Descent Into Heavy Drug Use

Part 2

At some point, I stopped taking my Adderall because the doctor wanted me to start seeing her every month. I was not about to start letting her inspect me face to face while clearly sleep-deprived and strung out on Amphetamines and painkillers. After discontinuing the appointments, I had only painkillers left. Usually, if I ran out of those, I would have taken the Adderall as a replacement to “motivate.” This was no longer an option.

I went to many doctors to get legal narcotics. Out of the five physicians, not one educated me on the risks of dependence taking pain pills, Benzos, and Amphetamines. The grim reality is in some cases, the doctors do not inform you of risks because they intend the patient to rely on the drug. The drug education I received in middle school, resulted in piquing my interest in using as well as educating me on how drugs looked, and what they felt like when consumed.

A month into my rapid halt of Adderall, I got to the point where I didn’t have a buffer to my next pain pill script. The brought on my first opioid withdrawal symptoms, I didn’t sleep, my legs felt like I had restless leg syndrome, I was anxious, and had cold sweats. I thought I had the flu, but that didn’t explain every symptom I had. I pondered why but never made the connection of that opioid withdrawal was the cause. I trusted the doctors who prescribed these medications would have made me aware of the risks.

I searched for what was wrong with me and started to express this to those who were my acquaintances. Multiple people told me I was experiencing was “dope sickness.” Not having any idea what that was, and never having used heroin before, I became very defensive because I had looked down on people who used heroin and crack and put them in the category of people with diseases who couldn’t get any lower.

Once I came to terms with that and felt what it’s like to be dope sick, I began pills on the street and it didn’t matter how much or what pain killers they were. I didn’t want to feel dope sick ever again and lived in constant fear of running out of my script and not able to find any pills. Since I was slinging drugs on the side, I had enough money to buy in bulk. My supply only lasted so long before searching for more. There would be weeks I could not find any pills, yet I was always contemplating alternate ways of obtaining more pills.

I had used up all the tricks I had to get my script before it was due to be filled. For years I had the chase for pills going; filing police reports saying someone stole my purse with my prescription in it or going to emergency rooms saying I was in chronic pain or having a toothache. Since hospitals in Illinois kept close tabs on what prescriptions people fill and how soon they filled them, I could not keep going to the same emergency rooms or pharmacies, so I switched up where I went.

At this point, I was beyond fed up, drained from the chase, sick of the struggle, and going through withdrawal multiple times was not ideal. I was tired of the mixture of pills I would take and started feeling sick every time I would swallow the obnoxious amounts of them, a hundred Norcos a day, if not more. Sometimes fifty at a time in one consumption. While I searched the constant high, what it took to stay there was no longer fun. 

Read Part Three