u/Sad_View5940

Back into shimmy, very beginning of the official SBD track, is the absolute personification of the term “locked in”. that’s it. It’s just…so good

I’m 40 now, and struggled with addiction since i was 15. OxyContin was all the rage among my white suburban teenage friends. Being as I grew up in Baltimore, heroin was always in arms reach, and a “logical” progression, and sure enough, at age 18 I tried heroin for the first time. Needless to say, it destroyed everything. Homelessness, legal issues, medical issues, infections from IV use, a couple OD’s, etc. Tons of rehabs (11 inpatient and about the same outpatient). I’d use for a period, then get sober for some time. I managed to stay sober for 5 years from age 22-27. I was completely broken in my early 20’s, but fortunately, I was still young and I was able to bounce back and get healthy again. BUT, I had NO IDEA the level of hell that I would go on to experience due to my addiction…

At age 27 I moved back to Baltimore, from Michigan. I had been living in Michigan for 5 years, working at a rehab and staying sober. I met a girl while there and we dated for a few years while in Michigan. She was a recovering addict as well and a staff member at the rehab. She also had several years sober at that time and we were both feeling very strong in our sobriety. Eventually we decided to move on with our lives and go back to the “real world”. So, I said let’s move to my home town of Baltimore and she agreed.

Within 30 days of being in Baltimore, we relapsed. It was 2013. Only this time was a different. I was older, more mature, able to hold down a good job. I now had resources. I didn’t need to steal and do crazy shit anymore to get it. I simply went to work everyday, on time, busted my ass, like a “normal” person. Only difference is that when I got off of work everyday, I shot heroin all night until it was time for work the next day. This was a new way of using for me. I was used to the “running and gunning lifestyle” of a typical drug fiend, so to speak. Scheming and hustling and such. Not now though…now I had a good job and so did she.

I continued this cycle for a few years. Sure I had money problems of course because I’d have to be filthy rich not to, but we managed to keep a roof over our head and maintain some semblance of a normal life. No one in my life knew that I was using again. NO ONE but my girlfriend and my drug dealer.

Here’s the kicker….this continued for 10 years straight! 10 years, every single day 5-10 injections a day, somehow continuing to hang on to some semblance of a normal life, but always barely hanging on by just the tiniest thread. Months behind on the rent, but never getting evicted, living off of credit cards for food and day to day stuff. But, for some reason, the universe never seemed to deal that “addiction-ending” blow that had always happened in my past. Plenty of close calls and crazy stuff that tend to happen when one is an IV opiate addict, but somehow narrowly avoiding the typical catastrophic events that come with the territory. And so…I continued. On and on, everyday, same routine, slowly killing myself.

By 2016, heroin literally no longer existed in Baltimore. It had been replaced with a new, cheaper, more powerful, fully synthetic version, called fentanyl. It was essentially the same thing, only it was so much more volatile in that it is a much more short-acting opiate, extremely potent, but it is a much, much worse drug in terms of managing and staving off the withdrawal. With heroin, if I had to, I could stay comfortable with an injection every 12 hours or so, but with fentanyl, by 5 hours in, I was already starting to experience the onset of withdrawal. It became harder and harder to maintain, and yet, somehow, I managed to, again, barely pull it off. And, my secret never came out.

By 2019ish, I was 40 lbs below my natural weight, and I think because it happened gradually, it somehow didn’t throw up any major red flags to my family and loved ones. I don’t really know how, honestly.

