Expert: Heath Woods - 8/30/2006

Question
I am middle aged female presently using 80-160 mgs of oxycontin daily.  I have a friend who is prescribed them for cancer and he hates them so he gives them to me.  I was on 20 vicodins daily (internet shopping) and now have graduated to these (the devil)  I desperately want to quit but no one in my family knows.  I need them now just to be normal. I work full time. I can manage to get down to one a day but it takes awhile (I have tried it) but I get so sick, I start again.  Should I contact a local doctor for suboxone? What to do?  I can't enter rehab, my husband and kids don't know.  Kids are married and gone but my grandkids are always around.  I need my life back.

Answer
I started off the exact same way, taking 3 lortabs a day, then 10, then 20, then 10mg oxy a day to 80 to 320 all the way to 1400mgs daily just so i would not start to feel withdrawals after 4 hours! If you do not stop now you are going to be dead or in prison before you find out it is to late!!!!!
Nobody knew i was addicted as well, I WISH THEY WOULD HAVE KNOWN!! They can help you...you CANNOT stop or 'maintain' a small dosage of this shi*. would you rather have them find out on their own? THIS is what would be bad!! I used to think everybody would cast me to hell for eternity if they knew what was going on! I WAS WRONG, You WILL NOT believe me right now, but your family WILL BE THERE FOR YOU!!!!!!! They will have a newfound respect for you because you ARE BRAVE and asked them for THEIR help. remember you are not asking for their opinions on drugs and when you sit the hole group together they will keep your announcement confidential if you ask them to! I am about to cry and have goose bumps remembering what my families reactions were. mind you my dad was a Marine Corp drill instructor. I told them, I sat them all down in the living room, after inviting them all over (make sure you tell them its for a reason,they must be there). I sat their and told them what was going on, what has been going on, i told them about doctor shopping and spending $1600 a week on the shi*, I told them EVERYTHING...)YOU MUST DO THE SAME)...I could not even look them in the eyes...to this day their response amazes me and gives me a natural high! I ended with, "will you help me?" and it went silent for a minute as i cried (i was thinking the worse)then I heard a voice say "son, I will carry you through each and every step if you want me too, I would die for you" i had never heard him talk with that kind of affection before! then i heard my wife say "we will get you through this no matter how difficult it is" , my dear mom then said, "I thank you for having the COURAGE to ask us for our help and of course you will get it" I later found out that she knew, i guess mother's know everything, My brother said" I wasn't put on this earth to 'judge' you, i'm here to love you!".....I couldn't believe it !!!
Besides some of your family already have a suspistion, it just that drug attacks believe they can hide anything! You MUST do the same way!!
YOU MUST HAVE PROFESSIONAL HELP!!!
Do not worry about your job, i hope your life is more important to you than a job (just like your life is more important to your grandkids than the fact you abuse drugs). DO NOT FEEL ASHAMED or ALONE!! Opiates are blind, they attack everybody the 1st time they take it and make you remember that feeling for life. I went to detox ashamed and embarrassed, thinking well, hell, i'm a teacher and a high school coach with a graduate degree, what am i doing in here with these uneducated 'street' people? I quickly found out i was sitting next to a doctor and a captain on the local police force!! You ARE NOT ALONE!!
please do not continue the same path you are on now. it is the exact same path I took. please take a short cut through my path and get into recovery today. I took opiates for so long, i used to wonder what it would feel like to be clean...I swear to you it is unbeleivable what it feels like when YOUR endorhins (not pharmacuticals) start firing again! It only took me a week in detox, when one night i woke up at 2:30 in the morning and wante d to go jogging. it feels like a cross between the first time you kissed and the 1st time you rode a roller coaster!!!
I am completely serious...i used to think,"nobody does as much as i do, they can't help me, I will die if they tried to take me off this drug, etc." but after rehab, i CANNOT BELIEVE HOW EASY IT WAS and i was kicking myself in the butt for not doing it sooner!

compromise, (tell your family, that's a given)---
   just find a 'medically supervised detox facility", a lot of nice rehabs have these facilities in their own facility.you can check yourself out at anytime, but try to make it thru detox! find one where they give you Librium and Catapress (clonidine). you will still get diarrhea but i SWEAR TO YOU you DO NOT feel the severe withdrawals like stopping on your own! you
'just' feel uncomfortable at first, you will sleep the first 3 days, which we know is the worst part, its better everyday after that.
   Please do this, do not worry about your job, tell boss the truth or take vacation time, i don't care, the point is it is against FEDERAL LAW for your employer to fire you for going to get help for your problem. see you are protected by the..Americans With Disabilities Act!! we have what is classified as a "pre-existing disease" therefore it is a disability! they fire you==sue their butts!
Thank you for your Q, I hope my answer helps a little, remember YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE YOUR FIRST STEP TOWARD RECOVERY by "wanting" to change..that 'chase' is terrible isn't it.
please contact me again with additional Q's, complete  helped save my life so I can help save yours!!
good luck!!
               be BRAVE,
                        Steven Woods