Withdrawal is an ever-spinning vortex that draws me inward and whips me into submission. Once caught in its violent grasp, I cannot move…I cannot speak. The turbulence makes me sick and dizzy. As I try to escape, it pounds me mercilessly into the ground and all my muscles ache. As my very soul is punished and weakened, I know all too well that there is only one way to make it stop.

I forget that anything else is important. I forget that I love anyone. I forget that I was once happy. Everything and everyone is pushed away so that I can make the madness stop.

My Drug of Choice is all that matters now for it is the one and only thing that will make me feel whole again. As it enters my veins, the sickness slowly disappears. The noise stops and, instead of spinning, the room now grows dim as the high increases.

Fleeting thoughts of getting help and facing The Withdrawal head on have disappeared completely as though they never existed. My Drug of Choice is strong. It makes the pain go away. It makes The Withdrawal go away. It makes life go away.

I’m trapped in a never-ending cycle that I no longer have any control of. I’m an addict and The Withdrawal is something that I will do anything to not face again.

The true me is hidden deep within now that my addiction has stolen my body and mind. I seldom come to the surface anymore. I no longer look to the future. I only look to make sure that The Withdrawal is nowhere near me.

Somebody please help me help myself…

Hello, my name is Edward James and I’m an addict. I’m also host of THE WITHDRAWAL podcast.

Thank you for joining me once more in this journey to understand ourselves and hopefully master our addiction. This week’s episode is called The Horrors of Withdrawal. It’s relatively self-explanatory to any of my fellow addicts listening, but for those that have never felt the sting of addiction, I will describe Withdrawal for you in detail.

What I just read to you was something that I wrote in a notebook a long, long time ago. It’s unclear, but I believe I wrote it around ten years ago.

Many years before that, when we decided to have children, we were in mutual agreement that my wife would leave her job to raise our children. She always wished to raise our kids in a more traditional sense in order to give them the best possible shot at doing well in life.

She’s a great mom…and a great wife. It hurts me in my heart to this day…the things that I put her through. Now that I’m sober and enjoy my life again, I try me best to show her the unconditional love that she’s always shown me.

Anyway, after my opiate addiction took hold and my ability to make rational decisions went out the door, my wife realized that I could no longer be trusted. In order to make sure our kids would have a home and the physical things that they needed she went back to work.

I was working, as well, but spent every last cent on buying as many drugs as I could consume. I was a monster. I was limping through life but was still hiding behind the lie that I was a successful man.

One chilly day, after snorting and smoking drugs while she was back at work and the kids were being watched by the babysitter that we shouldn’t have needed…I started to feel really guilty.

The mortgage payment was three months past due and bill collectors had started to hassle us. I was almost out of pills and my next pain management appointment was almost two weeks away.

There was around $2,000 in the bank, but I knew I was going to need to steal about $1200 of that in order to make it to my next appointment. My wife would see the bank statement and I knew she would rip me a new one.

I cared, and yet I wouldn’t do anything but that which I always did. I would take the money and buy my drugs.

That realization had hit me harder than usual that day and a deep depression had settled in on me. I was wasted and knew once my kids got home that I would need to sleep in order to get my head straightened out.

My wife would get home after working hard all day and how would I repay her kindness??? I would make her handle two over excited kids. I would force her to cook supper and clean up all the mess that I’d made that day.

I would tell her that I wasn’t overusing my drugs, but that I was having a horrible migraine and needed to rest. She’d already shut down emotionally and I knew she’d do it.

Yes, my wife had already telling me that she couldn’t handle it anymore. That she was going to have to leave…not to hurt me, but in order to save her and the kids.

I’d yell at her and make her feel guilty for ever saying those things, although deep in my heart I knew what she was saying was true.

It was that day…or a day like it…that I wrote those words that I just told you. There were SO many days like it that it could have been any day out of thousands.

I wrote the words…then I shut the notebook…then I went to sleep and forgot that I’d ever written them. Sometime around a year ago I found some of my old notebooks. I read through them in an attempt to try and come to grips with the way that I acted back then.

I still struggle with the past though the days get brighter.

So, what would make an intelligent man…father of two and husband to a loving wife…do such horrible things?

I had an unnatural fear of The Withdrawals…

Last week, in our first podcast together, I made mention of the fact that after three days of snorting oxycodone and Oxycontin, I would go into withdrawal. I’d get sick to my stomach…the chills…and my mind would turn to mush for a few days.

