As anyone can see i haven’t written i a while - other plces, yes, but not at my first love - here at junkylife.com. Still a guest blogger though - cest’ la vie mon ami.
What can i say? This is my second time on buprenorphine (subutex though also known as suboxone/bupe) in an attempt to get off heroin and NOT because i think heroin is over for me overall. It’s just tooo much right now. Wife seconds from leaving (and may still leave anyway), family clueless, at my job as a network engineer job is still going on, granting me a rather ok salary (a grand a week + a 50% bonus at EOY = 91k/yr) yet im always broke, CC’s maxed out with cash advances - heck my wife even changed her paycheck to go to her own account as opposed to our joint because $300/day is simply too hard to hide anyway u look at it. She’s another working professional that doesnt understand what addiction is and is wildly harsh in thinking it isnt something like stopping aggressing small animals or some such behavior one can magically stop by using the frontal lobes to do so, should one be inclined in that dark directtion >:(. Tsk, Tsk, not the case.
Throughout all this my work hasn’t really been affected - still delivered as use at work has been moderated. As a point as of last Friday I was out spending $300 a DAY (and on rare occasions twice per day) on 12-14 40 weight bags of 70-80% diamorphine - roughly a gram. Miami Florida is known more for cocaine than heroin and conversely cocaine here is relatively cheap at $50-100 per gram but Heroin? Either you have a good job or rob banks, or hustle in ways unheard of. In NJ i could have kept this up forever as my ceiling dose was around 400mg - the days that i would do a full 1000g throughout the day was extravagant luxury and i was in endless bliss in the land of nod. I always used my own needles - i used to be premed before jumping on this computer engineer career or mine, so some of the pharmacopia, method of action, resulting onset, and use periphenelia(aka needles comes naturally to me)
And now where my Downward Spiral began: opiates. The word (of course) brings me to full attention. Let me give you some history as im somewhat scatterbrained right now as you perhaps can tell from what you just read. My love affair started soon after being married when i worked at a credit card company that all of you have i your wallets (guaranteed). I good friend of mine there had now laughable 30mg codeine tabs and i suffered from migraines - and excellent combination. Eventually I found a online source in 2001 coming from somewhere in Europe for 60mg codeine tabs - i would order them by the hundreds and they would always come like clockwork. the the site went ‘check only’ (no more CC puchases) and i was pooched. But wait a sec - i started thinking of my premed days, specifically the in the series of anesthesiologist courses i was taking and remembering that my professor said *the first day* looking over the class at each of us in the face - i could have sworn he looked at mine for a few seconds more than others, but it could have been my imagination - “Wether you graduate or not - 50% of you will become quite familiar with one class of drugs more than anything else. You lucky yet unfortunate half will experience pleasures that most of us will never dream of, but you will also experience pains none of us short of going through torture at the hands of an enemy would have to go through - it’s a trade off. the family of drugs i speak of are the opioids…” Even then i was dumbstruck - heck EVERYONE was - i presume there were addicts there already. As i recall there were several thefts from the chemicals room of the usual suspects, morphine, demerol, hydromorphone, and even controlled 6-monoacytlmorphine (6-MAM) which is a metabolite of heroin (and in fact how heroin is detected from morphine itself in drug tests - morphine does not produce 6 or the less active metabolite 3-MAM) and the school had ordered near 3g’s worth IIRC - all of it gone. At the time i didn’t know why - how foolish of me - 6MAM is easily 30-50% more powerful than pure heroin (diacetylmorphine/diamorphine). At this the professor wasn’t surprised. “Thats why i order so little of it” he told the class “it gets stolen every semester, most of the times more than once or twice - but i can understand why he would say with a smirk”. I wish i kept in contact with that professor because i have the sneaky suspicion that it was him jacking the 6-MAM all the time. Anyway i chalked it up to the druggie kids at the time and life continued. Back to the codiene tabs i couldnt get anymore - what i recalled from my premed days was Hydrocodone/hydromorphone - i obviously couldn’t get hydromorphone… but hydrocodone? Heck Online pharms were practically giving it away with each pack of gum you purchased. I even once even managed to get an online MD to script compounded hydrocodone 15/100 (15mgs hydro / 100 mgs APAP) from one of these houses - the limit for any hydrocodone pill (15mgs) with the smallest amount of APAP (100mgs). This lasted just fine for three years and i went from a 34 pill/day habit to a 9-12 day pill habit requiring me to have multiple OPs every two weeks. Cost was still relatively low. The magic happened in Oct 2005 - the DEA shuts down BOTH my OPs. I go crazy looking for two more but can only find one in time. All the while I’m going to my regular MD for this severe back pain im having. Radiology