Columbus Day almost killed me.
I woke up avalanched under a junkyard of pain, my body a trap of torn nerves and trashed organs. An oily rash of sweat had soaked through my pillow and into the mattress. I was coughing, confused and crazy with anger. A throbbing, deep-pink chemical sunburn covered my face; my bowels were spitting hot mercury. I slid out of bed and dropped to the floor, the weight of a snarling mountain gorilla bearing down on me. I saw myself in the mirror as I fell. I looked puffy.
Outside, the sun was terrifying, while the hiss from a neighbor’s dancing sprinkler got in my head and pissed me off so much, it felt as though my blood had become flammable and would ignite at the next insult.
I made it to the car and somehow drove one block down to the mailbox, expecting the Priority Mail package from my eBay dealer to save me.
Nothing.
I hobbled into the car and drove back to the house, used the bathroom and looked on the computer. The U.S. Postal Service Web site tracker verified that my box of poppies had been delivered to Reno at exactly 10:32 a.m. Well, where the hell was it? I typed a threatening e-mail to my supplier but didn’t send it.
Then I got back into the car, reeling and jumpy, went back and opened the mailbox.
Nothing.
I closed it. Locked it. Waited a second and then stuck the key in and opened it back up.
Still not there.
I got back in the car and decided to wait it out. My head whirled with psychic errata–miscalculations in the synapses. As though faced with gravity for the very first time, I struggled to hold the horizon line, like an infant with an iron skull. I wanted to ram my head straight into the dashboard but feared the airbag might blow and deliver the knockout punch. Or, worse, I’d miss and hit the damn horn.
Everything hurt, but the pain came in slow motion and actually seemed to stop to register with each and every nerve. My pulse rattled, and my heart seemed to sizzle.
Maybe my package had been intercepted by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Good, I thought. Maybe they’ll be able to get me off this stupid homemade junk.
I sat there for less than a minute. Maybe I sat there for an hour; I don’t know. But something had to be done. I stuck some Klonopin under my tongue and drove to the post office, expecting to turn myself in. Give up. Take the 15 years, if they would just give me the fix. But the door was stuck. I pushed, pulled. It wouldn’t budge. No, it was locked. Closed for Columbus Day.
Columbus Day. No wonder everyone hated him. That tabard-wearing bastard had been dead for 500 years and was still causing trouble.
I took a dozen allergy pills to make me drowsy but couldn’t sleep. I lay awake in bed for the next two days before the shipment finally arrived. The postman had decided to make a long weekend out of the cheap-ass holiday.
I should’ve stayed in bed and ridden it out. I had put a price on my head in the form of a box-a-day addiction but already had endured the worst part of the withdrawal: the first 48 hours. But then the box arrived, and I was a helpless slave. I ripped it open by its pull string and dumped a dozen poppy pods onto the bed, trying to eat one whole. I then made a quick, crude tea, drank it and started to feel a rabid glow of health return in seconds.
What had all the fuss been about?
In better days, I used to crack the dried poppy pods over the blender like eggs, little rivulets of blue-black seeds rushing out as I shattered the crowned pods. Sometimes, I’d commandeer the kitchen and make a big production out of the whole thing, as though I was hosting some kind of lowbrow cooking show, doing stupid cockney accents while explaining the preparation process to the viewers.
Start with a clean, chemical-free stock of dried poppy pods. Pulverize in a blender and scald with water. Don’t boil. Don’t burn. Don’t vaporize. Just scald. Blend on low for about a minute, and then add a dash of lemon juice to taste. Add a cup of fine, aged brandy and then strain through an old T-shirt to remove lingering lumps.
Not only did the brandy serve to recreate that loose-laudanum effect; a swig satisfied the senses while I waited the few minutes for the infernal teapot to boil.
I had a whole list of fuel additives I’d researched on the Internet to intensify the tea experience: tyrosine, ascorbic acid, allergy medicine.
After downing a few bowls of tea, I’d lie down on the bed and watch the ceiling fan spin until my body felt etherized and free again. Ready for the imminent rapture.
