If you are like me you suffer from PMS, pre menstrual syndrome, each and every month. There are the annoying things like cramps and fatigue but then there are also the emotional upheavals that can come out of left field.

It's these emotional side effects of PMS that I find so challenging to my recovery. I have these very low, lows that come on me and it takes a while for me to realize that it's a symptom of PMS. Once that is realized I just ride it out.

Before that realization, I find myself going through a list in my head of things that I could do to make myself feel better. Being the recovering addict that I am, the top things on my list tend to be mind numbing things that aren't an option for me anymore.

What I usually end up doing is something that I have relied upon heavily in my recovery... doing things around the house. I know it seems weird but to me making my home clean and comfortable really helps me feel better.

I've always found that manual labor really helps me to clear my head, feel good about myself, and release stress.

Also... express your feelings. Don't keep them bottled up. We are only as sick as our secrets right?

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I was living under the assumption that things always have a way of working themselves out. Which is true... if you do your part.

Since we work on our ability to accept the things we cannot change we should surer than shit be working on the other part to that which is having the courage to change the things we can.

A long time ago in my recovery I decided to live by a very simple plan: Do what I can, the best that I can each and every day. Simple right?

It's a simple idea but the act of performing it is tough at times. It involves facing problems head on as they arise, no matter how big or how small. Which, for some reason, I tend to want to shy away from the smaller problems but jump into high gear when the big problems present themselves. Looks like I have things a little backwards when it comes to that.

It also involves doing something daily that will keep me moving forward in life. This is also a lot more difficult than it appears on paper (I understand this isn't paper... it's a saying ok?).

First, you need to set some future goals for yourself. This can be tricky because expectations are sometimes confused for goals. We all know what expectations are right? Today's expectations are tomorrow's resentments. What? Did you guys forget that I love all the corny addiction recovery sayings?

After setting some of your main goals you then need to figure out what will go into achieving that goal. This is where you breakdown what actually needs to be done and... start doing it. Day by day you complete all of the mini tasks that move you closer to your goal until finally... you have reached it.

But, and there is always a but, it's not always going to be easy. Let's take into consideration the fact that I still have some bad behaviors to modify within myself. This can make my simple plan of doing what I can, the best that I can every day a little more difficult.

A little more difficult but definitely doable. I look at all of the "character flaws" that I've already successfully changed or at least reigned in a whole bunch and it gives me the confidence that I can tackle just about any strange, destructive, weird, embarrassing behavior that I have in this brain of mine.

So yes, while I agree that life is not a race and not everything in your life needs to be worked on at once I also agree with the old AA wisdom of Easy Does It, But Do It.

So what goals have you set for your life and what daily things are you doing to make sure you reach those goals?

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It doesn’t stop with just silent judging though. Sometimes those bad thoughts about others make it out of my mouth to whomever I’m sitting with. It then causes whomever I’m with to judge that person also. I used to enjoy this, I thought of it as a pass time.

What I have realized is that this is a form of isolation. I write someone off by judging their appearance and deciding that they don’t look like someone I would want to have anything to do with. That way I will never have to put myself out there and possibly face rejection. It is in no way a sign that I think I am so much better than any of these people because deep down I don’t. It’s kind of low self esteem if you really think about it.

I’ve noticed that it goes the other way also. I judge myself from how someone else looks. If I see someone with a nice car or they have on nice clothes I think that their life must be perfect. Because they have nice hair or a tan they must be really happy and very together. Then I start to feel bad about the state of my own life or how I look.

I myself am a perfect example that this is totally false. Towards the end of my drug use I would go to extra lengths to make myself look great before going out for the night. I would make sure my hair and makeup was perfect. I was going tanning to give myself a health glow. This however was the complete opposite of what I was feeling inside.

I don’t want to do this anymore. It makes me feel bad about myself. I have no right to judge anyone else. I have faults just like anyone else. My life isn’t perfect so why do I feel the need to comment on other people like that?

