Addiction - Fresh pods cured my character's Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome

[bjarkii]

Not entirely sure where to post this as it sort of falls under the umbrella of multiple forums, so I figure here is as good as anywhere.

My character's situation is that for quite a while he had a daily heroin habit, which he kicked, moved onto pods, which he kicked, moved back to heroin which he kicked, moved back to pods, and there he stayed for a good 6 or 7 months until he ran out of money when he'd generally go for dihydrocodeine. He'd tried to quit in the past and had often lasted a few weeks, but Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome never seemed to go away, and restless/aching legs would keep him awake at night for weeks. So he always relapsed back to pods/dihydrocodeine.

Anyway, he came back to his family home, a short while ago where he had scattered poppy pod seeds from turkish white ebay pods 2 years previously. By now there were maybe 50 or 60 fresh pods swaying gently in the breeze, scattered throughout his garden, but they were mostly stunted, measuring about the size of a two pence piece, so not very big. In any case, during a drought, suffering from terrible withdrawals (restless legs, achey limbs, frustration, depression, all that good stuff), and a severe lack of money and opiates, he decided to go into his field and harvest some pods. He was also commited to quitting opiates as he had no money, so he chose 4 tiny fresh pods, not wanting to accidentally ingest pesticides/any nasties that might be growing on his pods, and just wanting to test the waters. he ground up these 4 small pods (about the size of a 2p piece each, again, and they formed a nice green pulp. Into the caffetiere they went, and soon a batch of watery, urine coloured tea was ready. Having quite a bit of experience with pods, he wasnt expecting much, but downed the liquid anyway. What he noticed as a definite comeup and an alleviation of withdrawal symptoms in his legs. While he was by no means high, he was able to get on with playing DotA and doing other things without constantly thinking about how shit he felt. He dosed at around 1:30am and by 7am the dose was noticably wearing off, and withdrawals were starting to manifest themselves again, albeit much more bearable than they were. he went to bed around 10am, and woke up about 9pm the next day. While he didnt sleep as soundly as he does on opiates, he managed to get a decent night's sleep which is more than he normally gets.

Now, it is 11pm the following day and he feels no withdrawals (well maybe very very slight, but he has to concentrate to be able to feel them, and they arent bothering him at all, or building in intensity like they normally do) where normally they would have manifested themselves a few hours ago and would be getting worse right now. He genuinely believes that this small dose of fresh pods may have cured him from PAWS, but now faces a problem. He has a small but respectable crop of quite potent but not yet ready fresh pods, which he is tempted by. If he were to use them again, he may well have to go through the whole 2 year period of fighting addiction again, and while he is quite enjoying sobriety without being achey and fucked up, it is tempting to get together with friends and enjoy these nice fresh pods.

If he were to give it another week, and then, if withdrawals are truly gone, use pods maybe every weekend, how would he go about storing them for use? Mouldy pods are NOT what he wants.

Sorry for the unintentional essay, but I thought it was interesting that a small dose of fresh pods were able to cure something that i've tried unsuccesfully to get rid of by quitting cold turkey.

[Potter]

Do understand that the pods are not "curing" WDs, but simply providing a different means of administering opiates. The patient is still an addict who is still taking opiates. Just make sure that the patient understands this and isn't fooling themselves into thinking that drinking PST is some how any different then what ever other opiate fix they were getting.

Also be aware that the patient may be consuming just as much opiates as before. There is no way of knowing the dose one takes using raw plant materail and it would be foolish to assume that a heavy addict* would have their WDs "fixed" by super light dose.

Grok this hard, grok it real hard.


*May or may not be the person in question.

[bjarkii]

Originally Posted by Potter

Do understand that the pods are not "curing" WDs, but simply providing a different means of administering opiates. The patient is still an addict who is still taking opiates. Just make sure that the patient understands this and isn't fooling themselves into thinking that drinking PST is some how any different then what ever other opiate fix they were getting.

Also be aware that the patient may be consuming just as much opiates as before. There is no way of knowing the dose one takes using raw plant materail and it would be foolish to assume that a heavy addict* would have their WDs "fixed" by super light dose.

Grok this hard, grok it real hard.


*May or may not be the person in question.

the thing is though, normally after a dose of opiates followed by cessation of their use, withdrawals manifest in around 12-24 hours and continue for around a week, in this person's experience.

the character in question, however, has still not experienced any withdrawals since the last dose taken almost 48 hours ago now, and has not re-dosed since then. the point that i was making is that this small dose of fresh pods seems to have gotten rid of withdrawals altogether in a way that other opiates have not been able to

[Tux27]

When SWIM was going through hydrocodone withdrawal after massive use(no idea it could be so bad), had a really stressful incident happen at work, and couldn't take it anymore(and unwind from the fuckup), he dug up some pod grounds that for some reason were not used, made a tea, and sipped just enough throughout the day to mask the withdrawal feelings. Lucky that he was already through some of the withdrawal, he was able to use enough pod tea to alleviate withdrawals, but did not use long enough to become dependant on the tea. SWIM was also very surprised to find that there wasn't much cross-tolerance.

SWIM is with SWIPotter in the surprise that one dose was enough to get SWIY on track, SWIM had to constantly dose throughout the day to keep the withdrawals at bay.

SWIM does understand that it's trading one drug for another, but in situations similar to the ones mentioned above, with enough control it can be a blessing and a less painful way to kick a habit.