But that was the first phase. And it didn’t last very long.
On a field trip to Washington, D.C., Nancy Reagan promised us third-graders that there were people in the world who actually wanted nothing more than to give us drugs–for free! Free crack. Free cigarettes and beer. Free grass. Free coke. Free PCP and LSD. At the time, I remember thinking this notion carried the vague backing of Mr. T.
Back at school, they showed us a video of the circumstances and places these drugs might be obtained: playgrounds, especially while playing kickball; from ice-cream trucks; in restrooms at parties.
I played lots of kickball, but no goon in a trench coat ever trapped the ball under his foot and asked me if I wanted to fly. My friends couldn’t score a Jolt cola, let alone a bump of nose candy. It was probably for the best. Had someone handed me a rock of crack, I think I would’ve put it in my mouth and eaten it. I couldn’t even get a beer. And New Year’s was coming up.
One place to get free stuff was the library. My mother dropped me off like it was day care, me and the damn bums. I looked for books with naked people. I read through investment magazines. Finally, I found the fiction section and a book called Beowulf. I liked it. The Vikings drank this stuff called “mead.” It was an alcoholic drink made from honey. I looked in the card catalog and found a book on mead. It even showed how to make it. I was 12. The librarian had her hair full keeping the bums from falling asleep on the newspapers. She stamped my books and sent me away.
The recipe seemed simple enough. I rode my bike to the supermarket and bought a bear-shaped jar of honey and some Fleischmann’s yeast.
I kept my mead in a pair of empty plastic Coke bottles. Every day, I’d have to twist the cap off and release the carbon dioxide, or the stuff would explode. On New Year’s Eve, I poured my first glass. It was warm, almost hot. It wasn’t sweet at all–it tasted like some kind of milky lard. I couldn’t drink it at first, but I made myself chug the stuff. I’m not sure what happened, but all of a sudden it was dark outside, I thought I heard Dick Clark talking about his balls, and I couldn’t stand up.
Because my neighborhood had failed me with its lack of blight, I began to see the supermarket and drugstore as potential drug dealers. I drank bottles of cough syrup before I knew what dextromethorphan was. I ate catnip and didn’t feel anything. I ate nutmeg and felt everything. There was no Internet to guide me and nothing in the library about morning-glory seeds. My mother just happened to have some Heavenly Blues in the junk drawer. I had never seen the carpet move like that before. I tried everything in the medicine aisle and everything in the bulk food hoppers.
I got my first pain pills from my friend’s dead grandmother. I liked them. I liked them so much, I started hanging out with my own grandmother, just checking in on her every now and then.
By the time I was driving, I still hadn’t found out where to get anything stronger than pot on the street. But they had just opened a whole-foods store about 20 miles away. Also, there was this damn new thing called the World Wide Web. There were whole pages on “legal highs.” I was an opiate man.
At the health-food store, I looked at the huge bins of sesame seeds and fennel seeds and poppy seeds. The page on legal highs had said that trying to extract opium from poppy seeds was ridiculous. You needed pounds of the stuff.
I bought pounds of the stuff. I had them back-ordered and front-ordered at 97 cents a pound.
Per instructions, I boiled some water and slurred the mix around until it poured out in a pale yellow oil. I added some lemon and forced it down. Thirty minutes later, I was a poppy plant floating in the vase of my own body. It felt like I had a headache that didn’t hurt, just these pleasant vexations. Later, I remembered this feeling, this innocent password to paradise.
In college, after a few semesters of spiking needles in my arms and toes before class, my friend Lukas never came back from spring break with the heroin he had promised. The way they described it, his heart had exploded. They called it an allergic reaction. I didn’t know what to think except that the greedy bastard had copped my share. I remember needing a fix but was too scared to shoot up. The shrink had me on Klonopin for anxiety attacks. I drank until drinking didn’t work. I tried every drug I could find. I stole Vicodin from medicine cabinets and kept an open ear for those with upcoming dental work, but the stuff was getting harder and harder to score.
