From: noise <.net.au> Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: Re: Naltrexone: how you start on it. Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1998 10:39:48 +0800 SkrewThem wrote: > im looking for a good rehab center or service , but every place that offers > naltrexone makes u be a part of a program , where u have to dedicate a big > chunk of time into rehab with such pointless shit such as group therapy, NA, > etc (these never worked for me before, i hate group therapy). are there any > good valid ways to be on a detox program without being dedicated to an ongoing > program in the NY area? i just want outpatient scripts for meds such as > klonodin and sleeping pills for the acute withdrawal, and then later on to > naltrexone. seems like such a scenario is not possible here without being > referred to a full time rehab program. That's a pain, that is. Over here (remember I'm in Australia) you don't have to do all that, though I've heard either Sydney or Melbourne naltrexone programs make you do that shit. I agree, all that crystal- gazing new-age bullshit is a waste of good oxygen. All they made me do was promise to dry out for a few days before-hand, and even if I hadn't they would have started me off anyway and just let me get sick, and the doctors are there to handle problems as they come up. Here, what they want you to do is start the program toot-sweet, not waste time with therapy etc. coz they know you'll be using in the meantime when you could be taking the pills. That's why it must cost so much less here: no protected-community detox, group meetings etc (unless you ask for it). The cost here covers all that shit if you want it, but they understand that most don't. If I ran off and stopped taking my pill and started using again, then I'm welcome to come back and be re-treated, that's part of what you pay for. See it's a clinical trial drug in this country, and each program in each city is started by usually one enterprising doctor who has put the program together the way they think is going to work. Looks like the Perth guy here is pretty sensible. If they stall you with all this therapy bullshit, they're just delaying you from getting the treatment you want IMO. Perhaps you could just go to a GP and discuss it with him/her one-to-one? All the meds etc they gave me once I'd already started the naltrexone, that's when you're really going to need them, the real detox and recovery starts once you've finished with hammer, of course. See, you can tell the doctor you're ready, made up your mind you want to stop using and have researched your own treatment, that should impress the right doctor and maybe they'll cut to the chase and prescribe it for you. I sought out doctors here who specialise in addiction cases and got all the good advice from them. Clonidine, temazepam to get to sleep, valium etc, yes you'll need them, but for me I just started the program and dealt with the shit as it came up. Because of the local laws no doctors except those who are involved in the trial can prescribe it for you, maybe different in your part of the world. I believe it's prescribed for alcoholism too in USA so maybe the right doctor can just give you the script and some good advice. Now I can't be fucked with group therapy, NA meetings etc either, but I do like to go to the clinic and talk with them about it. They tell me what I can expect to happen to me and I tell them how I'm doing, they suggest ways to handle shit and off I go home again. I mean I can't REALLY do it alone, when you think about it I do have to go through some farty crap, I mean I've got to be witnessed crushing and taking it every day, but I like that, it keeps me honest and makes me stick to it coz this guy will kick my arse if I even think about going back on hammer. Tell ya what, refer your GP to the program and research I'm on: Australian Medical Procedures Research Foundation (AMPRF), 65 Townshend Road, Subiaco, Western Australia 6008 Australia, ask for a copy of the book "Understanding the treatment of heroin addiction". It's full of referrences to the research that started the program, including years of published stuff from all around the world. Apparently, Israel has used the stuff for 23 years now. I'll keep posting what I know about it, maybe it'll help. Best wishes, 8) noise. ================================================================= From: noise <.au> Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: Naltrexone: phase two (the dry-out) Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1998 11:02:15 +0800 Having been treated (instant detox with narcan) and started off on the program, then the real hassles set in - withdrawal and recovery. When starting the program they want you to dry out for 7-14 days before. This is so you don't get sick when they narcan you. Now I am one lucky little fucker, the best I managed was 48 hours and I was fine on the day. One woman was sick as hell after 5 days of drying out and still had to do it tough, the stuff made her even worse. Poor thing, but she still had the guts to go through it and now she's a big success story. There's talk that says naltrexone makes you sick. No. It doesn't. Drying out from hammer does, naltrexone forces you to do that. So from the first day I had my naltrexone, I have never attempted to use again. The stuff works good! I had two weeks of nasty