I already talked about acting as if. So what I’m trying to do now is act as if I don’t constantly judge people. I DO NOT under any circumstances say out loud the horrible things that I think about perfect strangers. I know that a lot of people have judgmental thoughts about others…it’s just a fact of life. So possibly there isn’t anything I can do about the initial thought that pops in my head but I certainly can change what I do with that thought.

This happens to be one thing on the very long list of things that I would like to work towards changing about myself. Ya, I need some work but I’m a lot better off today then I was just yesterday.

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The next stop along your road of recovery was realizing that since you cannot fix your problem on your own, you needed to ask for help. This was one of the most difficult things that you ever had to do in your life. Saying out loud to someone "I need help", is not something that addicts do very well. We usually try to hide the fact that we are not in control and are not perfect. But somehow you did it. These things got you started out along your road of addiction recovery...but where are you along your road of recovery now?

What is interesting is that just as addiction usually follows the same downward spiral, addiction recovery seems to keep people on a similar upward course. This is not to say that everyone's situations are identical, they are far from that. What it does mean is that there are some common speed bumps that people will hit as they travel down that road to recovery.

These "speed bumps" aren't always monumental. They could be small, annoying things like not being able to sleep at night. Take myself for instance. I was reading some of my older posts and found one titled Downer Junky Asks How Am I Supposed To Sleep?. This was about two months into my recovery and I was finding it hard to fall asleep at night without the use of sleeping aides. Huge problem? No, but at the time it felt like that. Eventually I figured a way over that speed bump.

Climbing Over The Bigger Hurdles

I kept running into the little speed bumps of life in recovery and every once in a while would hit a bigger hurdle along the way. One of those hurdles was dealing with the fact that I am uncomfortable in social situations. I don't think that it is very obvious to anyone I'm around because I have a great knack of totally hiding what I'm feeling on the inside and making it appear that I am very confident and comfortable on the outside. THIS IS A BIG ONE FOR ME.

In the "good" old days, I would quiet that internal anxiety by getting a primer on. A primer would be the 2 or 3 beers I would drink along with the 2 or 3 Klonopin I would pop before I left for whatever social gathering I was going to. This was probably the reason that no one ever knew when I was feeling tipsy...they only saw me when I was tipsy. It was when I was stone cold sober that people would question me about the way I was acting.

That primer allowed me to be "funner" and more "out going" when I arrived at the social gathering. I felt less self-conscious and was able to talk and laugh and "be myself". At least I thought. As I got a little practice at sober socializing I realized that being on the quiet side and not always being the life of the party is ok. It's who I am. Plus, I never have to wake up in the morning and think of some of the things that I said the night before and be riddled with embarrassment. That used to happen a lot. Have you ever heard the saying "It's better to sit in silence and have people think that you are stupid rather than speak for the sake of speaking and remove all doubt".

Then Comes The Realization

As you go along your road of recovery and you hit the occasional speed bump, you may start to see that you have a lot of "issues" (for lack of a better word) that have never been dealt with. They have only been covered up with the use of mood altering substances.

It's at this spot along my road of recovery that I started to panic. I just kept thinking that I was so messed up. I was a weird person who can't even deal with the smallest of things. What is wrong with me? Well that answer did come to me. The only thing that is wrong is that I didn't have a lot of life skills or coping skills for that matter.

My skills were in the art of covering up the way I was feeling and never having to deal with things head on. Those are the "skills" that I had been working on so far in life. But, and this is a huge but, I thought about this and realized that this doesn't make me a bad person. It just makes me a person that has some work to do on themselves...who doesn't really?

At A Fork In The Road

When you are face to face with a situation that is new for you in the sense that usually you would run and hide, you are faced with a choice. You could either choose to deal with the situation and get this "life skill" or "coping skill" under your belt...or you could do what you have always done in the past. You can try to live in denial.