After taking upwards of 600MG of opiates each and every day for around eight years straight my tolerance was so high that the withdrawals were terrible. I was also abusing Ambien, cocaine, Xanax and every other addictive substance I could get a hold of.

After eight years, all morality was gone. Repetitive behaviors turned into habits, and as an active addict, I had so MANY bad habits.

I don’t want to jump too far ahead. The Withdrawals, for those who don’t know, are the symptoms we addicts feel after abruptly stopping the consumption of our drugs of choice or the doing of our behavior of choice.

I listed a boatload of symptoms last week, but I’ll do it again just to bring my point home for everyone.

Nausea, vomiting, shaking, sleepless nights, cold chills, hot sweats, lack of appetite, anger, massive depression, and a million other bad things. Worse yet, we can suffer from more than five of these symptoms simultaneously.

Speaking for myself, I felt like I was suffering from all of them at once. I’d suffered from withdrawals dozens of times over the years, both intentionally and unintentionally.

There wasn’t as much information on the internet back when I was suffering through addiction and so I went through some trial and error trying to get clean.

After eight years, I’d come to realize that the high I was seeking could no longer be found. I was chasing something that couldn’t be caught.

Imagine this then…close to ten years of active addiction to opiates and other drugs. Addiction is a timeline and so I’ll review my addiction’s timeline for you.

In the first two years of my addiction, it all seemed so wonderful most of the time. I went to work, and then partied as hard as I could. The drug worked as advertised. I sniffed them and the high was almost indescribable in it’s ability to send me to another dimension of pleasure.

After that first phase, things started to become very different for me. My tolerance became impossibly high. As a result, the amount of cash I started to steal from my wife and my mutual bank account became very noticeable.

It wasn’t as fun anymore, but I was so hooked and the withdrawals were so terrible that I kept going. My mind had been highjacked by the addiction, and there was no stopping. My relationship to my wife started to suffer and my ability to raise my children was suffering, as well. People at work were also noticing my work ethic weakening.

After about six years of addiction, I was taking at least 600 MG of opiates daily. I was easily wasting more than ¾ of my paycheck on extra drugs. I was taking lots of time off of work and had burned through three of four jobs…all of them not ending well. My wife was now seriously threatening leaving me, and I had begun to put her through daily mental tortures that no loved one should have to bear.

By this time, I’d tried to withdraw on my own many times, but all of them ended in me wasting my time. I wasn’t strong enough to do it on my own. Honestly, none of us are.

I bring up the subject of a timeline because I want all of you suffering addicts out there to create your own timeline in order to figure out exactly where you are in your addiction. It will help, I promise.

Remember, my goal is to help my fellow addicts become master’s of their own addictions. If I can bring enough awareness to you, and show you how to find help, then at some point or another…you will seek treatment…or else you’ll die or wind up in jail.

This much I know to be true. You need to know that it’s true, as well. I have hope for you so keep fighting…and keep listening.

So now back to withdrawal. Unless you’re in the very beginnings of your addiction, wishing to stop, then you will need to detox safely with medical help.

For new addicts that have the ability to stop taking their drug of choice on their own, I still say go get into treatment.

The reason being is…once an addict, always an addict…and I don’t say that to label anyone. I say it so that you’ll understand that once you self-identify as an addict, you must then realize that you need to take the time to learn a set of tools that will help you stay sober for the long term. Treatment and therapy is where you get that.

Alright, let’s back up a bit. Withdrawal affects the biopsychosocial spectrum of each addict in generally the same way. Remember BPS…biopsychosocial? It’s the way an addict’s mind, body, and environment are affected by the addiction…and by the withdrawal also.

Once again, I’ll use myself as an example.

As it relates to long term opiate abuse, the withdrawal is horrible. I tried to kick my habit many times, but the withdrawals whipped me into submission, and I started using again each time.

While trying to withdraw at home, my body was useless. I shook violently…my muscles ached like I’d been hit by a car…I threw up and had to purge my intestines a million times…I couldn’t eat….I couldn’t sleep…I couldn’t work…my body was destroyed utterly…and HEY, that’s just the BIO part of it.

The psycho part of my withdrawal was like this…

After about eight hours had passed, my mind started to break apart on me. I could no longer feel time passing…the walls started to melt…the room was spinning…I started seeing shadows on the walls that reminded me of demons that kept laughing at me and taunting me…I was terrified to go near my children and had begun to act like a lunatic…That terrified my kids and so I went downstairs to withdraw all alone…

Huge mistake…

My mind was breaking…my will destroyed…my ability to understand the difference between reality and fantasy was nonexistent. I was very close to calling an ambulance and having them take me away to a mental institution.