symptoms: diarrhea from hell (real bad), couldn't sleep hardly at all, ups and downs mood swings, passing out, aches and pains, and all the time I'm working at least 40 hours a week. Now THAT was hell. And I was so tired, just exhausted, yet couldn't sleep. After a week they agreed valium and other toy shit was not going to do the trick for me so they 'scribed me temazepam, two per night. That stuff works good, and in worse cases they say take 2 of these and 2 mellerill as well (especially for bif hefty patients). They prescribed me all the benzos I've ever heard of and then some, plus clonidine (this stuff is great), quinine bisulphate, and others I couldn't even afford to buy, forget what. It's all relief for the symptoms, nothing more. They just let you heal naturally and the naltrexone means you won't be using while you recover, so you succeed in drying out. They can't give you any opiates to help you because you're "immune" to them on ntx. Also, they started me on antidepressants, they say they do this to almost everyone on the program. That's another story but let's just say they are working well for me. During the entire first two months I was HANGING for just one more shot, c'mon man, just one won't hurt? But no, I stuck to the pill in the end and sooner or later all that shit started to pass over. It's crucial in those early days to be rigid about the program. That's why the carer system, so someone ensures you take it. Now, at 3 months, I'm starting to forget all about hammer. This is a GOOD THING IMO. Every now and then it hits me, and I miss the old days, like when I see my friends I used to use with and remember the fun we had and how we supported each other through our habits. I work at the speedway (y'know, clay track, big scary cars with a wing on the roof) and my ex- goes there...we used to hide in the back room shooting up and indulging in other hedonistic practices while I'm supposed to be working. Ah, them were the days... so when she showed up last night at work, I almost cried remembering how much I loved it all. Made me start hanging out again. But naltrexone helps a great deal with both mental and physical cravings, I'd never have had the guts to stay clean this long without it. And it would have hurt a lot more if it weren't for the stuff. 3 months now and my depression is lifting, I've got money back in my pocket, I don't have a reputation for nodding off and drooling over the mixing desk during gigs like I used to, people are prepared to sign me up for work again, not just my old boss who can only GET junkie reprobates who need the money like me to work for him. I'm getting the pay-off now and it feels good. New girlfriend too (bg). She wants her 2 best friends to sign up for the program and I want to try to talk them into it. OK, that's enough for now, I think I'll next write up about some of the info they give you that describes the research behind the treatment. Seeya tomorrow. 8) noise =================================================================== Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: Naltrexone: how you start on it. Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 14:37:18 +0800 Okey Dokey, well I've been bugging everyone for a while saying I'm on naltrexone and I think it's great. I received some emails asking me for my experiences with it and there have been a couple of posts asking the same thing. Sorry to those that emailed me, my stupid email account doesn't work. Just doesn't. Note my new email address: you can contact me there if you would like. So briefly I'll relate how it works and how it affected me. Having realised my heroin problem was way out of control and I just couldn't stop no matter what I tried, I eventually made the decision and took some friends advice, went to see the good doctor for the good oil. After a counselling session or two where they assess your problems, they admitted me to the program and made some effort to ensure I started it. They want you on it, not taking smack. Naltrexone is an opiate blocker: you take it and it binds to all the opiate receptors throughout you body and competes for space (and wins) on them against heroin, morphine, codeine etc. So you take an opiate and it does nothing to you. The idea is, when you know you can't get stoned, you don't try. They use a simple form of rapid detox before you start. If you have residual opiates in your system, the naltrexone acts like narcain only many times more powerful and it would make you very sick. So they use a super-dose of narcain to flush you out. If you haven't dried out, this is going to hurt. They just make you do it anyway. Then, once the narcain has done its thing, they give you the first of your naltrexone, which then makes you feel better as it gives those poor crying receptors something to hang on to. You go to "treatment" on the day, where this is done under supervision of 2 doctors, a nurse and interested social-worker types. There was also a first-year medical student watching. She was SHITTING herself, probly never met a junkie in her life and had NO idea how to handle being in a room with 8 of them. Poor girl! She was cute too, they lie you down on a bed for the narcain, and I was check- ing out her body with lustful eyes pretty badly. Having observed this, they gave me a big dang of sedatives (some form of liquid benzo I think...Kontac, what