Guess what. Since you are no longer using mood altering substances you are going to find that living in denial of a situation is not as easy as it once was. Believe me, I've tried. There is nothing that is going to numb your guilt or worse, you're shame. There is nothing that is going to make you escape reality for a few hours at a time. You will be left feeling horrible about yourself.

On the other hand, when you decide to actually face what it is you have fear of, you will begin to heal yourself. You will no longer be stuck in your addictive behavior patterns. Although your addictive behaviors are the ones that are second nature to you now, the more you work on dealing with life the more your improved behaviors will be the ones that happen without thought.

Addiction Recovery Becomes More Than Just Not Using

You will begin to see that addiction recovery is about way more than just not using your substance of choice. It is actually about healing your addictive thinking and addictive behaviors. It is about dealing with life in a different way than you have up to this point.

Once we grasp the concept of what addiction recovery truly is, we will begin the real journey of recovery. Once we realize that we will ALWAYS be a work in progress, the more forgiving we can be of ourselves. Once we realize that our understanding of addiction recovery can ebb and flow, we can stop beating ourselves up over the times that we just "don't get it".

Although there is no true definition of addiction recovery, I think that everyone can agree that it is more than just to stop using drugs and alcohol. It's about our human development which was stunted at the hands of addiction. Once we begin to continue to develop as humans we will find ourselves wanting to turn to drugs or alcohol less in life. For we will have developed other ways of dealing with life...on life's terms. Ones that actually get the job done, not just cover up our bad feelings.

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So who is "anyone associated with Suboxone"? This would include active addicts who are contemplating beginning Suboxone treatment, those recovering addicts who are currently in Suboxone treatment, Methadone patients who are trying to make the switch over to Suboxone treatment, and also those who have loved ones that are on a Suboxone treatment program.

So, why would someone who did not utilize Suboxone in their own recovery from opioid addiction choose to create a Suboxone support forum for others? Hmmm. It all started with a little post I did about the media dubbing Suboxone a miracle pill. In this post I mostly talked about the downside to Suboxone. I brought up the fact that I myself had bought Suboxone on the street when still in my active addiction days and just how common a scenario that is.

Mostly the article was about how important I think it is to be taking Suboxone in conjunction with a very strong recovery program. I got some really great responses to this article which included both sides of the issue. Those who were taking Suboxone along with being involved in a recovery program (either on their own or affiliated with a twelve step program) and those who were just kind of taking the Suboxone and hoping for the best.

Instead of just pointing out the problem, I wanted to be part of the solution. The Suboxone Help Spot was created in an effort to provide a place of support for those who are using Suboxone as part of their recovery program.

The Suboxone Help Spot is a place where those who have opted for a medically assisted recovery program can come and be completely open and honest about their recovery without the fear of being judged by those who do not agree with this type of recovery approach.

It is my firm belief that any good addiction recovery program is based on sharing and identifying with others that know what it is you are going through. I'm hoping that The Suboxone Help Spot can aid in that aspect of recovery for those who need it.

I would also like to take this time to thank those like TDA who has helped out by mentioning (and linking to) The Suboxone Help Spot in a great article he wrote about Alcohol and Substance Abuse Advocacy. There was also an excellent mention of The Suboxone Help Spot courtesy of PainPainGoAway who is doing some really great vlog posts about Suboxone.

It's kind of tough in the beginning to get a new website on the map so help like this is much appreciated (hint, hint, to anyone with a site). So far The Suboxone Help Spot has 11 members...woohoo! I am constantly looking for ways to increase membership and any help anyone can give is much appreciated.

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But now what? I'm not taking drugs anymore, I'm in recovery. So do I just go back to worrying myself to sleep? No. Just like anything else, being able to sleep properly without drugs took work. I spent many, many sleepless nights my first couple of weeks in recovery just sitting up and watching TV all night. This was driving me crazy.