Around 2021, things really started to get tough. Of course I was dealing with the stress of hiding this secret, and the constant stress of keeping a roof over our heads, and obviously the stress of paying for and acquiring the drugs every day. My girlfriend had the bright idea of trying to essentially trick old wealthy men into giving her money just for being pretty and pretending to be interested, AKA a sugar daddy. She’d just string them along, go out to dinners, pretend she was interested, and then ask them to help her out with a couple hundred bucks for a “bill” or “car repair”. I’ll never know the extent of these relationships, but I can say with certainty that I was very naive and likely in denial, to think that my girlfriend was just meeting these men for dinner and that there was no expectation of sex. I’ll just say that I later went on to find out that I was definitely, in fact, naive…

It was also around that time (2021) where I started to notice more sores and open wounds forming at my injection sites. Additionally, I was now 8 years into daily injections, numerous times a day. Veins are not everlasting gobstoppers…I was officially “tapped out”. I was resorting to the most extreme ways possible, of injecting. There was essentially NO WHERE on my body that I hadn’t destroyed. As the typical injection locations stop working, you resort to more and more obscure locations, until there truly are no more spots to go. Forehead, neck, genitals, chest, legs, feet, and eventually…tiny little blood vessels in the palms of my hands, crooks of the front of my fingers, heels, tiny blood vessels in the Bottoms of my feet. Contorting my body in all sorts of crazy positions, sometimes for hours, poking myself probably up to 50-100 different times all over my body, just to get 1 hit.

At this same time period, the landscape of the drugs available on the streets also started to change. There was a new form of fentanyl that people affectionately called “tranq” or “tranq dope”. This was fentanyl mixed with various tranquilizers and benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax, which are also extremely physically addictive and can be medically unsafe to withdrawal from without medical supervision).

It was around the time of this shift in the street drug landscape, when I started to notice effects that I had never experienced. I started to get these “attacks” or “spells” or “episodes”, etc. They were like mini seizures. Maybe 6 hours after last injection or so, around the time when early signs of withdrawal would typically appear, I’d have these attacks where my vision would become spotted and the room was closing in on me like I was about to black out and just fall over. And it would feel like my brain had been shocked. Just one single, unexpected jolt to the brain. The whole “attack” would last for 5-10 secs, tops. But they were truly terrifying. I came to find out later that this new symptom was a result of this new-fangled “tranq dope”. I was now physically addicted to fentanyl AND benzodiazepines. I also started forming wounds like I had never seen before. Injection sites were not only not healing. They seemed to actually get worse. I would find that the wounded skin would decay, and get infected, leaving gaping holes in my body. I was living everyday with a fever. I knew I had staph and a blood infection, on and off, for over 2 years, and never went to a hospital because I knew that, being admitted to a hospital, would mean I would have to face the withdrawal that I had been running from for years now, and I knew that this time would not be like the withdrawals I had as a teenager or young adult. This was a different animal. When all was said and done, I went 10 years straight without going more than 24 hours without shooting an opiate into my body. That whole 10 years, I had never even let myself feel what full blown withdrawals would do to me. I knew that when the time came to get sober, that I would need to be hospitalized and that I was likely to endure the most pain I’d ever endured. That thought alone is enough to make someone willing to do ANYTHING not to feel that pain. And, so I kicked the can as far down the road as I possibly could until I was on deaths door and there was no other option.

This all sounds bad, but wait till you hear about what my girlfriend was going through….

She used along side me every day, the entire way. She had developed a very bad infection on her hand. One of those same kind of wounds that seemed to just eat away at the flesh and become a breeding ground for infection. She became incredibly sick with infection, bed-ridden for about an entire year. Never leaving the house, and essentially never leaving the couch. She could hardly walk she was so sick and fatigued from infection. Every day, looking like she was closer and closer to death. And, when withdrawals would kick in for her, she would violently throw up/heave, uncontrollably. By 6 or 7 hours from her last injection, she was crawling to the toilet. She would throw up so hard that she could barely catch her breath between the uncontrollable heaving spasms. I’ve Never seen anything like it. I thought she was going to choke to death every time. It was horrifying.