would this be?) Comes in a glass snap-the-top-off ampoule thingy. They fit a valve-thing into your arm and use that to pump you up with the tranq and the narcain. Then you sit with the other patients and they observe you for reactions. We were all pretty dozy, 8 of us. One girl got ill and had to crash on the floor, they set up beds and blankets because you get very cold. She had been the week before for treatment, got the narcain, bolted out the door and ran off toward the train station and wouldn't come back. Then, there she was the next week for another try. Good girl! Another woman after being narcained got ill and started crying and getting hysterical, and ran for it too. I hope she tried again. One guy obviously didn't want to be there. His two VERY concerned looking parents had obviously roped him into the program. His kicked and fought and wanted to escape, but he'd had a big taste that morning (idiot!) and was too pinned to fight. The clinic staff just sort of thought "well fuck ya, this is going to hurt and it's your fault buddy, here it comes." and did him anyway. He cried for a minute, collapsed in a 10%-conscious heap and just didn't have the strength to fight anymore. Noise's prediction: this guy runs away from home, never takes his pill again, parents are mortified, he won't come home, maybe dead by now. If they narcain you then you escape, what's the first thing you'll do? Go and get on, for sure. Trouble is, the narcain has removed ALL your tolerance...you're probably less tolerant than the day you had your first taste. So you end up dead from half the dose you ever took in the first place. So don't go there until you really want their help. The two girls and this guy aside, the other 5 of us there for treatment that day were fine, me i was happy as larry. Actually, we had a good time because they've given us a big IV shot of sedative, I even talked them into letting me shoot myself up with it (i'm a pretty good injector IMHO). There were the 5 old junkies, nodding off in a room together, just like old times! We'd wake up, see who else was awake, and ask "how ya doin'?" and mostly every one was OK. One guy got very sick, but he managed not to get distressed. He fell down in a heap, and just lay there doing it tough. Not a single word of complaint from him, good man. His mother was there with him, just giving total love and support. Wish I could even TELL my folks, the lucky fella. She comforted him and would only give us confident, happy looks: here was her beautiful young son, being healed, sure doing it pretty hard but happy about it none the less. You could see a great burden rise up off her shoulders and float out the window, I loved watching it. The rest of us just sat there, nodding off on this lovely tranq. stuff and chatting, they gave us a tray of sandwiches and munchies, some orange juice and they come and talk to you, nice and friendly. I though it was excellent. We chatted happily between nods. 3 hours later, I'm all narcained up and I've had my first full dose of naltrexone. I felt 100% fine, just sleepy. Friend drove me home, I passed out on the lounge for the day until I had to go to work. The clinic told me, "you're just going to have to forget about work for a few days, you need time to yourself." Sorry, no can do, I'm in debt from drugs and I cannot afford to drop a single shift, so I went to work. That's when I started to feel like hell. I worked from 7pm to 2am that night and nearly passed out lots of times. But I felt HAPPY about it. The program works on a patient-primary carer system. You need someone where you trust each other. The carer's responsibility is to kick your butt into taking the pill each and every day, and to ensure you crush it up. Swallowing it whole is cheating, it has to absorb in the upper part of your stomach. You can cheat and put vitamin pills or something in your pill-bottle and take them and get your signature, do this for long enough and you can go back and use. To me this is dumb: why PAY to be on naltrexone and then cheat on it? I put it off signing up until I was 100% convinced I was over using smack. Every single day I have to be witnessed taking it and then I get a signature on my form which is my legal proof I'm taking it. Then you have blood tests regularly...to make sure you are not cheating and that you have naltrexone metabolytes in you...legal proof you are not using, so if anyone doesn't believe you're not clean you can prove it with good legal signed documents. Now I just go to the clinic every pay-day and buy a week's supply of tabs plus one or two spare in case I can't make it on time the following week. Next thing you know, you've started. One day I just asked my friend to take me there (this is the guy who has agreed to go carer for me) and make me go do it. That's just what I needed, couldn't do it alone. Then I'm into it, and never looked back. I had all the classic symptoms of withdrawal: headaches, nasusea, sleeplessness, aches and pains, the lot. Oh and diarrhea beyond anything I have ever experienced, several times a day for 2 weeks. Oh the pain, the discomfort. But I was HAPPY about this, it meant I was healing. It's Very good with your recovery, the stuff on your receptors makes it much more tolerable. Also, in your head, you know there's no point wasting your money on hammer so you kind of just don't bother. They put me on