Kintsugi
Sponsor
I’ve tried not to be super loud about my drug use here, but I also haven’t tried to hide it.
When I finally caved in grad school and went to a P (the first time I did this was in college, but it f*cked me up worse), I hadn’t yet realized that my symptoms weren’t just through the roof due to what I consider stressors. By the time I got to his office, I’d figured it out but went anyway. I was withdrawing from gabapentin. Winter break was over, and for those four weeks, I binged on anything and everything put in front of me. I had f*cked up once already like this—took Xanax every night for a week without even realizing it. Then I spent two weeks in hell. But the gabapentin was so much worse. So much worse. I essentially had a 6-week-long panic attack after accidentally (I’m not shitting you: as careful as I normally am with substances, it just went out the window in my fugue) taking like... 8-1600?mg a day/night for two weeks.
Even my T, who’s The Straightest Shooter, advised me not to tell a P about my drug usage. At this point, I’d been taking truly prodigious amounts of acid every two weeks for around 8 months, and that was the safest thing I engaged in recreationally/re: self-medication (really hurts me to call my entheogen use “recreational,” and this is exactly why I try to stay relatively quiet here about drugs, because I don’t want anyone conflating my personal gains with evangelism/advocacy, because seriously don’t do this).
Anyway, idk if I’ve told this story here or not, but I went in to see this man who I would later learn is a debatably evil and definitely mad scientist. I think his moral compass is long gone. He says I scare him. I like this. We’re kind of even. He’s got the blue notepad. I’m a valuable sample.
But before that dynamic bloomed, he greeted me and asked if a student could observe. When I grilled him about the student, I could tell he was already taken aback. I eventually said sure. Then I had fun.
It took about 15 minutes for me to dump my entire trauma history on him like unloading vendor inventory for a gas station worker. There’s so much shit, but we’ve both counted such items so often we clipped right through. I looked at the grad student in the corner. She was whiter than the walls. This put me in a very good, loose mood.
Another 15 minutes: my complete drug history. When he started asking me for numbers, I lowballed the hell out of them, because they were substantial enough cut by 30-70%.
Then I started with my requests. The only reason I was there was because I was sick of paying too much for street prices when I should be able to go legit. He was onboard... enough. He knew exactly where I lived, where I worked. He used to work there, too. He knew I could have anything I was looking for, prices ranging from lavishing my attention on the right man to just cash in hand.
We struck a deal. It was worth it. It had to look good. And he loves a guinea pig, I later learned from about a hundred stories from at least a dozen mouths.
8 months of his bullshit later, with me trying meds, having horrific side effects, getting them pulled, withdrawing, trying again, until he gave up and gave in, I got my designer script I’d originally requested plus some extra shit.
I did better. But of course I didn’t stop experimenting.
The thing with f*cking around with the shit I like to f*ck around with is that when all it costs is some cash, if that, something you start using PRN blues into addiction like a handful of potato chips turns into a bag. It’s insidious and self-rewarding and the nature of human behavior.
So here I am, two years later, and I’ve just kicked the addiction I never told him about. Of course I did plenty of research. Yes, it’s actually well documented to be beneficial for PTSD. I swore every three months I was GOING to tell him. And—either believe me or just suspend your disbelief, please—I was actually serious about it early last year, when it had officially gone from a sometimes thing to a full blown addiction. I’m so cocky when I’ve already successfully tapered something from one side to the other a few times. But I realized around February last year that this was getting too big.
So I have phone sessions, right? Because I moved. I kept saying I needed to go in person for this disclosure. Dr. Mad Scientist Sir, I’ve been taking this much suboxone this often, and here’s how it’s immeasurably improved my functioning. I have citations. Can I have it? Please?
And then... COVID. Lockdown. No in person sessions. And worse, we disaster prepared. While everyone without addictions to street drugs were losing their damn minds about motherf*cking toilet paper, everyone *with* those addictions were hustling like hell. We smelled the blood in the water first. We got the mother load. We were stocked up, son.
Y’know what happens when you lock two drug enthusiasts on their isolated mountain with a shitload of drugs? Yeah. Exactly.
But shit went sideways, like it always does with an addiction to something you can’t just get from a store. This wasn’t a dry spell, which we, being a little too experienced at our age, have contingency plans for. This was a desert combined with a financial collapse.
