IT'S A HOTTER DAY and all. The weather forecast promised temperatures up to 90F today. I don't think it was that hot. But on methadone, you never can tell... I wasn't sweating like a swine today as I took extra methadone and it held me. I'm doing what I had to do before and using extra methadone on top of my script, a little less each day, until my script is holding me. It's so miserable being a junkie: I'm starting to hate it more than I ever loved heroin, and that marks a tipping point. Hopefully ... For drugs no more...
I need to think carefully about what I'm going to say to the drugs doctor tomorrow as I still want my dose reduced as fast as humanly possible. That is: as fast as humanly possible without feeling any withdrawals at all. (There is no reason why an addict should not be weaned off opiates completely painlessly ~ provided the dose is tapered gradually enough.)
So I might remain on methadone for quite a while yet.
First I have to eliminate the need for any extra on top of my 20mg daily dose. Then I need to stabilize on 20mg a day. I would hope to have achieved this within 3 weeks of today, if not sooner.
After that I'm asking the clinic what they think about reducing me by 1mg per week. If they're not going to be flexible enough to allow that, I'll take a 5mg reduction and add the 1mg at a time mini-steps (19-18-17-16) myself bought on the street.
It's a sad indictment that a system set up to help you can end up being far less helpful than it should; but that's life...
I know because I'm a "new" client (even though I'm actually coming back to them after a year with no break in prescribing) that they will probably insist on supervised consumption, where you are forced to drink a tot full of green syrup in a shop full of people like some sort of common criminal ~ but that's the way it goes these days.
Yes, I have lived without a heroin/methadone habit. It's not as if I was born drug-dependent (unlike some people I know). I never got addicted to heroin until I was 28. I'm 40 now. But the 28 years pre-habit were hardly what you'd call a "life"; more an existence. So maybe I can go back to existing without hard opiates...
Whether or not I can live a full, clean life without depending however slightly, however intermittently, on any drugs at all ~ that is another matter.
THAT IS THE BIGGEST QUESTION OF MY LIFE!
UK Prison scandal: drug-free inmates put on methadone (Daily Telegraph)
WHERE IS IT WRITTEN?
This tune keeps going round my head... took me a while even to realize what it was. Sung by Barbra Streisand, it's from the film Yentl:
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