anti-depressants which are working well, and gave me a shit-load of benzos and stuff to get me through, clonidine is another drug to go for, it reduces the dilation/expansion of the arteries that can cause your organs to go hay-wire and relieves just about all the symptoms. For about a month or more I was saying to myself "oh God I would kill for just ONE MORE TASTE" but it gets you through the day, then you know that the next day will be that little bit better. I'm now three months into it, it's working extremely well, I haven't cheated on it once. Some guys tested me offering me some good morph to play with, and the new me shone through and said "nah, you keep it, you'd be wasting it on me." It was a set-up, a test, and it was easy to pass with flying colours thanks to the little pills. I've still got "implement-osis" though, meaning I'm still hooked on the needle ritual, not the drug. But as time goes by, I'm blissfully forgetting. It just gets better and better as you go, by about a month or two into it you really start to feel the grey clouds lifting out of your head. That's enough for now; next post I'll describe the follow-up treatments. Wish me luck, Good luck to you guys too, remember naltrexone is an option if you're serious about getting off the gear. 8) noise ===================================================================== From: noise Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: Frogshit or what, as usual. Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 16:39:28 +0800 What have we got here...hmmm let's see... NOTHING. Fuck this naltrexonew shit, it's taken away my best friend. I've got a job, a car (well a shitheap but I own it), what else? Diddly squat, zip, zoot, less than something, not a lot, a grand total of a large round digit that comes just before 1. Why did I get on smack? So I had something to FEEL! Why did I stop? Couldn't afford it no more. What do I FEEL now? You guessed it... Nothing entertains me any more, except sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now it's just sex and rock and roll, fuck naltrexone, I'm gonna get on as soon as today's pill wears off. Fuck this shit as far as I can jab it up the date. Love-life? Forget it. What a fucking crock of frogshit that crap turned out to be. What a fucking lie. "You'll meet someone, there's someone for everyone, rah rah rah" etc. Stop giving me that fuckihng bullshit, world, there ain't no such fucking thing. Love schmove, what a fucking crock. "Try and maintain a positive outlook, it's all in your head. It'll be OK". Oh yeah? When? How? I don't fucking see it. At least when I was on smack I could make myself feel good. I want it back. Why the hell did I stop? What the fuck was I thinking, I took away my own favourite thing. What a great fat stupid fucked up dumb idea that turned out to be, now life is just back to how it was when I had reasons to jack the shit up. I miss it, I want it back. The only reason I stopped was I couldn't afford it no more. I'm going to fucking Thailand and losing my watch, clothes, keys, wallet, the lot,l I don't want the fucked up plastic crap of this world no more. It's cheap over there, I've already shown I can do shit to get money, I'll find a way. Fuck this trying to do the right thing, where the hell does that get me? You know those little wheels that mice run around in? They run and run and run until they're exhausted, then they get off and crash, feeling fucked, then they wake up, drop a turd, drink some water, and they do it again. Later, they get old and die. Give a mouse some heroin today, do your bit to make it happy for 5 minutes. I got on smack because I wanted to die. I wanted to die because life just doesn't cut iot for me. When there's a thing you want and you can't get it, what do you do? Do you keep trying to get it? What if you just keep on not finding it? Try again? Nuh. How does it feel to lose a race? Do you say "I lost" or do you say "hmm I think I'll come back next week and lose again, since history proves that's all that every fucking happens." When it doesn't woprk, give it up, if you raise your hopes to high you've only got further to fall. When you force a situation, try to TAKE or aquire what you want, it doesn't work. So you can't do that. So what do you do? Well what the fuck CAN you do? Nothing. So you do NOTHING, what do you get? NOTHING. Nothingness leads to nothingness, even when you get SOMETHING it fucks off then you have NOTHING again. So you have NOTHING, you want SOMETHING, you try again, NOTHING happens, leaving you with NOTHING. All I want now is sex and smack, there is NOTHING else worth my even waking up for. Sex and smack or both feel good, friendships etc are great but they're NOT ENOUGH ANYMORE, nothing else feels THAT good, where's my wallet, what was that phone number again? "Sieze the day! Take what you want! Go get it!" Nuh. I tried that over and over and what have I got to show for it? Diddly jack fucking shit, squat, fuck-all as usual. And that, my friends, is just how it goes for some people. That's what I got in my lucky-dip at the fairgrounds. Others just won't understand. You pricks have got love, you've got friends, you've got stimulation, your brains are switched on by all the good things that happen to you....how the fuck did you wankers get so lucky? Ahh fuck off. ==================================================================== Ed. Note: