*A quick note and trigger warning, before reading this. My wife read this and was concerned that what I’ve written here may worry some people who know me and know my history with addiction. I’ve never experienced physical pain like this in my entire life. What or why that is, I don't know - but the general medical consensus is it's a combination of things. When the doctor at hospital suggested Oromorph, whilst a conversation took place, I said I want anything that will stop the pain – I was in A&E, sitting squashed against the wall like a dying cat, my arm in the air and on my head. Dark and depressing thoughts have entered my head these last few weeks – not about having a drink, although I’ve questioned whether I’m an alcoholic (which those of you who’ve shared similar troubles, will know is a provocative and risky question). Despite some of the pain-relieving effects of the medications, I’d have done anything to find another way – I tried the breathing, the meditation and everything else suggested. I’ve been in touch with several doctors and specialists, been open and honest, and this has been the best they could offer, and it wasn’t enough. This is an honest reflection. I have the mind and experiences of an addict, and this is framed as such.
In the few days since the days before, where pain pretty much ruled me and I found it hard to be, I’ve bounced around occasionally content, other times restless and depressed. The pain is slowly receding into the background. Sometimes louder, it’s quite noisy now; sometimes just a (medicated) whisper.
Heavily dosed on opioids and Pregabalin for a month, I’ve thankfully now started reducing the meds. Zapain isn’t much in the grand scheme of things – most of us get by on paracetamol and ibuprofen – but this prescription is a common one (and minor compared to its American brothers). Still, sometimes, If I don’t eat before taking them, which is often the way, because pain wakes me up, after 30 minutes or so I’ll occasionally feel a euphoric high. It’s very familiar to me. If I analyse it, it’s not dissimilar to that first high – the ‘early beer buzz’ I used to call it – from drinking. Back when I was drinking, I never compared the two – they were completely different – but from this vantage point, 12 years without a drink, it’s hard to separate them.
As the pain increased in recent weeks, until I couldn’t hear myself think, one half of my body on fire, they gave me Oromorph in hospital. I didn’t get a sense of euphoria from this. In fact, I skipped straight from euphoria to the road to Oblivion. I felt drowsy, absent, reminded I was conscious by the muted trombone of pain, beneath – similar to the pain I’m in now (I’ve taken nothing so far this morning – so I’m two squirts of Oromorph less in pain).
The hospital sent me home with Tramadol. I interspersed two Zapain with two Tramadol. The Tramadol felt similar to, but not as effective as the Oromorph. It skipped the euphoria, occasionally experienced with Zapain, to the first steps on the road to Oblivion – a combination of pain, meds and sheer exhaustion, it often put me to sleep for a couple of hours.
The pain, and trying to manage it, felt eternal in the eye of the storm. Like that was it, for life. It’s almost embarrassing looking back a few days, but that’s how it was. I was lost in it. It sent me a little crazy, awake at 3am, my arm and back screaming at me, twisting my neck to try to shut the fucker up; or my spine sore, like the skin had been grated off and left open, bloodied flesh, bone and nerves exposed. In the day, contorting, unable to sit, unable to stand, using the furniture to balance my skeleton in strange freeing poses; or I’d stumble around the house, my arm an antenna in the air, wiggling it, turning it, trying to find the gap in between the white noise (there’s still a bit of this).
So, I upped the dose of Zapain and, with this, felt that familiar but largely absent euphoria. What I discovered was, the triple dose muted the trombone akin to two tramadol, but the euphoria made it a little bit irrelevant. Regardless of pain, how can euphoria be anything but pleasant? The description is in the word. So, for a few days, I was taking three Zapain at a time in the morning, not exceeding the daily limit, but taking a more concentrated dose.
The euphoria quietened the madness around the pain, the fears, the depression. And, in those moments, I didn’t care about the pain, about anything. For 30 minutes or so, perhaps once a day for a week, I had respite. After this brief period of twirling escape, I was spat out onto the road to Oblivion, drowsy and heavy, the pain muted to some degree, but out of myself, out of control, on a road I didn’t want to be on.
