People sometimes say that taking Suboxone just delays the inevitable. They assert that Sub is just as addictive as the drugs I’m trying to quit, that there is no “easy way out” and I will eventually have to suffer through withdrawals to “get clean” and have genuine sobriety.

 Since I started the tapering process and experienced uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms, certain people have indulged in a bit of “I told you so” attitude. They think I should have toughed it out in the beginning, or that I’ve wasted a year of my life on this medication. They say Suboxone is a bunch…

I read this last night:

Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW…so you stop asking.

                                                   -Ram Dass, Be Here Now

I feel like I’m somewhere in between these two points with my recovery. Some days I long for the time when I will be “better”, when this tapering off Suboxone will be done, when I’ll be healthy and strong, finished with school, working as a therapist, have money in the bank, a clean…

Uncle Iroh by *Purple-Twilek on deviantART

One of the highlights of my recent depressive episode was time spent watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with my daughter. Sure, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s better than 95% of the crap on the telly these days. We’re all addicted to it here at Casa del Quitter, and we whiled away more than a few rainy days watching Avatar marathons.

The man pictured above is one of my favorite characters, Uncle Iroh. Fallen from power and deprived of his birthright by a conniving brother, he is a fearsome fighter and also a wise and kind man. And from…

The past few weeks have been difficult, and I’ve been screwing up. A kind of passive screwing up, in that I’ve been screwing up by not doing things, but the result is the same. Stagnating, or backsliding, and then self-recrimination. Not a fun time.

I think this all started when I went on vacation. I guess I didn’t realize how much I needed the little routine (which I sometimes affectionately think of as a “rut”) that I’d cultivated for myself. Hey I learned something! So, yeah, I came back from vacation sick and my fibro was exacerbated by travel and I…

My therapist gave me some homework to do. I’m supposed to make a list of the changes I need to see in my relationship in order for it to work for me.

Every time I try to think about it my mind just shuts down. I quiet myself and try to look inside, but all I feel is a turning away. All my walls go up and my mind floats off to the vanilla ice-cream in the freezer.

I keep saying that I want things to work out, but is that what I really want? Maybe I’m just too angry right now,…

It happened again.

Every few months, I’m unable to contain the mass of anger inside me and I blow up at my partner. Unsuprisingly, this tends to happen about a week before I get my period. For a long time, I wrote it off as PMS, but I’ve come to realize that I actually am that angry all the time. It’s just that when my hormones are raging, I can’t stuff it away and hide it as well as I usually can.

This blow up involved me angrily and loudly verbalizing ever nasty, bitter, resentful thought I’ve had over the past few months…

This afternoon, my roommate came upstairs and said: I think there’s some kind of leak in the garage. I heard water dripping and I went to look and, well, you should probably check it out.

We ran down, and sure enough a summer shower was dripping from the garage ceiling. The water ran down from the subfloor and along the HVAC conduit, dripping off onto stacks of laptop comupters (the garage is J’s workshop) and into various boxes we have stored out there.

Back upstairs we shot to figure out what the hell happened. Little C and her friend had been filling water…

What if you are an addict, and you are also the adult child of an alcoholic and your significant other has some addicty tendencies?

You see, I’ve been relating very much to some of y’all who are married to addicts - but then I don’t feel like I should bring my addict self into your safe spaces, or even like I should identify too much because maybe that’s a way that I’m trying to take the focus off of my own addiction.

Confusing. But the healthier I get, the more clearly I see the sickness around me.

I wish I knew where I…

My relationship (with my fiance of 8 years, telling, no?) is falling apart, and everyone but me seems to acknowledge and accept it.

Friends and family have been making the offer: You know, if you ever need a place to stay, even if it’s just to get away for a weekend and have a little time for yourself…our spare room is open.

But I’m not ready to let go yet. When I first got into treatment for my addiction, I had this moment one day when I was driving and I realized that my relationship might not survive me getting well. I…

Just realized that I will be without access to a computer until Friday.

AAAAHHHH!

I’m off to the Keys, wish me luck!

See y’all in a few days.

Vacation has been a little tricky so far. I’m away from my partner, my routine, my gym, my therapist, and my friends who know what’s going on with me. I’m essentially a single parent and my kid’s been clinging to me like a velcro monkey since Thursday, and since my family doesn’t even know I ever had a problem with opiates, let alone that I’m in treatment for my addiction. Sketchy? Why yes it is!