And that was only after eight hours…after ten to twenty hours it just continued. Nothing got better, and everything got worse.

Oh, let’s finish the trinity of the biopsychosocial spectrum. Relating to my environment…I couldn’t speak to anyone. My family was afraid of me…I couldn’t tell whether it was hot or cold out…there was no chance of going to work, answering the phone or doing anything.

This went on for three days, mind you. Three days of torture…three days of hell…three days and then I couldn’t take it anymore and I crushed two roxy blues and snorted them as fast as possible…within one minute of that, the world seemed peaceful once more.

And that is why I couldn’t do it on my own and neither should anyone else.

Picture this now…once I went to rehab, they detoxed me with the help of doctors and other medicines. I only needed to withdraw in my bed for ten hours and they then started me on suboxone and other meds which made my life bearable.

I was surrounded by people that wished to help including other addicts who knew exactly what I was going through. There’s something to be said about not suffering alone in the darkness.

Anyway, that’s just detox. After that comes the rehab part. Did all of you know that detox and rehab are two different things?  Two hugely different parts of the healing process? Yes? No? We’ll talk about it in future podcasts, have no worry.

Detox comes first…rehab is always second. Rehab is the part that takes a lot longer. After weaning off drugs of choice, we must be taught how to end our bad habits, address the reasons for taking drugs and the pains of the past. After learning those important lessons we then learn how to rejoin the world and how to find meaning in our lives.

Being able to feel the sun on our backs on a spring day while the west winds blow gentle breezes across our face is a beautiful thing. Being able to sit with a loved one looking up at the moon and stars while laughing…all the while without thinking of taking a drug or performing an addictive behavior is also a beautiful thing.

There is hope for you. I personally send positive energy out to those needing it through meditation every single day and I’m not the only one.

There is an interconnectivity to all of our souls. While in the throes of addiction, we can’t access it. The world is cold and meaningless. After finding help and getting strong…we get sober and plug our souls back in. We can then access all the power of that spiritual internet and make it work for us once again.

OK…now you know what opiate withdrawal is like…and why it’s impossible for an opiate addict to stop taking drugs on their own. For the non-addicted, I hope you’re learning how to see this disease through a proper lens. For the addicted, I hope you’re listening to me and reflecting on your own addiction with the intent of getting help.

All withdrawals are difficult to go through, and even for those whose detox isn’t that difficult, there is still a dire need to learn skills in rehab that keep us sober for the rest of our lives. We share many pains in our efforts to stop destroying ourselves and many joys in our mutual healing.

I know that every time I describe part of the cycle of addiction or part of recovery…it’s very natural for many more questions to pop up. Write them down…seek me out and ask your questions.

I’ll tell you every single detail of every angle of this disease over the course of this podcast if you stay with me…and if you should have any questions on anything specific or want to know more you can always visit us at THEWITHDRAWAL.COM or FACEBOOK.COM/THEWITHDRAWAL. You can also email me at [email protected] . I will get back to you. I’ll help as much as humanly possible. I will NOT leave you hanging…just reach out…and keep reaching out…to me, to your AA and NA brothers and sisters…to trusted doctors…and hopefully to loved ones that are listening and learning with you.

OK…now let’s talk about repetitive behaviors becoming habits and how that wraps itself into withdrawal.

In general, we are addicted to our drugs of choice physically and mentally…we’ve talked about that…but we’re also addicted to our daily ritual and our obsessive habits…they are also equally difficult to stop and change.

I’ll give you an example…for around ten years I was addicted to all forms of opiates…except heroin for some strange reason. In my sick mind I felt that I was better than other addicts because I’d never stuck a needle in my arm. I wasn’t any better…that false pride just prolonged my disease.

Remember our talk on false pride and ego from last episode? They are killers.

Back to the story at hand now…during my active addiction I…

Ahh…alright…let me define that as well…when I say active addiction I mean during the period in which I was addicted to opiates. It was my strongest, longest, and most destructive addiction cycle in my life.

After years of treatment and self-reflection, I realize that I have always been an addict. When I was thirteen and my mother’s second husband was making my life miserable, I started to binge eat and my weight shot up. I didn’t realize it then, but it was addiction.

When I was thirteen I drank alcohol for the first time. I binge drank, threw up and almost passed out and smashed my head. That was addiction.