Finally, by around July 2023, I’d had enough. I’d kicked this can as far down the road as I possibly could. It was time to face the pain, or we were going to die. The several month long fever felt like it was literally frying my brain, and I was truly terrified that my girlfriend’s heart and body, were just going to fail. That I would come home from work one day, and she would be on that couch…no longer breathing. Not to mention, It was becoming clear that she had actually lost the will to live/fight. She didn’t have the energy… it was easier to give up at this point. I’d be lying if I said I wasnt having similar feelings and doubts. Daydreaming about what it would be like to just surrender and take the easy way out. But I knew I wanted to live and that I had to give it one last fight. And if I died in the process, then what’s the difference? I was just so scared of the pain…

I’m a big fan of the band phish. I’ve seen them 125 times. I’m writing this right now from a phish vacation in Vegas (the sphere!). Anyway, in July of 2023, I went to a phish show in Philly with some lifelong friends, and one of those friends happened to ask just the right question at just the right moment…

Don’t judge me, but I take party drugs/psychedelics from time to time at these shows. I like to dance and completely get lost in the music. And sometimes I might throw a little “dancer enhancer” in the mix, if you catch my drift. Well, I was having one of those moments in Philly that night, and ended up in a deep heart to heart convo with my friend, when he suddenly got the courage to lean over and ask me “could drugs have something to do with your relationship issues you’re having and why your girlfriend hasn’t been around in the last couple years?” I told him to follow me away from the rest of our friends and that’s when I did it… I finally told someone. I finally let my secret out and it was incredible. Finally, another soul knew and he was blown away by how bad it was. I lifted one my pant legs to reveal several of my necrotic wounds and told him “I’ve got about 50 more of these things all over my lower body”… He was floored. He insisted that I needed to go to a hospital immediately. I reassured him that it was ok and sort of down played it some like “right now it’s not that bad, I don’t feel too sick and infected right now” lol. I begged him not to tell anyone yet and that I was devising a plan but I needed just a little more time. Just a few weeks.

My plan was to try to transition to methadone, get myself to a stable dose of methadone, so that I could then cease all fentanyl use, and once the fentanyl was out of the picture, I could focus on a controlled ween down of the methadone under the supervision of a methadone clinic, and I would try to ultimately work my way down to 0mg of methadone, and finally be opiate free.

These plans always sound great, but are woefully naive. The most unpredictable part is “pain”. There is no “pain free” way to come off a 10 year daily fentanyl addiction. And though you may think in your mind that you’re ready to face the pain, there’s just no telling how strong you’re actually going to be when that pain finally comes. It’s not easy to just dive into something that you know is going to be more painful then your wildest nightmares. It’s a real head fuck.

To add to insult to my naive optimism, I should point out that during my 10 year heroin/fentanyl run, I had been a patient of a methadone clinic for roughly 3 of those years on and off. It did absolutely nothing to stop me from using fentanyl. I used fentanyl every single day that I ever attended that methadone clinic. It did nothing but add to the depth of my body’s physical dependence on opiates. Just another opiate that my body would have an absolute freak out over, if I ever stopped taking it.

But, nonetheless, I wanted to try this plan in hopes that just maybe I could somehow make this process less painful.

Ultimately, the plan did not go well, 4 weeks or so, went by since I spilled the beans to my friend and he was starting to put a lot of pressure on me. “How’s the methadone thing going? When will you have worked your way up to a stable enough dose that you can come off of the fentanyl?”. He was holding me accountable and trying to set deadlines. Saying things like “well, you’ve got 2 more weeks to figure out the methadone thing. If you’re still shooting fentanyl in 2 weeks, then something more drastic needs to happen or I will tell your family and other friends myself”.

In August of 2023 I went to more phish shows, but with a different close friend. I don’t know what came over me in the car ride to New York that day, but I suddenly broke down and spilled the beans to that friend as well. I don’t know, I guess I knew the secret was going to come out soon, and it was somehwhat relieving to finally have told my other friend just several weeks earlier. And so I did. I cried my eyes out for most of the 4 hour ride up to New York, and I told him about all of the gory details of my addiction, minus a few facts that I have always been just too ashamed to ever tell another human. He knew enough to know that my girlfriend and I were dying, and that there wasn’t much time left.