I was longing for the day when I could reduce the dosage and regain a little bit of clarity, and it’s here, but what I didn’t account for was the pregabalin that was prescribed in the middle of this strange fuddle. It’s probably contributed to my recovery, the relief of pain, the return to cohesion. I’ve been taking it twice a day and was told it would start to have some effect at 10 to 14 days. Because I’ve reduced the muting meds, stopped the tramadol, returned to a normal dose of Zapain, suddenly I’m getting side-effects. My head dazed, like I’ve been punched, my body light, dizzy and weak. It’s like I’m being carried on a magic carpet, hovering above the road to Oblivion. If you read about Pregabalin, it says don’t give it to anyone with a history of alcoholism or drug addiction. I guess this is why. I get it. I don’t want it.
There was a time when, with friends, I experimented with many drugs, prescription or not, some logical ones like opioids, benzos and sleeping pills, but also weird ones, like mixing blood pressure pills, diuretics and tricyclic antidepressants and other sedatives, a rainbow grabful swallowed with booze - I was messed up. It didn’t make me feel good, just different, and we would force ourselves to stay awake so that we’d start hallucinating. We had horrific experiences, saw dead people, wolves, ambling around the midnight streets of the Black Country. I remember waking up one night, after an hour of sleep, in a cage on my bed, the red light bulb I had in my room turning the scene into a darker moment in a hammer horror, body bent out of recognition, Oliver Reed forcibly morphing into a beast.
Yesterday, free from the shield of opioids, Pregabalin side effects gave me a less visceral experience of unpleasant and unnecessary body change. I drank a lot of coffee, whilst writing, and somehow that made it much worse. The pain still grumbling beneath, I felt ill and anxious on top.
This whole experience has reminded me what addiction is. At first, it’s a chase for euphoria (which is the kindest escape from pain, physical and psychological) – you might get it from a cake, new clothes, lust, drink or drugs (and many more things). We all feel euphoric at times, whether you define yourself an addict, a recovering addict or a non-addict (normie). The only thing that separates those three categories, is how much you want it – and eventually, in some cases, depend on it. Or, another way of looking at it is the level of pain experienced. The higher the pain, or inability to take it, the more desperate the chase to escape it. In addiction, as time goes on, that euphoria becomes more elusive, fleeting, brief, and in a bid to find it, we stumble onto the road to Oblivion.
The road to Oblivion isn’t devoid of life, it has side roads sign-posted Little Euphoria, Delusion Lane, Laughter Close and Tears End, but they’re cul-de-sacs or run adjacent heading towards Oblivion. When you get to a certain point on that road, there’s no turning back, feet that turned into wheels down Delusion Lane, get caught in a track and it’s too hard to get off, until you land in Oblivion. Which is nothingness. I can remember an early experience, I was 16, it was perhaps my first thought that felt profound – and I wasn’t stoned, I was sober, despite being on an 18 - 30s holiday. We were talking about a Brief History of Time. Standing on the balcony, one early evening, I closed my eyes and thought it’s impossible to imagine nothing. Nothing can’t be imagined, something always exists. Even when the colours aren’t spitting or swirling behind eyelids and it’s black, it’s not nothing, it’s still something. I didn’t really understand it, but it felt deep, deeper than me – then we went and got pissed. But in the years that followed, I found nothing many times, almost as if I was trying to prove my younger self wrong.
It’s been an interesting month. There has been no nothingness, always something, and despite tripping over the line from euphoria onto the old road to Oblivion, there’s been no longing to get to the end of it. Quite the opposite. I feel wiser for the experience. Somehow, I’ve managed to complete a draft of a play in rare moments of lucidity. As I start to edit and craft it, it will be interesting to learn how much of this experience has slipped into it.