shows multiple bulging and slipped discs with what looks like “growths” which later turn out to be tumors and later cancer in my lower back. So i tell everyone, wife doesn’t believe me, (denial? life insurance?) even as i show her the radiologist images and reports. I couldnt fucking beleive it. Great. I got a second opinion and sure enough i got sent to pain pain management. I got send home that first day with 240 5mgs oxycodone and 90 30mg kadians (morphine in beads you can crush and bang). I thought i was in heaven. This will last me two months ! i remember thinking. Two weeks later i had nothing left but my usual stash of 120 norcos (10mg hydrocodone/325 APAP). I remember the thought like it was yesterday. “This will hold me till the next visit to the pain clinic” i thought….not. I was taking near 20 pills a day and a dead liver to boot just to keep WDs at bay - forget feeling anything on the comfortable side of anything. I called my pain management doc the next day and lied. Junkies have it down to a science. Heck between you and me a hard core junkie could easily have God let him borrow a few bucks to “pay the car” or “pay the x bill” all while God knowing where it was really going to - my arm. So off i went to the local police precinct to get a statement made that my meds and other fictional stuff were stolen from my briefcase, which i didnt even have. Ran to the pain management place which was 30 min away and got Lady D dancing with me once more - though this time i only got 110 of the oxys. That month was the second stage of my downward spiral. My usual pill bill was <500/month. Now it was <~900 month. “We make enough i thought”. People also started noticing me nodding off in places where this is generally not the accepted norm - church, home, while reading, while on the computer. The attack of the pictures came from my wife and family, spearheaded by my wife asking what was going on. I told her again about the back issue and the fact that the MDs had issued meds - she wanted a list. Fine i thought. She then went with this list to one of those ultra-conservtive MDs who said “Why is anyone taking these meds? There is NO reason for anyone to take them…” What an uninformed prick. To this day my wife quotes him word by word like if that MD was the ultimate authority. Things get out of hand? Yes. But were the meds medically considered necessary by three MDs who were studying my case *yes*. Eventually i got the oxycodone changed to hydromorphone but the croaker cut it by half to 120/month 4g dilaudid 4/day PO. I also got the Kadian changed out for the new drug Opana (oxymorphone) ER which you cant crush - you can only rail due to the engineered filler called TIMERx. At first i thought i was in heaven as Oxymorphone is one strong opiate but orally its wholly not bio-availiable. Though IV its around 60%+ more effective than PO as first pass metabolism breaks it down most of it to a metabolite that isn’t active in mu, kappa, delta, or ORL1. infact i dont know any drug in the market that does much with ORL1 other than buprenorphine - and that only has slight angonisim at the receptor site from the papers i’ve read. Supposedly its supposed to be like mu - work is still being done.
So the meds wouldnt last the month, what to do what to do? I got into my car, went to my old neighborhood known for cokeheads all over the place, hooked up with one in a gas station and we started talking and negotiating. For coke? Hell no! For good ol’ horse. Heroin will fill the usual two week gap and all will be fine. Riiight. We drove around and we found some shitty H which i paid an arm and a leg for, eventually on a buy another dealer from down the road yelled out that he had better shit down the road, so i drove on (how cops didn’t get onto any of this was beyond me). Well lemme call the dude D. D was right he did have better, less cut shite. 40 weight bags for <duh> $40. At first i would buy three bags a day fo $100. then 5 for $200/day. Thats when my first trouble began. $200/day from an ATM isnt easy to hide from an account that has only a few thousand in it to begin with. But still wife not the wiser - ive always run the accounts. Bills started to get paid late and finally one month later in 2007 not at all, and that was when it was 1,500+/week going to big brother H. I finally confessed when my wife showed my the late bills, etc, the nodding off, the trackmarks, etc blah, blah, blah - but i wasn’t ready to quit. I used on the last friday before my first detox which was the following monday, i didnt last still sunday. Saturday at 2:00am i took off to find my dealer. I scored, but my wife figured out i wasn’t home, called *while* i was copping and once again obviously knew what i was up to. I shoved the gear in my rear underpants and went home saying i didnt get anything. lots of yelling, she refused to go back to sleep trying to keep an eye on me constantly to see if i did anything. i then decided that i needed the hit already. but how with my wifewatching me like a hawk - keep in mind it was already 4:30am… Aha, i left some hidden works in the bathroom. So i go “empty handed” as i show her into the bathroom and took a bath to “cool off” and shoot up - gawd what relief when that plunger hit. Insta-mu gratification. the needle even stayed in my forearm for about 10 minutes. It was like veil of releif had come mandated by God to cure everything that was wrong. When i