I took the advice of a counselor and started a bedtime routine. I didn't have much of a routine when I was using. Usually I passed out on the couch with my clothes on. Glamorous, I know. But a bedtime routine? Yes. A bedtime routine. I start my routine by having a coup of sleepytime tea. Then I tried something really out of the ordinary for myself...bedtime hygiene. It seems kind of gross but when I was using I never even thought of brushing my teeth or washing my face before bed. Like I said, I usually just passed out. Then I usually write in my journal for a little while and then read.

Reading has become a big part of me being able to fall asleep. I suggest it to anyone who is having trouble sleeping. Get yourself on a new nighttime routine that involves positive, relaxing things. Stick to it even if it doesn't work right away. Soon you will let your body know it is time to unwind, relax and drift away to sleep.

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I understand that people aren't throwing their entire lives away to get another pill of Cymbalta like what is sometimes done (myself included on that) with Oxycontin, but there really is a similarity here. For Cymbalta to cause such severe withdrawal symptoms in people for such an extended period of time there must be some real brain dependency going on here.

What's worse is that some doctors don't even realize that Cymbalta causes these withdrawal symptoms and so they are not weening their patients off of it at the speed necessary to avoid severe withdrawal. I had gotten sample boxes from my doctor with the informational sheet (which has "please remove from box before dispensing to patient" written on it) inside and no where did it list the severe withdrawal symptoms. It did say that Cymbalta should not be stopped abruptly. To me, that doesn't really drive home the fact that severe withdrawal will ensue if it is stopped to quickly.

To me, if doctors are unaware of the severe Cymbalta withdrawal symptoms this could mean that the pharmaceutical reps are going in the doctor's offices and are not giving the entire scoop on this drug. Possibly...obviously, I'm not there and I don't know this to be true.

Because of Cymbalta's pain reduction property, the FDA has now approved Cymbalta being prescribed to Diabetic patients to treat pain due to Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy. What I have been reading from patients making posts on message boards here and there is that it works for a couple of months and then is not so effective. Once that happens the patients end up having to continue to take Cymbalta for months and months after it stops being effective to ween off.

I'm not trying to say it's some huge conspiracy like what happened with Oxycontin but it does make you wonder. Why aren't Cymbalta patients being told upfront about the long weening off process and the severe withdrawal symptoms? Ultimately it is up to the patient to make an informed choice when starting any medication but it would help if the information was more readily available.

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The purpose of this step is supposed to be about openly acknowledging the positive while committing to work at rectifying your negatives. I do understand the purpose of it, I guess I'm just NO WHERE near being ready for this type of outward honesty. I'm not saying I'll never be there, just not right now.

It seems that I'm not alone in my unwillingness to admit my secrets to another human beings. I have found some sites recently who's main purpose is to let people anonymously admit their secrets...both good and bad.

I had never heard of these types of sites before until I had read a post on another blogger's site about confessing our secrets. It was in this post that the website Post Secrets was mentioned.

It didn't take long for me to be in tears while checking out some of the anonymous secrets that are posted on this site. I felt so horrible for some of these people, they have been carrying around these secrets for so long. They obviously needed to unburden themselves or they wouldn't thought it necessary to anonymously share their secrets on this site.

Then it dawned on me...I'm not sitting here judging these people for what they are sharing. I'm empathizing with them and identifying with them. Feeling bad for them that they found no means of unburdening themselves other than leaving an anonymous secret on a website.

So why is it that I feel that I would be judged harshly? Why do I feel like there are things that I've done that I could never say out loud to another human being? I'm not talking serial murder here, I'm talking just normal human being type actions that result from low self-esteem and possibly addictive thinking.

I don't have an explanation for this. I have no trouble admitting to myself my wrong doings. I also have no problem thinking about these things and trying to figure out what caused these actions. I know that it's not just the result of being a bad person.

I guess I'm looking for some feedback on this topic. Are there those people out there that don't feel like they have gotten to the point of being able to bare their sole to another human being yet? Am I holding my self back in terms of my recovery because I can't do this? Should I just wait until I feel ready? Will I ever feel ready?