Noise appears to have stuck with the program for several moths following this post. Until... ==================================================================== Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 22:09:26 +0800 From: noise Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: Shit do I need to tell someone this... My life has degenerated into a sordid web of deception, lies and secrets and I have utterly no motivation to continue to take part in the world as I understand it. One of these days the bubble is seriously going to burst and I will bid you all goodbye the other side. The longer it looks like taking for things to change, the sooner that's going to happen too, and so far progress is zip. > > What? What's going on? Shit, I thought you sounded funny last time you > posted. Killing yourself is not a good idea. You're way too smart and > nice a person to be better out of this world than in it, as far as the > rest of the world is concerned. As far as you're concerned, I can only > speak for my own experience and say I'm glad I didn't do it all those > many times I seriously considered it. Tell us what's happening, man. Geez I'm glad you asked me that. Well here it comes... I have relapsed pretty badly into using again. I've stayed very quiet about it and I didn't want to mention it in ADH but the time has come. So many people wrote to me and said they were not only pleased for me staying clean, but also considered that as an example of success with naltrexone for themselves. Well I've now found out what happens when you don't stick with the program. Once on that stuff, you MUST take it until you're convinced you will never use again. And then still keep taking it. I've now let those people down. The best I can hope for is that they will see this as a warning and draw from it the knowledge that it takes more than a tablet to solve your drug problems, it takes fortitude of an uncommon order. I let mine slip, and then I semi-deliberately reverted to using. These tablets do work, but not if you don't maintain complete determination. And CONCENTRATION.. you have to watch out for yourself and ask yourself how you're doing and how to make it better, or your urges could take over again. NOBODY DO WHAT I DID AND START USING AGAIN! After you've been on these things, you have NO tolerance and I'm literally very lucky indeed to have survived that first relapse dose. Tiny amounts can kill you once you're system's tolerance has been reset by taking naltrexone. I want you folks to know that if you're on naltrexone, STICK WITH IT. Otherwise, suddenly you can find yourself saying "hey.. I haven't taken my pill for a while, now I can get on again." The whole idea with naltrexone is to stay on it doggedly for a long time until you're totally out of the woods, and I bailed out too early. Now I find myself with a shiney new three-month habit and I'm trying to dry out. But my problem is this - I'm already hooked again and I have a lot of commitments to meet. If I show up hanging out at my gigs or at work (at the place where my best friend gave me a job), it'll be totally obvious what's going on and I'll lose these jobs, which I am in no position to afford. I don't really want to kill myself, but I keep feeling like I just want to drop right out. I want to get the hell away from where anyone can find me for a few weeks and come back dried out and feeling well. But I've got no opportunity to do that - I simply cannot afford to drop any shifts for financial reasons. And if I pull out of this gig, it won't be there for me to come back to. Plus, this venue has indicated they want me to be their in-house engineer every night they open, which would earn me more per week than any of the full-time positions I've applied for in the past couple of years. So what I do is retreat and hide when I can, sneaking a day or two where I vanish and can hang out in peace, sick as can be, enduring it to get my tolerance down. Then, when I need to work, I get on again so I'm in a fit state to be seen. How this happened started a few months ago. When I hit the exactly 9 months mark since I had my last hit, I told my carer "well! That's a big milestone for me, another month for a total of nine, feeling fine." This carer is one of the guys I live with. His response was "yeah that's great but how do I know you're telling the truth?" He went on to imply that I must be swapping the naltrexone for something else, and that he thought that since I'm a junkie (his words, note the present tense, not past), that'd be just the type of thing I'd do. I got pretty pissed off and I said "THIS is how you can know" and I fetched my most recent blood-test results, showing that I was full to the brim with naltrexone metabolytes (by-products in the body that you get from taking the tablets), and another set that showed my blood to be opiate-free. He then accused me of faking the results. I asked how could I have done that? He said I probably brought in someone else's urine to the tests. "These are BLOOD tests, not urine tests!" I told him, but his reply was "listen, one thing I know about drugs is that once you're a junkie, you're a junkie for life and all junkies are dodgy." I told him he didn't know JACK SHIT about junkies, heroin or addiction, let alone recovery. Every statement I had to tell him that I was clean got me