There were online pharmacies on the Internet. I ordered Tramadol from Mexico and Nurofen Plus with the legal max 12.8 milligrams of codeine per tablet from New Zealand. Then that got tougher.
Finally, I found eBay. I had been looking for old motel stationery and fake Jackson Pollock drip paintings. They sold everything–why not drugs?
I typed “poppy pods” into the search bar.
Like anyone trolling the Internet at 4 a.m., I had been looking for some kind of temporary fix. I found it on eBay under Crafts>Floral Supplies>Flowers, Foliage>Dried.
Crafting. Sure. I liked art.
A query turned up all sizes and quantities of poppies. Some, called gigantheums, were as big as tennis balls. A special of “600 XXL-sized gigantheums” was selling for $399. Fortunately, for crafting projects requiring so many poppy plants, financing was available for $17 per month. For all of us hard-core flower arrangers, of course.
The recipe was simple enough. I ordered a few dozen dried flowers from a seller with more than 3,000 positive-feedback points and a clever handle that was a clear double-entendre on horticulture and getting high.
At first, the plants came double-boxed, rubber-banded by the dozen with the stems intact. But after a few more orders, the seller seemed to cut out the pretense that I might actually be using the poppies for floral arrangements and just sent the pods themselves.
The first taste gave off a steamy insult. Even after being filtered twice, the manna was as putrid as a bowl of warm pus. It seemed completely undrinkable. Its fermented, earthy taste–a little like a liquid squeezed from gym socks–had to be chased with something sweet. The dark grinds of crushed seed and sediment formed a repulsive grit in a half-ring around the bottom of the bowl.
As I poured the slosh into what would become my ceremonial chalice–a plastic child’s cereal bowl with a built-in silly straw on the side–I learned how to drink it. Rather, it seemed to teach me how. Its nauseating properties demanded that it be downed fast at first, and then titrated for the rest of the session.
Fifteen minutes after downing my first bowl of poppy-pod tea, I entered “Flanders Fields,” from the John McCrae poem: Where the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row.
Immediately, I felt redeemed. The raw reel of life became distant, pleasant. My head was an overstuffed pillow that could softly implode any minute, and it didn’t matter. Nothing could. A pleasant pressure settled on the back of my neck. I was snacky. I wanted sweets. I felt the promise of a divine massage as the pressure spread through my shoulders and opened my ribs like wings. My thoughts slowed down until just about everything seemed to fold neatly inside everything else.
I became happily over-focused in the comfortable mud of abstraction and triumph; immortality bobbed around me like fat peaches in a hot tub.
It was far from the predictable recklessness of alcohol or the silly buzz of marijuana. I didn’t have the lubricated jaws of a chatty coke fiend or the mystical misconceptions of a psychedelic spaceman.
It was quiet up there.
For a while.
Poppy tea seemed to inspire creativity, from conception to actual completion, without any of those time-consuming frat-boy impulses. It effectively killed the sex drive for the night. As such, much writing could be done. A good dose could keep me up all night without that toothless amphetamine tic.
By morning, things tended to irritate me, and the return of the sun seemed an impossibly horrifying affront. I covered the windows with blankets.
As the original confessional opium-eater, Thomas DeQuincey, put it way back in the September 1821 edition of London Magazine, “Booze is an acute pleasure while opium is a chronic one. It introduces among the faculties the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession, opium greatly invigorates it.”
Another thing opium tea slows down is the bowels. As an experienced pod-head, I learned to carry a Fleet two-pack before any major binge. (Those are the enemas in the green box.) Opium bunged things up the way eating a beach towel might. When things did finally make their exit, they felt like pine cones being forced through a tiny hole in a dry brick.
There was also the cottonmouth. It was once so bad that it was physically impossible for me to eat a sandwich.
Poppy tea was an extreme beverage for sure, but no more foul than that goofy, green yuppie-goo: wheat grass.
