited out due to rules)).
THE BUPE WEAKNESSES
But what of the more heavily addicted patients? ask Australian docs Andrew Byrne and Alex Wodak in a letter to the editor in November's American Journal of Psychiatry, in response to the Swedish study. More than half the buprenorphine patients in the comparison study were eventually switched to methadone, they point out. For them, buprenorphine was less effective than methadone — for the very same reasons that made it safer.
The maximum approved daily dose of buprenorphine is 32 mg, which is approximately equivalent to 70 mg of methadone, write the study authors. But optimal doses of methadone are around 100 mg per day, and some patients need up to 140 mg/day during their treatment process. So patients who were long-term addicts eventually "outgrew" buprenorphine and were switched to methadone.

Well that's it, I wanted to get that off my chest.

I'll post in this thread from time to time my progress and the like. If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask.

I'm so dissapointed I failed at the taper. Every time it's the same, the day I get the pills I say ok today is a binge day and tomorrow I'm going to start reducing. Tomorrow never comes.

It's such a shame there isn't a limitless supply of opiates for anyone who wants them, because I would truly like to remain on them for the rest of my life. It kills me knowing that I can't.

My goal is to somehow achieve buprenorphine treatment. I'd prefer a taper rather than permanent maintenence (yes I know I'm contradicting myself, wanting to stay on forever is just a pipe dream fantasy and not reality) due to how much harder it supposedly is to get off bupe or methadone than it is Oxy etc. oxy is fucking NASTY withdrawals so I can't even imagine worse.

I'm looking for any and all information about buprenorphine treatment in Canada and anyone who has experience with it. All of the treatment clinics seem to be in Vancouver, which is impossible for me as it's a 2 hour drive and 3 hour ferry ride, followed by another 2 hour drive. I could not make that trip every day for my dose due to work/money. So am I supposed to just sit here and die because there are no clinics in my shitty small town?

I need to work up the courage to ask my Doctor. Do doctors have to remain confidential or could he find some loophole to tell my employer?


Thanks guys, reading some of your threads really opened my eyes.

I'll post in this thread whenever I feel the need, read it if you want. Ignore me if you want, I'm used to that )

Apologies if I come off a bit of a moron at times, that's what I am.

theswimmer added 15 Minutes and 18 Seconds later...

What I type below this line is fiction, I love to tell stories!

My other plan if for some reason you can't get bupe here is to hopefully transfer back onto the Pods as I could afford to stay on them indefinetly.

When I don't have any pills I sometimes buy a 30 dollar bag of seeds (man you get some WEIRD looks from the clerks buying so many poppy seeds) and it takes w/d away at least 80% of it anyways.

I hope I don't have to do that as I really just wanna get off the damn drugs, I've had my fun.

But that's an alternative anyways.

theswimmer added 18 Minutes and 47 Seconds later...

Also, I'm not sure what "Monkey on the back" means, but I like it so I used it in my thread title. Anyone care to elaborate?

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good choice to share your story and to look for help. You're not a moron!