So I’m officially clean... I think. I tapered like hell. I actually didn’t get too bad until there was a clerical problem with filling my legit scripts, which of course I was eating like Skittles because refills, amiright? The whole opioid-benzo double whammy comorbid dependency shit that doctors are always saying is a crazy problem? That shit is no f*cking joke. When they actually filled my clonopin script, just three days late, I was in such bad shape I couldn’t do one of my favorite things: drive... to pick it up. J saw me that morning and ran out immediately. He didn’t even nick one on the way back, and he didn’t taper, so he was pretty jacked up (still is... it’ll be another week probably for him).
But now I have all of my essential meds, and I’ve felt more or less fine since then. Except all those symptoms I excused as being due to the tremendous stress of grad school? Yeah, turns out they didn’t fade away as my stressors faded away. It was the f*cking suboxone. Even now, as I write this, it’s like I’m wearing a very familiar but interminably uncomfortable sweater. These symptoms are so familiar, but I know it doesn’t have to be like this. That’s what benzos did for me: opened my eyes to how I could be.
So great, I’m clean and miserable and I know it doesn’t HAVE to be like this.
I wouldn’t ask for suboxone, much as I am so fond of it. Subutec? If that’s how you spell it? Doesn’t have f*cking poison in it. But it’s notoriously difficult to get. I could walk into a pain clinic, pay my dues, and walk out with enough suboxone to do, share, and pay for my car. Say I love painkillers. Give details I know from my many intimate relationships with people in various states of recovery and addiction.
But I don’t want to do that. I want my actual psychiatrist to know everything and see what he thinks... except if I do that, the genie won’t go back in the bottle. What if he decides my leash has been way too long? Or he just wants to f*ck with me as a power play, starts pulling my controlled shit knowing what it’s like out there right now. Do not be mistaken. This is no hyperbole. Dude is a sick f*ck.
I just don’t know... live with these symptoms? Go back to the streets and try to regulate it as a PRN? And then there’s the clinics—a last resort, probably worse than just sucking it up because that shit will definitely get way outta hand.
I’m open to anything anyone has to say who has actually gotten through this hot mess.
When I finally caved in grad school and went to a P (the first time I did this was in college, but it f*cked me up worse), I hadn’t yet realized that my symptoms weren’t just through the roof due to what I consider stressors. By the time I got to his office, I’d figured it out but went anyway. I was withdrawing from gabapentin. Winter break was over, and for those four weeks, I binged on anything and everything put in front of me. I had f*cked up once already like this—took Xanax every night for a week without even realizing it. Then I spent two weeks in hell. But the gabapentin was so much worse. So much worse. I essentially had a 6-week-long panic attack after accidentally (I’m not shitting you: as careful as I normally am with substances, it just went out the window in my fugue) taking like... 8-1600?mg a day/night for two weeks.
Even my T, who’s The Straightest Shooter, advised me not to tell a P about my drug usage. At this point, I’d been taking truly prodigious amounts of acid every two weeks for around 8 months, and that was the safest thing I engaged in recreationally/re: self-medication (really hurts me to call my entheogen use “recreational,” and this is exactly why I try to stay relatively quiet here about drugs, because I don’t want anyone conflating my personal gains with evangelism/advocacy, because seriously don’t do this).
Anyway, idk if I’ve told this story here or not, but I went in to see this man who I would later learn is a debatably evil and definitely mad scientist. I think his moral compass is long gone. He says I scare him. I like this. We’re kind of even. He’s got the blue notepad. I’m a valuable sample.
But before that dynamic bloomed, he greeted me and asked if a student could observe. When I grilled him about the student, I could tell he was already taken aback. I eventually said sure. Then I had fun.
It took about 15 minutes for me to dump my entire trauma history on him like unloading vendor inventory for a gas station worker. There’s so much shit, but we’ve both counted such items so often we clipped right through. I looked at the grad student in the corner. She was whiter than the walls. This put me in a very good, loose mood.
Another 15 minutes: my complete drug history. When he started asking me for numbers, I lowballed the hell out of them, because they were substantial enough cut by 30-70%.