At thirteen, I started to smoke marijuana. That drug really took hold of me and I smoked it religiously for 17 years. That was addiction though I didn’t call it that back then.

So, when I say my active addiction, I simply mean the ten year period of opiate addiction that nearly killed me and destroyed my marriage and life with my kids.

Man, I went off the rails there, huh???

Where were we now…???

Right, um…obsessive habits…when I took my opiates I never swallowed them. Instead, I always crushed them up and snorted them.

What I’m saying is that I was as equally addicted to the drugs as to the behavior. The behavior of crushing a pill into fine powder was a source of pride for me. I took my time and watched affectionately over the pill powder, making sure that no rocks were left intact. I would go over and over and over all of it to make sure that it was in perfect order, ready for me to snort.

I was also addicted to the snorting of drugs. Yes, this is all besides loving the feeling of the drugs taking hold in my bloodstream.

I loved to line up the drugs in perfect lines and then make sure that the straw that I used was in perfect order, as well. It had to be a specific length with no sharp edges anywhere.

I try not to go crazy on old war stories, but I have to give some detail in order for everyone to understand me. I’m sorry if this triggers anyone. I’m trying my best not to.

So, mentally, it gave me a euphoric feeling to anticipate breathing out and then snorting in drugs with a massive breath drawn in.

In conclusion, when I got into recovery, I had to learn how to not crave the drugs…I also had to learn how to no longer crave snorting in things…I also had to learn how to not obsess about crushing hard things into powder.

I’m being serious here. After I got out of rehab…for the second time…if my kids were eating a Spree candy or any other candy that was hardened powder, I would dream about crushing up the candy and placing it into fine lines. I couldn’t help it.

Obsessive behaviors are hard to break.

These are all triggers, by the way. Triggers are another concept that we’ll talk about more in great detail. Each piece of this requires its own unique podcast. Triggers are anything that we see, hear, or smell that leads us to obsessive thinking about taking drugs or performing addictive behaviors.

We’ll get to talking about triggers very soon.

Back to habits and behaviors. If you ask some older people how long it takes to from a habit, they’ll say 21 days. This idea can be traced back to “Psycho-Cybernetics,” a book published in 1960 by Dr. Maxwell Maltz.

Maltz inferred that it takes 21 days for an old image to dissolve and a new one to form.

In truth, everyone is different. Unluckily for us, addicts form new images or habits much quicker than non-addicts.

Habits are anything from brushing your teeth every morning and night to remembering to do two sets of twenty-five sit ups every other day.

It’s easier to remember to brush your teeth and harder to remember to do the sit ups. So, why is that? I have no clue…no…I do have a clue…thanks to researching the subject…our brain likes creating habits because they make our life easier…more streamlined even.

The less we have to think things through, and the more things can be done from our subconscious, the more efficient our brains become.

Now, as it relates to bad habits, you can see how that begins to become problematic. Our brain, in its efforts to make our lives easier, becomes our biggest nightmare when it starts to form habits around taking drugs and the obsessive “other” behaviors” like snorting, crushing, getting the needle ready, and many other addictive habits.

Habits that give us great pleasure are the hardest to break. The reward of dopamine is a hard thing to resist. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a huge role in how we feel pleasure…and we do love to feel pleasure…don’t we?

So…breaking the habit of turning a light off and checking it three times is typically easier to break than injecting heroin into our veins and receiving instantaneous pleasure. The greater the pleasure the harder it is to break the habit.

Mental diseases can also affect habits and how we break them, but I don’t want to stray too far. I just want you to understand how habits play into addiction and also into withdrawal and recovery.

So how do they then???

Alright…once we have been addicted to our drug of choice long enough for our habits to be set in our subconscious, we can then create expectations on what it takes to break them.

The drugs themselves are extremely difficult to stop obsessing about because they create instant dopamine rushes and other pleasure responses on the greatest levels. Once again, the greater the pleasure, the harder to break the cycle.

Behaviors not related to drugs can be equally difficult to stop and that is because these behaviors also give us great pleasure…rushes of delight and gratification that make us feel oh so good.

So, when we withdraw from our drugs of choice and behaviors of choice, the whole thing is entirely too difficult for a person to do on their own.

One addiction is much, much more than just one addiction to one drug. One addiction is actually a group of addictions…to drugs, behaviors, and obsessions that all need to be identified and then unwired from our subconscious one at a time.