a reply that started with the words "Yeah But..." and ended with yet another scam that he thought I must be pulling. He then told me that's just what junkies are like. Now this guy wakes up at 6am, latest, every day, and drinks hard until he passes out. He only pauses this schedule to go to university. If he;s had too much to drink by 7.30am (which unbelievably, happens all the time) then he catches the bus. So I told him, "Coming from an alcoholic that doesn't exactly convince me you know what you're talking about." Then it got ugly. He told me he'd call the cops to search my room next time I was late with the rent. He also threatened to "dob me in" to everyone I work for, my parents and my girlfriend at the time. I told him he'd better get his facts straight before he tried anything like that. So he walks off muttering "fuckin' junkie, watch your fucking step or I'll get you fucked right up" so I hit him. We had a fight and I won hands down. Next, he demanded I pack my things and find somewhere else to live. I told him no way, HE can fuck off. So to this day 3 months later we both live in the same house and aren't speaking to each other. I hang out with the third guy, Matt. I then decided and told him I was no longer interested in his being my naltrexone carer, and that I'd be taking my doses each day at the clinic instead. THAT pissed him off. He rang up the clinic and told them I was using (which at that stage I wasn't). So basically I never took another tablet, and started using, mainly to spite him. In fact, I hadn't really intended to start again, but some friends wanted to score, which I overheard, and I offered to go do it for them. I got a quarter G, made it into 5 and kept one. I did this a few times until I had a quarter sitting around for myself, which I was planning on selling or giving away. After being called a junkie one more time when I got home, I got REAL pissed off with this guy (Loopy is his name). So I decided to take a shot. It didn't work, it was too soon after my last tablet. This frustrated me and made me more determined to get on. Next day and the day after that I kept hitting up. Nothing happened. My needle fixation had returned and I just wanted to play with them as much as I could. I scored and shot up speed a few times. Finally, 4 days after the last tablet, I wondered if I could finally get stoned, so I bought myself another quarter. This would have been a lethal dose for someone just off naltrexone, so I took only a fraction. ANd I took the same amount again, day after day for 5 days. It was working quite well. I never told anyone else I was doing it... the only other person who knew was the dealer. Soon, I got found out by Matt, who was just back from working up north. He'd been on nalrtexone too before he left, but hadn't taken any while he was away. That made hime very jealous and he started hassling me to score for him. Before I knew it, Matt and I were scoring for each other every day. I haven't paid Loopy any bills or rent for 2 months and it's all gone up my arm instead. He can go fuck himself, but I still can't let him or anyone else actually see the evidence of what I've been up to. And finally, this weekend just gone, I ran right out of resources and opportunities to score. I won't have another cent till next week and I'm stuck with being sick. I am very ashamed of myself for doing this, as it's all so underhanded and sly and deceptive. Matt and I are in it together and it's no good for either of us. WE're making each other do it more, basically, and Loopy has only his suspicions to go on. The bubble is really going to burst, and soon. I'm going to look like hell all this week, at the job-search course, at my gigs and at my day job. And SOME of the people are going to know why without even having to ask. I'm going to be in very deep shit for this very soon. The only way I can avoid a blood test is to drop right out of the naltrexone program, which I don't want to do because I hope as soon as I've not been able to score for a week I will take the tablets again. Every tuesday I get 7 free tablets, worth $7.00 each, and I've now got 3 months worth at one tablet a day hidden in my room. I've kept getting them because I want to start taking them again but I can't stay clean for long enough. I lie to the doctors about being clean, I lie to Loopy as to why I can't pay my bills, I lie to Matt so I can score without having to share it, I'm keeping it secret from my boss and the bands I'm working for, the woman I've started going out with doesn't know either and they're wondering exactly why I'm so incredibly sick every morning at the job-search place. Then a couple of hours into it most days, Matt arrives, has me paged from reception, I go out to talk to him in the car and then I come back inside again, whistling a happy tune and generally feeling a hell of a lot better and looking it too. When a person's hanging out badly, they look like junkies. People always accuse me of being wasted on smack when I'm drying out (because they assume looking so haggard means I'm wasted), and when I'm dosed up I look normal and healthy and happy again and everyone says "wow, you're looking so much better"... back when I wasn't hiding it, people would say to me "I'm so proud of you for getting clean, you look well again", not realising the reason I DO look well again is that I'm stoned. So