These 2 friends spent the next few weeks ushering me toward sobriety. Once again, trying to hold me accountable, placing deadlines on my sobriety and such, and making threats to tell everyone, if I didn’t show them results soon. Thank god they did, because on September 17, 2023, I told my parents…

The very next day (September 18), i spoke to my girlfriend once more, and told her that it was time, with her or without her. I leveled with her and said that we both know that the time is near, especially for her. She needed a hospital immediately or she would be dead within days, maybe weeks at best. I pleaded with her to fight for her life one last time, and to my surprise, she agreed. I called her an ambulance and that was the last time I spoke to her as my “girlfriend”…

I knew it was over. I knew that that this “relationship” had started as something real, but over 14 years together, it had turned into something entirely different. It was broken beyond repair. We had lost our chance at having a real life together years ago, when we let the addiction take over. There was no fixing this. The only chance we had at living, was to get as far away from eachother as possible and never look back and I knew that. I was willing to surrender EVERYTHING, and that’s exactly what I did. I checked myself into a rehab in PA.

And let me just say, that pain that I had been running away from for all of those years, 1 injection at a time, it was even worse than I ever could have fathomed.

Within 12 hours at the rehab (18 hours since last injection), I found myself crawling out of my room and into the hallway, and curled up in a ball, violently throwing up in the same horrifying way I’d watched my girlfriend do so many times. I was involuntarily heaving so hard and frequently that I couldn’t catch my breath between spasms. I genuinely believed that I was going to choke to death on that rehab floor.

Fortunately, a fellow patient found me in the hallway and ran to get the nurse who arranged for me to be rushed to the hospital as my blood pressure was sky high, I had a terrible fever, and was experiencing very violent and painful body convulsions.

The next 6 days of my life are a blur but here are some details that I remember about this nightmare, as well as what I was later told by both hospital and rehab staff, as well as fellow rehab patients…

Somewhere around 24-36 hours from last injection, my brain snapped… I had a psychotic break.

Now, try to remember, i had experienced very extreme withdrawal symptoms earlier in my life, when I struggled with opiate addiction in my late teens and early 20’s. I was no stranger to agonizing opiate withdrawals. BUT, I had never experienced the pure terror that is, psychosis. I spent the next 6 days or so stuck in a waking nightmare. I was awake, but to everyone around me, it was clear that I had lost all touch with reality. I found out later that I was introducing myself to people using different names, ages, dates of birth, that today was my birthday, making sexual advances toward the nurses, saying terribly inappropriate things. I don’t have a great memory of going back and forth from the hospital to the rehab but apparently I was admitted to the hospital once, brought back to the rehab, did more insane psychotic stuff at the rehab again, then got sent back to the hospital again! Here are a few of the memories I have from those 6 days….

I remember having an elaborate hallucination that i was stuck in a big multilevel parking garage, with a bunch of mutant, post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-type characters. Big, ugly, deformed dudes with crazy piercings and covered in chain links, 55 gallon drums on fire, weird muscle cars and stuff, etc. Reminded me of some scene from the video game Twisted Metal that I used play on PlayStation back in the late 90’s.

It was intense and I was terrified. They were everywhere and I couldn’t figure out how to exit this parking garage. It was while searching frantically for an exit, that I suddenly heard my brothers voice. Like he was speaking to me remotely. Like an angel or something. I said to him, “Dave, I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared and I can’t get out of this place and one or more of these mutant guys, are going to kill me”. And he said back to me “The way out of there is by taking a shit. Just take a shit and it will set you free, I promise”

I remember feeling the sensation of my body shitting and me pushing hard, eager to free myself from this satanic parking garage.

I didn’t find this out until several days later, when I popped out of my psychosis, but what had actually happened, is that I had that hallucination while at the rehab, inside my room that I was apparently sharing with 2 other patients at the time. While in the throes of that “nightmare”/hallucination, I had gotten out of my bed in front of those 2 roommates, pulled my pants down and shit on the floor in the middle of the room. 1 of those roommates had went to alert a nurse and that was what got me sent back to the hospital again, after having already been admitted once and brought back to the rehab.