I swallowed the tea a few times. Then a few more. By a month, I was drinking the juice of upward of 60 crushed pods per day–swallowing gallons of liquid and pissing out about $300 a week worth of tea matter. Bowl after bowl of blissful narcotic bloat that I sucked down with a silly straw.
Often, late into a session, I’d get that uncontrollable opiate itch.
Raking my skin with a giant plastic comb seemed to help. Occasionally, I’d bleed or accidentally scrape a piece of a mole right off.
The thing is, heroin gets you addicted to heroin. But opium is 40 to 50 different alkaloids, meaning 40 to 50 different drugs I was becoming addicted to.
Some nights on the tea, I’d just lie in bed, content, even cheerful and impossibly satisfied enough to watch my wife read a copy of Lucky magazine, helping her put those little stickers on items she wanted.
Admittedly, slugging down bowl after bowl of plant slop through a silly straw lacked the romance of an opium den or the skinny-tie-and-suit jet-setting of the French Connection; it didn’t have the instant appeal of the smoky red-light pleasures–the real ensemble pieces of the imagination–the ones where curly white smoke swirls in slow motion until it takes on the figure of an overly gracious geisha girl in fine red silk.
Poppy tea didn’t leave me fashionably thin, either. In fact, after four months of constant use, I had never been so freaking fat in my life. I swelled from a size 30 to a 38 in jeans. I gained 65 pounds, almost exclusively in the middle, from the constipating bloat and junk-food chasers. While hard drugs collapsed on the user like a broken elevator when they wore off, poppy tea seemed to fade into the next day like a down escalator.
At first.
The chronicles of the opium trade zigzag through early civilizations from Mesopotamia to China and eventually wander to Neolithic southwestern Europe, where groups of early open-minded dump dwellers found the opium poppy plant, papaver somniferum, growing like a weed among piles of refuse. They soon discovered that not only would the plant seemingly thrive almost anywhere, but, also, when eaten or brewed into a primitive tea, it even took the edge off of living in a dump.
During the 1800s, when the strong painkilling alkaloid morphine was first isolated from the poppy and used in everything from battlefield amputations to snake oils and suspect tonics with names like “Mister Jim’s Special Relief for Facial Neuralgia” or “Calmer’s Baby Tonic for Calmer Babies,” the poppy’s use as a tea fell out of practice. Purified morphine was cheaper than liquor, and a mix of the two, called laudanum, was sold as a kind of cure-all by greedy, apple-cheeked pharmacists everywhere. Once morphine was processed into brand-name heroin, the use of poppy tea just about came to an end, at least until eBay came onto the scene.
As a modern world-bazaar or world-sized museum of bizarre junk, eBay reconnected well-worn trade routes electronically that had disappeared and grassed over centuries ago. While becoming a worldwide garage sale, global swap meet and anthropologist’s curio shop, eBay also quite naturally had become the official opium gray market to at least some of the masses.
But it didn’t also sell the cure.
It was sometime before sunrise, and I was sitting in a motel in Carson City, Nev. My wife didn’t kick me out. She didn’t even tell me to stop drinking the tea. There was no ultimatum. I just packed three huge boxes of poppies in the car with the blender and left. I didn’t tell her where I was going. I didn’t really know. But that seemed to be where you were likely to end up–at a cheap motel. There was some equation there.
I walked a few miles to a grocery store for some lemon juice, Coke and junk food for the binge.
I tried to get the motel tap water running to a boil, but the closest I could get was to put the hand-crushed poppies in the ice bucket and run the shower until steamy water filled it to the brim. I drank it down in hideous gulps.
The reverie, the calm of my ocean, a measured but strong divine state for silent natural trances. I was back in the folds of the plant. I realized I had left because I didn’t want to share this experience with anyone. I reached into the grocery bag and ripped open a three-pack of yellow Easter Peeps.
This was living.
DeQuincey noted that some nights he seemed to live for 70 to 100 years. This was going to be one of those nights. As long as I didn’t die, at least.