I get stoned these days so that I don't LOOK stoned. Ha. This is NOT going well and I really don't think I'm going to get away with it for mych longer. I'm going to look like hell at work all this week and I doubt I'll make it through the gigs without collapsing. And the odd person here and there at these venues knows I've been hooked before so they'll know straight away what my problem is. I'm feeling extremely dire about this and I have no idea what I'm going to do about it. I'm obviously going to have to stick it out and stay clean, but in doing so I could get blown wide open and lose everything. Not only that, but I made it to 6 days clean a couple of weeks ago, and then Matt appeared offering me a shot, which I coudln't resist. He talks me into it so that he's got someone to go halves with. Yes I know, Matt and I need to be separated and what the fuck am I doing living with Loopy. Well here;'s the good news... Matt's checking into residential rehab. later this week for 10 days and Loopy just got paid back a lot of money owed to him so he;s off my case. That's my window of opportunity to dry out and get ready for naltrexone again. But frankly, I no longer have the will to tolerate the sickness and I think I mught just be too far gone to have the fortitude to stick it out. That and the general frogshit between me and Loopy is making me very tense and pissed off all the time, and I'm simply not getting myself successfully into the right frame of mind to get clean. I'm totaly obsessed with heroin again and it's like a war between the two hemispheres of my brain. I feel sick all day and night and it hurts all over. It's like watching someone else when I go and score. It's like being at a pantomime, yelling at the characters "don't do it!" but relentlessly the leading character just goes ahead and does it. That character is me. I've woken up thinking I dreamed about scoring and getting on, then I look at my arm and realise I'm mistaking reality for a dream. Matter of fact, since I'm also lacking my anitdepressants, I'm experiencing some very strange and wierd things going on in my head and I actually mistake dreams and reality for each other all the time... things I think I remember from real life turn out to be dreams and vice versa. I'm getting so panicky I'm getting irrational at times and it feels like I'm going mad, in a not-so-pleasant way. So if anyone can suggest a way to buy myself some time off work, or if you happen to know any good sound engineers in Perth, let me know, so I can go and sweat it out for a week or two at the detox centre. But if I end up losing my work, I'm facing very real bankruptcy and my reputation will end up on the scrapheap with me. I'm hanging on by a thread, hiding my addiction as best I can, but I'm right out of resources. It's going to be very hard to get through this without everybody finding out what the hell's been going on. I'm glad you asked me Harry, I really needed to tell someone other than myself. ==================================================================== Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 06:31:28 +0800 From: noise Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: Naltrexone stalwart falls off wagon Well having realised that I have a problem, ie I'm hooked on smack again, I've signed up for methadone maintenance. ANd with the money I'll save on smack I've upgraded my computer. Bought a K6-3 450 and I want to overclock it to 500mhz, on an Epox ep58-mvp3c-m. Can anyone help me regarding what voltages and BIOS versions settings to use? It's a 2.4v chip and the m'board only gets as close as either 2.2v or 2.8. At 2.2 it won't fire up and at 2.8 it still thinks it's a 450mhz (both cases when I've set the multiplier to indicate the CPU is 500mhz). What newsgroup should I ask in to get some help with that? Anyway, I've been doing so many opiates lately it'd keep me out of work for a month trying to dry out enough to take naltrexone again and I can't afford to lose the work. I can no longer afford the tablets or the fees for the naltrexone joint anyway, matter of fact I can't afford any more smack either so I'm going with MMT, I have to wait all this weekend for the red tape to be done and then I can get my first dose on Tuesday , they only let you start on 25 but I don't feel too keen on raising it much higher than that. So I'm pleased about it because I can be productive, continue working and get liberated from the need to get on everyday just so I'm in a fit state to be seen at work. More some other time. I've been iup all night shooring up and tinkering with my computer and the ramifications of all this are a little beyond me right now. I'm pinned, tired and confused, and while there are a great many posts directed to me I would very much love to reply to, I think I'll save that for tomorrow. Lynx especially, you know what buddy? You and I if we were the same age would probably have so much in common it'd be very scarey. Hope you're doing OK buddy, I hope shit isn't getting to you because you're a very intelligent and experienced person. When you're not full of loathing for everyone else in ADH it's always good value to read your posts, I reckon you've got a hell of a lot of wisdom to share that you just don't trust us with yet. I sure will write to you soon, but let me just hang on till I get dosed up. With love to everyone from noise