I had similar recurring waking nightmares for the next several days at the hospital. I believed I was fighting demons. I believed that the fate of the world rested on my shoulders. In my nightmare, I was physically battling demons, trying to contain them to the underworld. Terrifying ghouls climbing up out of hell and trying to make it to the surface of the earth and destroy us all. And, it was up to me to physically fight them off and keep them from making it to the earth’s surface. These battles lasted for what seemed like forever. I believed I was stuck in some kind of purgatory, batting these demons back down to the underworld, for the rest of my existence.

I remember “waking up” and recognizing the real world from time to time. I would have brief moments of semi lucidity, where I at least knew I was in a hospital bed, but those moments were also terrifying and confusing, as I was basically always “waking up” to find that I was strapped down to the hospital bed... I had restraints on my wrists and ankles and across my chest. I still don’t really know why I was restrained. If I had to guess I would think it’s because I was doing something to harm myself, not because I was violent toward anyone else. I was, however, later told about an altercation that I had, had with another patient while I was at the rehab, and also in the throes of psychosis. So, I guess it’s possible that I was restrained at the hospital because I had said or did something that indicated that I might be a danger to others. Either way, it was a terrible feeling to leave my job fighting demons, only to come to a real world where I was strapped down to a hospital bed and having uncontrollable convulsions.

I also remember briefly coming to lucidity, only to discover that I shit myself. Basically Waking up to the feeling of being fondled by a random woman, which was just a nurse cleaning me up. But boy, I sure thought she was fondling me in those moments.

But the worst part really was the vivid nightmares, the demons, the twisted post-apocalyptic universes that I kept finding myself trapped in, and terrified beyond belief.

Finally, after about 6 total days in and out of psychosis, I came back to reality and was safely in my hospital bed but still in agonizing pain and unable to control my body from this violent shaking I was experiencing. It had been a total 9 days since I was initially sent to the rehab and I was now finally getting released from hospital and back into the care of the rehab, to battle the rest of my intense withdrawals.

The next several weeks was a slow process of continuous pain, lack of sleep, lack of food, and just generally disoriented. And even though I had just lived through and successfully endured that psychotic episode, emotionally, I still felt essentially nothing but hopelessness. I was stuck in the grips of utter despair. There was still very little hope for me, but I pushed and pushed and eventually I started to feel the tiniest little shreds of hope that kept me going.

I was released from the rehab a total of 30 days after being admitted (October 18, 2023) but was still extremely ill. I had been put on a drug called Suboxone, that is designed to essentially be a safe replacement for physically dependent opiate addicts. Neurologically, it fills the same receptors as fentanyl and tricks the brain into thinking it’s gotten at least a small fix. Enough that you are not violently ill, but instead experience less intense withdrawals.

Suboxone is a miracle drug, however after so many years of physical dependence, it doesn’t work perfectly. It made a huge difference, but even with suboxone, it took at least 2 more months (3 months from last use) until I ever even got a full nights sleep one single time.

Opiate dependence also can totally shut down certain bodily functions. My libido for example, had been totally shut down. About 3 months into sobriety, my nipples started swelling and I was having almost nightly “wet dreams”. My endocrine system was starting to work again.

Another example…I haven’t had a dream (that I can remember) for about 12 years. I’m sure I’m reaching REM at times and having dreams, but since my long fentanyl run, I’ve never “had a dream” like normal people.

It has now been 2 and half years since my last use of fentanyl and 5 months since I got off Suboxone and I can say that I am a complete shell of my former self. There is life before that run and life after that run. They are 2 different lives. My appetite never returned. I’m still extremely underweight. My mental health is terrible. I live with so much anxiety that didn’t exist before.

My brain was so used to that routine. I think I broke it. I don’t think my brain knows how to live anymore without opiates every 5 hours.

I am getting better…I think. It’s just sooooo slow and I’m not so sure I’ll ever be the same again.