I took a poppy pod out of the box and looked it over. It was regal, like a birch-colored rose wearing a halo; a poet could sit and be effusive for days meditating over its near-beauty.
Insulated by the opium and the sumptuousness of a secured motel room, I lay down with hopes of the state between consciousness and sleep.
Suddenly, everything got blurry. The lights stayed put while my eyes moved. It was as though they were riding on oily ball joints. Or were the lights on ball joints? My lips shrank, and I couldn’t talk. My heart drummed fiercely. I needed to calm down.
I panicked. The fear was intense. My toes wiggled around and got stuck in a cigarette hole in the bottom sheet of the motel bed. Did I drink too much? This was the high-water mark. I scratched my itches. Chasing. Always chasing. But this time, I wasn’t catching anything. I was caught.
I made more tea. Used more pods than ever before. I was trying to blast off somewhere.
A few hours later, I had drunk the salt of 200 pods but only felt a kind of necessary doom. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror to make sure I was still there. I looked like that mug shot of Nick Nolte, my hair up in the air, pasted in place by sweat and spilled drink. Tiny poppy seeds were stuck to my shirt. They were everywhere. In the bed. Under my feet. On the floor.
I turned on the TV. The news. Some jackass was trying to sell a body part on eBay, and it had made the headlines.
I felt like I was trapped in an aviary of evil eye-pecking birds. The threats were soaring overhead, then dive-bombing beak-first into the pores in my aching skull. I screamed. The writhing, palpitating torment; the shattering headache; and the enormous irritability and agitation of the world all fit into the grit in my teeth.
I needed something, some kind of painkiller, or I was going to die. I didn’t know any old people who might have medicine cabinets stocked with Norco. I needed help. I thought about the stairwell. I thought maybe I could push myself down the stairwell and break something and go to the emergency room and get some pain meds.
I hurried down the hall and stood over the top, but I couldn’t throw myself off. It was carpeted. I might just bruise, not break. I couldn’t jump. My eyes fogged over with tears that didn’t stream. I never knew how serious it had gotten until it had gotten serious. I had left my wife. I had blown through our savings. But I couldn’t make myself take the final fall and literally hit bottom.
I went back into my room and found the Bible. I promised to God I’d quit. I tried to read some passages, but my eyes kept closing. I knew if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t wake up. I found a section called “Leviticus.” It was awful. Something about an “unclean creeping carcase.” I had to get out of there. By “there,” I meant my body.
But I was stuck.
I’ve been off opium tea for almost two weeks: twelve days of nonstop low-grade flu and restless thoughts of maybe sawing off my head with a bowie knife. I’ve also considered a homemade lobotomy with a knitting needle. I can’t live on this plane of plain sobriety.
When I can sleep, I wake up after a couple of hours, shivering, as though I’ve been sleeping in the steerage of some Alaskan fishing boat. Everything hurts.
I’ve tried jogging to build up that natural high, but my brain’s capacity to make natural painkillers has been so dimmed by the opium that it feels like my knee joints are ripping with every stride.
The thing about it is I realize that I’m going to order more poppies. It’s not a question of “if.” I know where I can get them. It’s only a matter of time before I do this all over again. As long as someone sells the pods, and nobody cares to stop them, my recidivism is all but assured.
Poppies have shown me a better place. An occasional oasis of emotional stability. It’s medicine for life. I doubt it will ever kill me. Perhaps make me into a 400-pound shut-in. Whatever–as long as I can get to the mailbox.
This article appears in Apr 7-13, 2005.
Great Article! You remind me of myself, just a decade or so later. Instead of the library and learning how to make “mead”, it was the internet and some sort of plastic precursor analogous to GHB. Brought back some good memories!
Hope you feel better soon.
Wow.