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My post was about my current feeling of loneliness and the fact that I thought being disconnected from my higher power was the main factor behind this feeling. Scout explained that her connection to G-d also ebbs and flows. Just reading that made me start to feel better. I guess it was that whole "identifying" thing at play.

Reading some older posts on my site and also from reading fellow addicts sites I can see just how true this whole ebb and flow thing really is. It doesn't necessarily just have to do with my connection with G-d. It has more to do with my happiness and peace of mind within addiction recovery.

Sometimes I let myself get overwhelmed with the thought of spending the rest of my life trying not to relapse and thinking about all the work that goes into living a good life and being a good person. I feel blah and kind of boring. I feel that the pink cloud I originally walked around in has dropped me in the land of the gray. I examine my thoughts and behaviors and instead of accepting imperfections I think of myself as weird...this is when my addiction recovery ebbs.

Other times I am connected to my higher power, I'm able to take things Twenty-four hours a day without struggling to do so. I have peace of mind which to me equals happiness. I can laugh and have a good time. I'm not walking around in a pink cloud but I'm seeing life with all of it's vivid colors. I seem to be right where I need to be on my road to recovery...this is when my addiction recovery flows.

What Have I Learned From All This?

And so realizing this, what have I learned? Well I will tell you. I have learned what countless other addicts and alcoholics have already learned. They have even tried to pass on their wisdom about this subject in the form of a catchy saying (we all know how much I love to spew out these addiction recovery sayings) "This too shall pass".

Boom! It seems so simple and kind of common sense. I have said it to other people before, why didn't it dawn on me to apply this to myself? Do I have to learn every single thing in life the hard way? It's really starting to look that way.

Just in case you have not noticed from my writing...my addiction recovery is once again flowing. I got over the hump and did so in a way that allows me to feel good about myself. I didn't allow myself to use...I hung on by the skin of my teeth and I made it through. I guess it's at the toughest times when you really see how far along the road of recovery you have really come.

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Mereggie is a website dedicated to the true story of Reggie McDonald. He was a drug addict, who under the influence of crystal meth left his house one day and never returned. Despite a country wide search...he wasn't found.

What is truly unique in the story of Reggie McDonald is that his family found hundreds of pages of Reggie's writings after he disappeared and they have decided to publish them on line in hopes of stopping others from following down the same path as their Reggie. They also write their own take on the whole situation from time to time.

Reggie's dad gave his insight on his son's life. He gave some reasons on why he thought Reggie got caught up in a life of drug addiction. It is really touching to see how much Reggie's family obviously loved him.

Along with Reggie's own writings the family has gone on to post information about developments in the search for Reggie. The developments conclude with officials finding Reggie McDonald's remains in a swamp.

There is something about the whole story of Reggie McDonald that grabbed me and got me really wrapped up in it. When I got to the part of the story where the searchers located the skull of Reggie McDonald I can honestly say I was very saddened. I thought for some reason that this was going to have a happy ending to this story...or at least one that let you hold out a little hope.

The story of Reggie McDonald seemed to be the classic addiction story. Reggie had actually complied his own timeline which shows in black and white his downward spiral into drug and alcohol addiction. There was a sentence in one of his writings that truly struck a cord with me:

"After Mike died I did a lot of thinking. I stopped planning for the future and began to live more for the moment. What a mistake that would turn out to be".

This brought back some memories of my fuck it attitude. Everyone is going to die someday, what does it matter if I die being "happy" on drugs or if I am president of the United States? I too at one time had given up on doing anything for my future. I was worried about one thing, getting high.

Luckily I was able to come out of that way of addictive thinking and go back to having a productive life. Unfortunately Reggie McDonald did not have that chance. I suggest that anyone and everyone who is in anyway connected to addiction whether it be themselves or a loved one, read the writings of Reggie McDonald. I did, I got a lot out of it.

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