Went to the pharmacy to pick up my meds yesterday, and they didn’t have my anti-psychotic. This is my first major hurdle since being out of rehab, since drinking was the only way I coped with being without my anti-psychotic. What sucks is that this happened on memorial day weekend so I can’t get this solved until Tuesday. Wish me luck y’all, it’s gonna be a shitty weekend :/
But no matter how bad it gets, I’m not gonna drink about it
I have no idea how it’ll read for you, but the philosophy that I carry to simply not drink is “this situation is bad, but at least I don’t have to navigate it drunk.”
I’ve never had a problem with desire for alcohol, so my philosophy never got “pressure tested.” But I imagine drinking like a scaling debuff to strength, constitution, charisma, wisdom, intelligence, and dexterity in the DnD of life. Like if I encounter a problem and I have to use any of those, I don’t want to have to navigate a -2 to my rolls. If my keys fall in the sewer, maybe I can intuit a way to fish them out or I can take the constitution hit and jump in after them. But if I were drunk I’d just sit there going sigh godammit!
In a sense, I imagine drinking for problems like going “could this get any worse?!” and then thunder cracks, rain starts pouring, & laugh track plays.
As a person who has had strong desire for alcohol and is an alcoholic, this reasoning unfortunately doesn’t hold up well. Because, for me at least, it was this sucks… but I COULD be drunk and it might suck less. I was the kind of alcoholic who’d down a 9% tallboy before work some days just to ease into my day. At 3am.
That said, to OP, you’ve got this. It feels like a long time, especially if it’s your first out of rehab. Try to keep yourself busy. Find something to read, a video game to lose yourself in. Go on walks. I like bike rides, if that’s your thing. I just went and rode a few miles of trails yesterday because I was having a rough mental health day.
If you need someone to talk at hit me up. The only thing that sucks more than falling off, to me, is having to start sobriety all over again.
Good luck friend!
Playing it forward to the next day has helped me a bit. Sure this sucks, and sure I could go to the store right now, but what about tomorrow? How will I feel tomorrow about all of it while hungover?
I normally like this mentality, but anti-psychotic withdrawal is definitely a time that being drunk is preferable to being sober. There’s so much bodily discomfort that comes with it, so much physical pain and resentment that alcohol is a band aid for. It also makes the snappy decisionmaking feel okay.
I guess I shouldn’t say it is better to be drunk off my meds. But it definitely feels better
That sucks! I don’t know you or your situation. but I have some simple practical ideas. If that’s not what you want, dont read the spoiler.
Tap for spoiler
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know anyone on same drug you could borrow from?
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can you go to another pharmacy? They should be able to transfer your prescription? But you might have to go back to prescriber to get it back later. assuming US: https://www.dea.gov/stories/2023/2023-09/2023-09-01/revised-regulation-allows-dea-registered-pharmacies-transfer
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if that won’t work, could you go to a walk in clinic or hospital and get them to write you a 3-5 day prescription at a pharmacy that DOES have it? If you show them your empty bottle it should demonstrate you were on the med and its due. They can call the pharmacy to confirm.
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or they might be able to directly dispense
Either of the above cases, you’d need to first find a place that has it which means calling around.
There are lots of good reasons why any of the above wouldn’t work or be viable. Dont need to explain them. Just spitballing in case a crisis was interrupting thought.
I appreciate it, unfortunately I’ve thought of all these already. My pharmacy is closed on the weekend so I can’t call them to get it transferred. My best bet is going to an ER, but I really can’t afford to take time off work, and even if I go right now I’d still need a way to get to an open pharmacy without a car.
It’s a super common med, so pretty much anywhere I call it in will have it. This is the first time in 2 years a pharmacy hasn’t immediately had it (Risperidone)
Sounds reasonable. That sucks.
Pharmacies are such a mess. There are 100 different systematic ways to avoid or solve this problem but I’ve never heard of any pharmacy even attempting to implement them.
You just have to show up every time and hope nothing went wrong. And they don’t like it if you do anything proactive to avoid problems. After something like this happened to me I started calling in advance a few days to check if they have stock… They hate that. First of all, nobody likes being micromanaged. Furthermore it doesn’t work with their systems because even if they have it on Tuesday, they can’t “set aside” some pills for you if the refill is due on Friday. Its due when its due. Its filled when its filled. Its available or its not.
The concept of “rationing” is so verboten but sometimes it is the right tool for the job. If 4 people need 1 months worth of meds and there is 1 month supply on hand, I’d rather get a 1 week supply to give time to sort it out, then have a 1/4 chance of being the person who gets all 4 weeks or a 3/4 chance of getting nada and up the creek. But there is no way to accommodate this kind of logic as far as I can tell.
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Good resolve! Nobody ever looked back after quitting drinking and thought, I wish I hadn’t done that
Yeah, my life is infinitely better without alcohol. But this is gonna be hard being sober without my anti-psychotic. I was already noticing the odd thoughts and feelings this morning
Hope it goes ok! Always here if you need an ear
I appreciate it, I’ll probably end up calling you at some point this weekend if you’re okay with that
You got this, Tuesday will come before you know it. Do you have a support person or a worker at the group home who can help keep you grounded til then?
good luck!If you’re not in the US, I’d suggest going to the ER.