Then I started with my requests. The only reason I was there was because I was sick of paying too much for street prices when I should be able to go legit. He was onboard... enough. He knew exactly where I lived, where I worked. He used to work there, too. He knew I could have anything I was looking for, prices ranging from lavishing my attention on the right man to just cash in hand.
We struck a deal. It was worth it. It had to look good. And he loves a guinea pig, I later learned from about a hundred stories from at least a dozen mouths.
8 months of his bullshit later, with me trying meds, having horrific side effects, getting them pulled, withdrawing, trying again, until he gave up and gave in, I got my designer script I’d originally requested plus some extra shit.
I did better. But of course I didn’t stop experimenting.
The thing with f*cking around with the shit I like to f*ck around with is that when all it costs is some cash, if that, something you start using PRN blues into addiction like a handful of potato chips turns into a bag. It’s insidious and self-rewarding and the nature of human behavior.
So here I am, two years later, and I’ve just kicked the addiction I never told him about. Of course I did plenty of research. Yes, it’s actually well documented to be beneficial for PTSD. I swore every three months I was GOING to tell him. And—either believe me or just suspend your disbelief, please—I was actually serious about it early last year, when it had officially gone from a sometimes thing to a full blown addiction. I’m so cocky when I’ve already successfully tapered something from one side to the other a few times. But I realized around February last year that this was getting too big.
So I have phone sessions, right? Because I moved. I kept saying I needed to go in person for this disclosure. Dr. Mad Scientist Sir, I’ve been taking this much suboxone this often, and here’s how it’s immeasurably improved my functioning. I have citations. Can I have it? Please?
And then... COVID. Lockdown. No in person sessions. And worse, we disaster prepared. While everyone without addictions to street drugs were losing their damn minds about motherf*cking toilet paper, everyone *with* those addictions were hustling like hell. We smelled the blood in the water first. We got the mother load. We were stocked up, son.
Y’know what happens when you lock two drug enthusiasts on their isolated mountain with a shitload of drugs? Yeah. Exactly.
But shit went sideways, like it always does with an addiction to something you can’t just get from a store. This wasn’t a dry spell, which we, being a little too experienced at our age, have contingency plans for. This was a desert combined with a financial collapse.
So I’m officially clean... I think. I tapered like hell. I actually didn’t get too bad until there was a clerical problem with filling my legit scripts, which of course I was eating like Skittles because refills, amiright? The whole opioid-benzo double whammy comorbid dependency shit that doctors are always saying is a crazy problem? That shit is no f*cking joke. When they actually filled my clonopin script, just three days late, I was in such bad shape I couldn’t do one of my favorite things: drive... to pick it up. J saw me that morning and ran out immediately. He didn’t even nick one on the way back, and he didn’t taper, so he was pretty jacked up (still is... it’ll be another week probably for him).
But now I have all of my essential meds, and I’ve felt more or less fine since then. Except all those symptoms I excused as being due to the tremendous stress of grad school? Yeah, turns out they didn’t fade away as my stressors faded away. It was the f*cking suboxone. Even now, as I write this, it’s like I’m wearing a very familiar but interminably uncomfortable sweater. These symptoms are so familiar, but I know it doesn’t have to be like this. That’s what benzos did for me: opened my eyes to how I could be.
So great, I’m clean and miserable and I know it doesn’t HAVE to be like this.
I wouldn’t ask for suboxone, much as I am so fond of it. Subutec? If that’s how you spell it? Doesn’t have f*cking poison in it. But it’s notoriously difficult to get. I could walk into a pain clinic, pay my dues, and walk out with enough suboxone to do, share, and pay for my car. Say I love painkillers. Give details I know from my many intimate relationships with people in various states of recovery and addiction.
But I don’t want to do that. I want my actual psychiatrist to know everything and see what he thinks... except if I do that, the genie won’t go back in the bottle. What if he decides my leash has been way too long? Or he just wants to f*ck with me as a power play, starts pulling my controlled shit knowing what it’s like out there right now. Do not be mistaken. This is no hyperbole. Dude is a sick f*ck.
I just don’t know... live with these symptoms? Go back to the streets and try to regulate it as a PRN? And then there’s the clinics—a last resort, probably worse than just sucking it up because that shit will definitely get way outta hand.
I’m open to anything anyone has to say who has actually gotten through this hot mess.