So, I just realized that it has been three months without an update and I feel really bad about it. I am going to try to post twice a week for the rest of the month since the number of people reading has increased as well.
Anyways, I hope that everyone is doing well during the pandemic. I remember when the news broke about it, methadone message boards were flooded with panicked questions about what we will do when the clinics shut down. I remembered talking to my husband about sending him to go find me some methadone so that I could function if martial law ever came about and the country went up in flames. I feel like everyone has had some kind of doomsday conversation with their spouse at some point. In all reality, I'd probably just be in for a hell of a bad time.
On another less ominous note, I am weeks away from finishing my medical billing degree! I never thought that I would be doing something so....boring? I don't want to offend anyone who does this as a career because I will be too, but I just really can't seem to focus on anything in class. It might not be as bad for other students but I'm convinced that years and years of IV drug abuse has ruined parts of my brain. I have had trouble focusing and remembering things that I've read so I've really been struggling during this whole program. I miss working on an ambulance but that was in another life.
My one and only relapse took place about four weeks after I had quit using. I was with my partner at the time (he's now my husband) and we went on an overdose call. It was for a girl that had gotten high as she was getting ready to take a shower and was found by her mother. She had gotten a nice hotel for her and her daughter that weekend. Her mother had no idea that she was an addict. The mom looked like my mom and the overdose girl looked like me ten years ago. She even put together two shots for herself. This was identical to many of my setups back in the day. I would have two shots ready for myself, one before my bath and one after. Looking back, it's a wonder that I never drowned in the bathtub. I would shoot up sitting cross legged on the toilet in my towel and then go and basically take a nap in the tub. Then, when I got woken up because I had been in there forever, I would do my other one.
Anyways, we show up to this call and the girl is sitting on the toilet in a towel with the fire department ventilating her so that she can breathe and I'm looking at the loaded syringe on the bathroom counter. I thought that I had been doing so well in my sobriety but seeing that girl being thrown back to life and then seeing that loaded syringe gave me the deepest sense of longing. I know that it doesn't compare very well but imagine being on day two of a low carb diet and then having the world's most beautiful cheesecake set in front of you. This cheesecake has white chocolate shavings and caramel drizzle and there is a huge serving fork waiting for you to dive in. Now, imagine that feeling and multiply it by a thousand. That was what caused me to relapse. I wanted to be that girl feeling so marvelous and warm again, forgetting the years of hell that I just escaped.
So, I relapsed. I used that very night. When we left the call (the girl was fine, they gave her narcan and took her to the hospital), that was all that I thought about and my brain wasn't calm until I was sticking a needle in my arm in front of an ex boyfriend. The joke was definitely on me because I had been on methadone for about five months at that point. I believe that I was on about 90 milligrams and the opiate receptors in my brain were full from my medication, so when I shot up........I made myself tired. It was the equivalent of taking a handful of Tylenol PM and taking a shower in the deepest guilt ever manufactured by some guy in Detroit. It was not worth it.
That night, I kept it a secret from the man that I loved and went on to marry. I fell asleep next to him hoping that he didn't notice I was a little off. I kept my secret for about a year until I broke down and told him. He was sad and told me that he wished I felt safe enough to tell him back then. All that I accomplished was self loathing. That was the last time I used.....and that was four years ago next month.
So yeah, I will happily take the monotony of medical billing over EMS any day.
