addiction, blog,art,life blog, doctors culpable in opiate epidemic, doctors over prescribing opiates, medical issues from opiate abuse, open heart surgery

Sorry, But It Should Shock You

So, yes…that’s really my chest when they took the bandages off for the first time after my valve replacement. It should make you cringe, it makes me cringe and I’m the one who went thru it. If all the other reasons fail to snap you out of the fog that drugs lets you live in, this one photo should at least make you stop and think. Because it’s not just a thing that happened and then I needed surgery. I’m not, never have been over weight or out of shape. I don’t drink and I don’t eat 3 greasy burgers a day. I actually eat healthy if that doesn’t hit you as ironic.

I’ll let THIS happen to me from using drugs but, by golly, I’ll watch my diet and have perfect cholesterol ! Let’s look at it from another direction. If the possibility of open heart surgery (and a myriad of other illnesses that love to land inside drug addict bodies) doesn’t scare you a little then the legal crap should. I have had one drug related conviction ten years ago and it’s still to this day keeping me in debt to the State of Kansas and able to toss me in jail on occasion – and possibly prison. The people I associated with were people who started the way I did, with a doctor. We (most of us) did not get up one morning in our normal lives and say ‘hey, after work I think I’m gonna go hit the streets and fins me some opiates and get high’.

As I explained a little in a previous post, most of us had an injury or a surgery around the time that Oxycontin hit the market and it’s so addictive for so many reasons, that after only a week – ten days on it, you are in full ‘omg I am in HELL’ withdraw if you try to stop taking it. But, honestly, if the doctor had said ‘no more, that’s all that’s required after a surgery/injury like yours.’ myself (and many others) would have spent a few sweaty, sleepless, vomiting nights and would have been finished. Most likely if another issue arose where you would need pain medicine, the majority of us would have said just give me something weaker, not that Oxy crap because DAMN, it made me so sick when I ran out of it. Instead, in my case and many, many others I know, it was actually difficult to get out of the dr. office back then without that script in your hand. As strong as those things are, the drawback is that your body becomes tolerant to them very fast. You need more and more to achieve the same pain relief. As for the other reasons that it is addictive one need look no further than history books.

So, no I don’t blame my doctor or any other totally, but I believe they are culpable and they know it. Now, it’s the patients who are left to pick up the pieces of some very shattered lives – if they are still breathing.

All for now, Missy

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addiction, daily rant, legal issues due to addiction, probation

And another clean u.a.

Weekly I go to the justice center and take a u.a. in front of this person, who stares intently at me and the mirror placed directly behind the toilet. To make sure I’m not bringing in I don’t what…a balloon of someone else’s pee. It’s all very un nerving. I’ll just say that this would be roughly my 25 th clean u.a. and it still visibly pisses this person off that I’m not being carted off to jail.

Even tho I’ve been through my share of legal trouble I still have tremendous respect for the police and especially the sheriff deputies around here,but there are some that do jobs like pee tests…that enjoy their job far too much. Jail does NOTHING for a drug addict. You can’t even get a Tylenol. You lie there and u can’t eat or drink,they don’t give a shit.

Addicts need medical detox. Not to be thrown in a freezing cold cell and left to withdraw alone . By the way, withdraw can kill people.

Anyway I know people say ‘ they get what they deserve’ but when u reach a certain point in addiction, you may as well tell a diabetic.. hey,just stop with that insulin crap. Man up.

Addiction is a disease and it’s complicated. Telling someone ” just stop” just baffles me.

That’s all for now.

Missy