I’m in the US, but I have state insurance. I work all weekend though and really need the money, so I can’t give up a shift to go get them. I’m financially screwed if I give up a day to go get them from an ER.
Are you able to ration what you have? Can you break the pills up and take partial doses so you don’t go off it and have withdrawal problems?
I took my final dose on Thursday expecting the pharmacy to have more, so unfortunately I can’t. Last night was my first night sleeping without it and that was rough, but I expect tonight to be much harder. I was in such a weird headspace this morning.
That’s rough. I would say go to the ER. You can’t work effectively if you’re not in the right mind.
- u can do it. alcohol sucks.
i’ve come upon some decent concentrated kava powder lately that’s helped with my phenibut cravings. apparently in the last few years they’ve started growing shitloads in florida and now it’s way more plentiful
That’s interesting, I didn’t know they were growing kava like that!
i forgot i had heard about it years ago and recently was wondering why there was so much kava floating around again when it used to be very rare and expensive (due to climate change, stealing Pacific islander’s kava, other bad shit)
it takes a loooong time to grow so i guess the florida cultivars recently started getting ready. apparently the American shit has really fucked up the Pacific islander’s large scale farms they started around the same time. capitalism being capitalism, exploitation, etc.
but it’s legit i haven’t had any decent kava in a long time and i forgot how subtle but pleasant it is.
But no matter how bad it gets, I’m not gonna drink about it
Good! you know it will only make things worse! let’s both make better decisions (i’m making bad decisions 😔)
Kratom has been very good for me to help with alcohol cravings.
anyone seeking to try kratom who hasn’t already let me note that the powder is the worst tasting shit you will ever encounter in your life, it’s like a grassy, chlorophyll, fermented elephant’s asshole, and it’s hydrophobic as shit so if you just like try to swallow some and chase it with water it WILL coat your mouth and everything will be nasty, gagging agony, if you’re really prone to coughing like i am right now it might actually kill you
so i highly recommend either buying capsules or buying powder and pressing it into capsules
edit: before some tough guy contradicts me like yes you can totally just raw dog that powder, my brother’s old roommate used to drink slurries of that shit, but I literally do not know how he could stand it, it is genuinely one of the worst tasting things I have ever in my life encountered, like imagine if you mowed your lawn and then just brewed a tea of it and then just let it stank for like a few weeks, then dehydrated that into a powder
Fair criticism. You can get used to it though. I mix mine thoroughly with water and shake it up before I take a drink, then immediately chase it with a strong flavored drink. My personal choice is Bang Sour Heads sugar free energy drink.
I haven’t done any research but I can anecdotally report the same. I quit in October using kratom. I was also in active opioid addiction for like 10 years (sober since 2017), so I had to be really careful. But something about kratom makes it manageable for me. I’ll take it a few times a month just to tweak the ol brain chemistry a touch.
it’s like something like a mu opioid agonist or whatever, google that shit for nerd accuracy, but iirc it acts more like a stimulant at lower doses and more like an opiate at higher doses, while also varying between strains kinda like weed because there’s different ratios of psychoactive alkaloids (iirc the main one being mitragynine or something like that)
so anyway, that’s why it’s good for weaning off opiates, it helps trigger some of the same receptors so you don’t get full ass withdrawal from no opiates
Oh it’s definitely a very strong mu agonist. Also, my favorite thing about oxycodone was it, for me, was an upper and then a downer. So l love that kratom has that quality, and even grants you better control over it. I can take 3-4 grams and go to work with a nice mood boost and some extra energy. Or I can take 10 or so for relaxing times.
It’s been quite successful in treating opioid addiction as well. They were just about to ban it in my very conservative state, but the American Kratom Association gave a convincing presentation to our legislature and they changed some minds
I could certainly see it being useful there. And I remember hearing about it back in ‘my day’ but never tried it. I was just worried about it scratching the itch too well and making me want to relapse. And it does give some of the same feelings as opioids. But it doesn’t hook me the same way. I’ll buy a bag of capsules and forget I have them sometimes, which is just not something I’ve ever done with anything.
I wrote the kratom guide on the drug comm of Hexbear, it’s alright but I’m trying not to lean on that as a crutch. I discovered 7-OH towards the tail end of my addiction and it made me uncomfortable with kratom tbh.
I’d rather be sipping some nasty shit than wake up hungover every day miserable. What’s 7-OH?
7-OH is a very powerful alkaloid of kratom that’s present in small amounts in powder, but is now being sold in extracts and pills. I sing the praises of kratom pretty regularly, it’s great from a harm reduction standpoint. I can’t say much good about 7-OH as someone in recovery, it’s about as addictive as real opiates, it’s expensive, it isn’t as good of medication as regular kratom, it’s just a better high.
Thanks for the info. I’ve been taking Kratom long enough that I don’t get a high at all. I just don’t feel like drinking alcohol as much. No desire to try 7-OH either.
Yeah, avoid 7-OH like the plague. It’s more addictive than some opiates I’ve kicked because of just how short lived it is and how steeply the tolerance increases. I’m not for the criminalization of drugs, but I hope it gets banned so that kratom doesn’t if that makes sense. Kratom has been nothing but a help to me in my life. I try to avoid it nowadays because I haven’t used any drugs in 66 days, but there are totally cases I’ll bust out some kratom again. 7-OH has been nothing but a problem to me though, the only reason I’d grab it is if I want to give into my addict brain
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