Here's The Deal

Okay, here’s the deal.  The last three weeks have been pretty challenging.  More so than normal, that is.  So I’ve been meditating to drumming and trying not to go too “dark” on my gastro-intestinal issues.  If the docs at ER didn’t see a blockage, I’ve got to accept that.  And if it means liquefying my bowels in order to eliminate, I’ll stock up on coconut water for the electrolytes.  But eating is a problem, because I have no appetite when I’m in this stage, which seems to come every other month or so.  But this time it lasted a long time.  It finally cleared up a little in the middle of the night…no diarrea, thank heaven.  And again this morning.  Sorry to be so graphic, but I know others out there have this challenge.

So I had this thought.  My body is still craving the methadone, even though “I” am not.  And I really thought hard about that.  So while I was meditating, I gave thanks for all the years the methadone helped me function without excruciating pain.  I thanked the methadone, and I meant it.  Then I said since no more is forthcoming, and since it not only didn’t help with the pain anymore, it made other things far worse, would you please let it go forever.  But mostly, I gave thanks for it.  And I started to think about addiction... The kind that’s not attached to those of us who need this stuff for real, intractable pain coming from a known source….like tumors, whether cancerous or not. My bowels  cleared up 12 hours later.  Connection?  I say yes, because in giving thanks, I was letting go of a situation I have no control over.  Keeping in mind the Serenity Prayer:  G-d, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”   The last one is the toughest, for me.

Correction:  I just saw my healer who does acupuncture/energy work/gentle chiropractic work (though not much of that for me) and she said the body does not want stuff that's bad for it but we create the cravings through our behaviors (like feeding it narcotics).  So all the withdrawal is purging (which I knew) and all that discomfort which for me, will go on for as long as a year though not as horrible as it was at first, is just that....a purge.  Phew.  Still, when I meditate, I will lovingly send it on it's way.  The neurogenic bowel is another story.

And I thought, what if (and maybe this is done, I don’t know) we taught addicts about the difference between the body and the mind, or the soul, or whatever.  So that when they crave the drug, they can work on acknowledging that the “I” of them does NOT want the drug (if he/she doesn’t) but the body wants it worse than anything else.  And I understand that it’s much different from those of us who would give our teeth not to be on any one of them.  So maybe it’s just about us.  Those of us in chronic, intractable pain who would love to find a way to get through the withdrawal of one particular drug.  The worst of them being methadone (or oxycodone).

These drugs serve an important purpose and the DEA and all the other brown shirts that want to control the distribution that pain doctors oversee need to get medical degrees in pharmacology and meet a few of us face to face.  Right.  Like that will ever happen.  Years ago I wrote a book entitled “The Politics of Chronic Pain Management”   I even had an agent.  Never did find a publisher.   I put a lot of work in it, interviewed doctors who were in prison for writing legitimate prescriptions.  While there is always the occasional (medical) OD, it’s usually done on purpose though not always.  Medical errors happen daily.  Why aren’t those doctors in prison?  Anyway, I wrote it a long time ago, when life first turned left on me when I wasn’t looking, and lots of it doesn’t apply anyway.

Okay, that was my rant.