I don’t even like to admit that I have these thoughts, which probably means that I should fess up. Before I even got on the plane,…

My doctor has been great with regards to tapering my dose. He’s been open to hearing about things that I’ve read online about tapering, and he agrees that slow is the best way to go. Our plan is basically for me to drop my dose by about 25% and then stay at the new dose until I stabilize. When I feel ready to lower my dose again, I can. This seems smart and intuitive to me, and I’m glad that he didn’t hand me a fast-set tapering schedule and order me to stick to it.

Tapering, so far, has not been…

Now that I’ve been off the drugs for almost nine months and I’m feeling more stable in my recovery from drug addiction, I’m starting to pay more attention to the myriad other ways that I’m dysfunctional. The main one that I am very tentatively starting to work on is my relationship with food (and eating, and body image.) Which is appropriate, I think, because my food/eating issues are very much connected to my drug-abuse issues.

Ah, food. This is the one area where abstinence just isn’t going to work. Too bad.

Now, food and I have had an effed up relationship, off…

I’m having difficulty keeping track of time. The days hurry by and I forget to do this or that, put things off until later and then suddenly it’s later than later and I’m too far behind. Discipline seems to be an element that I’m lacking and I’m not sure what that’s all about. I used to be fairly organized.

Sometimes I wonder if it has something to do with the Suboxone that I’m taking. I recall that time used to slip away from me when I was high, back during my active addiction. Now, I don’t really feel “high” from Suboxone,…

Soularsister left me a comment on one of my previous posts asking how Suboxone works. This got me thinking that there might be other folks here at TSR who don’t know about Suboxone, or don’t know anyone who’s on it, or have questions about it. So I’ll do my best to give some info about it here.

How does Suboxone work?

Suboxone is composed of two drugs: buprenorphine and naloxone. The naloxone is an opiate-blocker, but it’s inactive unless you dissolve the pill and inject it. Buprenorphine is a partial-opioid-agonist, which basically means that it doesn’t fully stimulate your opioid receptors.…

Today I realized two things about myself.

The first realization happened as I was walking to the park with my daughter. I had one of those moments where I flashed back on the hundreds of times we’d walked this route together, especially in summer, on our way to play, picnic or just get some fresh air. It occurred to me that when she was born, one of the most important things I could think of was that I wanted to give her a loving, safe and stable childhood - and I have done that.

It’s been no small accopmlishment either. Our little…

I’ve been in recovery for a little over 8 months now, and I’m afraid that I’m starting to stall a bit in my growth. Time seems to speed by, and I get so caught up in the day-to-day that I fail to notice what’s going on with me. And I lack the structure of a 12 step group, since I don’t go to meetings.

My therapist and I did devise a recovery plan, but I don’t always stick to it as well as I could (or should), and that’s not good. I haven’t been doing certain things for myself that are…

It’s as if you just looked at yourself in the mirror, and you saw a gorilla. The mirror’s there; it’s showing you, and what you see looks bad. You try to angle the mirror so you will look a little better, but no matter what you do, you still look like a gorilla. That’s being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what’s happening or push it away.

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape -…

Been cleaning all day today, and yesterday. Well, maybe not all day, there was some toenail painting and shopping in there as well, but I’m exhausted still.

Bagged up so. much. crap. today and took it to be donated. Oh, that felt so good. I had this huge pile of “stuff to be donated” gathering in the corner of my bedroom for like a year, and now it’s gone. And, I scored a pair of in-line skates for $7, thanks to J’s eagle eye. Turns out they retail for 180 beans and they’re barely even used. I love getting rid of all…

Little C left on Sunday for Alaska, and contrary to my grand plans for my time during her absence, I’ve accomplished basically nothing.

Sure, I’ve been looking forward to cleaning out the closets, scrubbing the bathroom floor, decluttering the house and having a yard sale ever since her grandma planned this trip. They’re gone for a week - what a perfect opportunity to do all the stuff I never do because I have a 5-year-old under foot. And I’d even have time to hit the gym, go for walks, cook some delicious food, and plant some flowers. Well, they left on…

I love this beautiful city that I’ve adopted as my home. Sure, it rains or is cloudy eight or nine months of the year, but when summer comes to town ~ the whole city celebrates.

Today, J and I took our 5-year-old daughter, Little C, to the Solstice Parade and Festival at one of the coolest parks in Seattle. The park itself is a reclaimed oil refinery that sits on the lake shore, and the parade is a spectacle of beautiful hippie-pagan-freakshow rejoicing that is truly fit to celebrate the sun’s birthday.

Little C was dressed up like a fairie, and she…