got out of the bathroom my wife was suspicious after a few minutes. “Why arent you shaking and complaining now?” She said, knowing about some WD symptoms. I responded that the shower must have helped. Right. Remember folks = by definition the junkie *has* to lie to survive - to anyone no matter how much they love that person. You have to just like you have to breathe or you’ll start thrashing about. So came monday morning i was in bad shape couldnt sit still for 3 minutes, pains that only another junkie can know. William S Burroughs was right brother. To a junkie junk isnt a kick - its a way of life. Anyway when we got to the detox center that following monday i was in horribale shape. In the COWS scale i must have been 30+ (rnge 0-50) (a withdrawl scale used for opiates - google it and you’ll see version of it). Shaking, sweating, cold, hot, churning innards, etc. We’ve all been there - they then took a picture of me took my insurance and CC and gave me 2mgs subutex, then immediately another 2mgs. I dont remember what happened next because i fell asleep - i had been awake for the prior 48-72 hrs (even after my last shot at 4:45am Sat. morning). When i woke up i felt 90-95% normal. WTF i thought? Thats it? buprenorphine can do that? So fast, so little? That detox lasted five days. and i felt fine throughout. I left it and was ok for about a month. Then the memories of the good times rolled in. Hmm i though. A little indulgence? I passed by my dealers and got three bags. I knew about the bupe blockade, as in you need to wait 24-36 hours before taking another full agonist or the bupe will just sit there on the receptors blocking everything like naloxone/naltrexone would - so i hadn’t taken my bupe in about 30 hours. Boy that first relapse was magic. The bupe had dropped my tolerance to the point where even at 30 hours where bupe is still blocking (10-20% of the opioid receptors) it felt better than any previous time i could remember. Again. The needle stayed in my arm for what seemed like forever. See now, why cant we have these endogenous opioids in our systems play this way? The only time the stronger ones come out is when we’re in shock over some severe physical trauma like loosing a leg or something. Stupid endorphins/enkaphalins. But pain is evolution or God’s way of punishing fallen man -i cant see it any other way at this point. The poppy plant somehow came in as a temporary escape but with horrible effects afterwards. Almost sounds like those two angels from the Koran - Harut and Marut who share “forbidden divine knowledge” but for a “severe price” which could be even your death.
Funny - I even went back to my croaker and continued like if nothing happened. He gave me my usual script for 120 dillies and 90 opanas and for the past two months I’ve taken my Opana script to a new pharmacy and i guess they cant read because they keep giving me Opana IRs which dont have the matrix gelling gunk the ERs have by mistake. I thought then it would last the whole month finally. Unhuh… I got 90 on friday and by tuesday of the next week zero was the active count. Goes to show you that availability doesn’t mean you can hold, now does it?
Continuing the first time after detox situation, I missed my next bupe appointment as it came with a series of NA course requirements that i simply couldn’t take (and hadnt for that matter - had i shown up the asshole MD said that i needed “class credits” for him to give me my next script - is that even legal?). Plus the only meeting i attended had no cute girls around anyway :), less reason i had to go, right? Yeah, i know, im the smart-ass. There are only wise ex-junkies - no wise junkies, my friend. Well after my ill fated detox and the “one time” pass by my dealers house that ill fated friday things went downhill faster than any vortex you can conceive and my habit grew to montrous proportions - this time to $300/day as i would make a deal that would have otherwise cost $400-$480 for a gram and change. Maxed CCed grew into overcharge and i started to think inside this is too much. I said to myself “This sandcastle is going to collapse soon and there is no rock bottom for you”. By now my wife wanted tkick me out and she had changed her paycheck to go to another private account and she was paying the bills. I was/am husband in name only. I love her to bits, but she says i “killed any love she had for me”. One could argue that this isn’t very supportive and i don’t think it is either. But everyone has thier entitled opinion. I managed to get another bupe MD in the area which is wha i wanted to begin with where i simply go into her office and she writes the subutex (yes pure bupe NOT suboxone) script for the month and thats it. Where we go from here depends largely if i can stay on bupe which ive been on since yesterday 8:00am - last IV shot of H was this past Saturday at 3:00pm - 3 40 weight bags - i dont have viens i can hit easily anymore so it took me near an hour to find one to register. With the bupe after waiting only 13 hours from my last hit no precipitated WDs were experienced, but i did suffer large dysphoria for the entire day and a huge loss of energy which still plagues me now.
Free of H? Yeah right. I have retirement plans that involve moving to a country with high heroin exports and live the high life from my saved 401(k)/SS money. To me its a dream……..
Darkmatter
“MobiusDick, we miss you so…”
Anyways my brief intro…