The death of hope

Now see, this is why I say that hope isn’t my friend and frankly hurts more than helps. I know people hate when I say stuff like that, but frankly, usually they have the things I once had hope for.

I’m stopping taking Bup/Nal.

Yep. Frankly I kind of wish I’d never taken it to start with, because now I know what things could be like, if I was a different person. I know what it’s like to live with a 4 on the pain scale instead of a 7, to have a bit more of chance to do the things I want, to fall asleep and wake up without stabbing pain, hell, to simply fall asleep and know that if I wake up I’ll be able to fall back to sleep. It was damned nice when it lasted, and I will miss it.

So why am I stopping if it was working that well, no doubt you are thinking. I can’t live with the side effects or how Bup/Nal interacts with damn near everything else. Believe me, I struggled with this decision. I muscled it out for a couple of months to see if things got better.

Bup/Nal blows my anxiety out of the water, at least double as bad as it’s ever been , and makes it almost impossible for me to tell if how I’m feeling is real, or anxiety. I have NEVER had anxiety this bad, no matter what messed up crap was happening in my life, and in the past it’s rarely interfered with me knowing what’s real and what is anxiety. Yes, there is medication I can take for anxiety, but I’m already on something that has it’s own intolerable side effect, and even if it didn’t I can’t raise the amount I’m taking. Bup/Nal does not play well with a huge number of medications, but none so bad as how it interacts with anxiety and depression meds. You can’t mix it with anything could drop your heart rate and yes I know it will interact poorly with me, because one of the meds I am taking was upped, and my heart rate dropped.

I’ve come to realize there are some situations that have been happening the last few months, that were driven by anxiety, and I couldn’t tell in the slightest. So how can I know if there is something actually wrong with me, or if it’s all in my head? What do you do about that? K will ask if I’m sure something isn’t my anxiety, and I won’t be able to answer. What if it is a real problem, and I’m telling myself it has to be my anxiety? I could accidentally kill myself, and knowing that makes everything worse.

When you take as many different types of meds as I am, you do tend to worry that you could accidentally overdose and kill yourself. Bup/Nal interacts so poorly with other stuff, that I can’t help but worry that I’ll end up in deep crap. Plus near as I can tell this med for this use is so uncommon that most doctors know almost nothing about it…so I can’t trust that a doctor won’t prescribe me something I shouldn’t tale.

Yes, I have to live in the body I’ve found myself in, but even more than that I have to live in my brain…and I can’t do this, I can’t live like this.

I agonized over this for a month, but I’ve known almost the whole time that I would have to stop taking it, I just didn’t want to make a knee jerk reaction.

Thankfully I saw the less intense of the two doctors at my pain management. The other one is the one who put me on Bup/Nal, and I know she would have argued with me, and frankly at this point I want done with this as quickly as possible. He was very sympathetic and understanding and completely understood my issues. At one point, while I explained all the various issues I had and why they were problems, he asked me why the other doctor even put me on the med. I didn’t have a real answer. Not really, the truth is because she pushes and pushes and is constantly trying to get you off the pain meds. That and that she was blinded by other success she’s had and didn’t bother to look up with else I was on. The nicer doc actually got up at the end of my appointment and came over to sort of rub my back in sympathy, he’s never done that before.

So over the next month I will be slowly weaning off yet another medication. What will I be on after this? No idea, nothing at this point, by choice. I’ve been on these types of meds so long I frankly have no idea what my baseline is and I want to know. Plus I am just tired of the whole cycle of this crap. I’m over being on pain meds, over every lass part of it and I’d rather be on nothing at this point. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. So wish me luck that this weaning goes well, and that my base line isn’t so horrible that I have to start all this BS over again.