There you have it. I think I’ve covered this Withdrawal thing enough for one session. In the future we’ll continue to talk about withdrawal…I’ll have guests on that discuss their own withdrawal nightmares and how they overcame them…and we’ll have professionals on as well to provide their own unique insights into how to address withdrawal and conquer your addiction.

I just want to summarize. Addiction, once again, is a spectrum of disorders revolving around the obsessive repetitive consumption of drugs or performing of behaviors. Withdrawal is what we addicts experience when we immediately stop taking those drugs without medical help.

Remember, we can’t get to recovery without forming a solid plan on how to get through and minimize withdrawal symptoms. In order to do that, we need to learn to master our addiction. We also definitely need professional help.

We need to choose our detox and rehab facility wisely because each one has its pros and cons. Choosing the right one is the difference between finally getting sober and staying that way for a lifetime versus getting detoxed and then relapsing again and again.

I know I focused on withdrawal in the BIOPSYCHO sense and not so much the SOCIAL…so let me spend a moment on that.

All humans need social interaction and by that I don’t mean being around other addicts who do the same drugs that we do.

As people of the world, we all need to experience certain things. Love is one of them. While in the throes of addiction, we might think we know love, but we don’t. We might think we love our children, but it’s just not possible while being addicted. The only way to express true love is to do so with a mind unburdened with the obsessions of the addicted.

There are other things…like going on vacations, seeing and doing new things…eating strange foods…helping others…learning new skills.

None of these can be done while addicted. As a matter of fact, if you are wondering if you’re an addict or not consider these things.

Does your life consist only of getting drugs and taking them? Are you no longer seeing friends or loved ones like you used to? Have you not gone out into public for a long time and enjoyed a new experience? Or, perhaps you’ve gone out into public, but only to drink until you black out and forget everything that’s happened that night? That’s a dead giveaway that you need help.

Have you dropped out of school, stopped looking forward to your future, and realized that all of your thoughts are dark and repetitive?

You might just be an addict…please don’t despair…there is help…you just have to reach out a hand and ask for it.

I’ll say this…we’ve probably all seen an episode or two of the show Intervention. Why is it so necessary for addicts to be ambushed into getting help?

It’s because most addicts don’t understand how to get help on their own…or they’re too deep in their addiction to desire to get help.

Their biopsychosocial profile is not good.

Again, that is what I’m trying to change with The Withdrawal podcast, THEWITHDRAWAL.COM website, and FACEBOOK.COM/THEWITHDRAWAL page. I’m attempting to infiltrate the minds of my fellow addicts in an effort to help them become more proactive in their own recovery plan.

You cannot afford to wait. Saying that you’ll go in another year or so is BS.  To know and to be educated is to desire to take immediate action. By the time next year comes, you might be dead or in jail.

My biggest wish is to help addicts realize that time is not on our side. Take action today because tomorrow is too late.

It’s being cheesy, but I’ll say it…wouldn’t it be great for an addict to not even need an intervention because he or she has called a rehab and simply tells their loved ones that they are going…or perhaps an addict receives the gift of an intervention and instead of yelling and saying no, they just smile and say “yes” before anyone even needs to read a single word of their speeches.

I believe it can happen. Changing the hearts and minds of the addicted is difficult, but not impossible, I think.

OK…we’re done for the week. I love you all and will send out as much positive energy to you as I can.

Let’s unwind ourselves from these painful thoughts for a bit and find a happy thought to drift into and get stuck in.

There is no dark without light and there is no pain that cannot be overcome by the will to live.

This goes for the addicted as well as for the loved ones of the addicted.

I don’t care if you’ve just finished your last line of coke or whether you injected yourself with heroin an hour ago. Right now…this second…I want you to close your eyes and find a positive memory that you can latch onto and not let go of.

Find a place where there is less noise. A place of peace. Then take three deep breaths. Breath slowly and with intent. In and out…in and out…in and out….breathe in with great purpose…hold that breath for two seconds… and then breathe back out releasing toxins and bad thoughts as you do so.

Latch onto that good memory and know that it is not your last. Linger in the decency of that memory and know that you will create more.

Just sit still for a moment more and clear your mind…now…go in peace and do your best to make this next seven days better than the last seven.

I’m Edward James, the host of The Withdrawal podcast and a fellow addict. I’ve found my way back to a good life from impossible odds and you will do the same.

Seek me out at THEWITHDRAWAL.COM and at FACEBOOK.COM/THEWITHDRAWAL. Email me at [email protected]. Educate yourself and prepare. I will help you and then you will help yourself.

Until next week, be well. I will talk to