Instead of exercise, why not try a meditation retreat when you are feeling better? It’s relatively less physical stress, and the social pressure of a retreat can get you to the point of experiencing its benefits more quickly than an irregular home practice. And yoga is gentler. I have friends who have gotten amazing results from one or both. Maybe all that addictive energy can work in a different way. And I know Narcotics Anonymous probably sucks, but it might be better than nothing. Alternative health care may be useful too, I have read about hypnosis for addiction here http://www.vancouverhypnotherapy.org/hypno… for example. It sounds like you are going to need the best support system possible.
Feel for you man. Seriously, don’t go back… now that you are off, get off for good. There are programs, as you know. So. I beg you please, you’re a great writer.
I had an experience quite similar to yours, lasting two and a half years. I never hit bottom. I never, ever, EVER escalated my dose. I never had adverse health effects. I NEVER experienced withdrawal. I bought my pods in the same manner, on eBay, and cooked them in scalding water for 15-25 minutes, and sweetened them with Crystal Lite (that part was a bad idea, looking back).
Please, readers of this article, do not assume that there is no such thing as responsible drug use. I have been entirely clean for two years out of the requirements of circumstance alone – my experience with opiates has been entirely pleasant, affordable, and manageable.
Alcohol, benzos, poppies, oxycontin, heroin, meth…it’s all out of your system in three days. I’d say try antidepressants to get your brain functioning agin. SSRI’s feel like drugs to me; Wellbutrin feels OK.
Once you’ve fucked up your dopamine/serontonin system, you need something else besides an NA emotional crutch to get you through the night.
(Sleeping: melatonin or valerian will help…)
you should really look into travelling to an Ibogaine clinic.
Ibogaine is the single most effective treatment for opiate addiction. Essentially, it is a hallucinogen that has anti-addictive properties, and has been demonstrated to dramatically treat addiction for many drugs, but mostly for opiates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine#Trea…
Strange as it might sound, a very simple way to deal with all of this may be what is now called “energy psychology”. Specifically EFT (emofree.com)! Working with vets who have tried everything to stop their PTSD and constant nightmares EFT has quickly put an end to these problems. I work in colorado and know that some of the private clincs out here are now using EFT, it really works and is free to learn at the above site.
a lapse doesn’t have to be a relapse, and a relapse doesn’t have to be forever. getting off something and maintaining your life off it is a process that will finally defeat you only if you want it to. you are actually at the moment, already enduring and managing your pain and withdrawal. and your narrative very much reads more like you left to hit bottom, take responsibility, and get sober.
those chemical responses to exercise work more as you exercise routinely over time. exercise at a high level of fitness is the most crystal clear high i have ever had. running is pretty hardcore – walking at a challenging pace can be as good for you. swimming is no impact and is also a great whole body workout.
all the best
People commenting here should note that the date from the article is April 07, 2005.
Man I thought i couldn’t read this long article but once i started i never knew it was over. utunga said it right don’t go back you are a good writer. May god bless you.
Everyone’s here from Reddit wishing him well 4 years later — did anyone else read the dateline? — I’m just hoping he’s still alive.
You want peace, calm, wisdom…I strongly recommend cats. At least 4 of the right ones, and you have to spend some quiet time with them alone to tell (I’m talking 10 minutes or so, not weeks).
You don’t just ‘fuck’ your neurotransmitter and neuromodulation systems.
Take magnesium.
http://www.john-libbey-eurotext.fr/fr/revu… Read this.
Try taking phenylalanine as well, it MAY help.
It will kill you eventually.
You have to decide where your bottom is. It wasn’t losing your wife. It wasn’t eating through your savings. It wasn’t having a near death reaction. It wasn’t standing at the top of a stairwell contemplating breaking your own arm to get painkillers. So where is it? What will it take for you to stop. Do you have to start robbing people for money? Do you have to kill someone? Or does it only stop when you die? There are two ways for you to stop: you can hit bottom and decide that this is it, this is the worst it is going to get, or you can die.
So what if poppy seeds are available on the internet. That is not an excuse to not stop. Alcoholics have alcohol everywhere, people drinking it in front of them, they drive down the street and BAR BAR BAR BAR everywhere. You have none of that. There are plenty of alcoholics who quit. You can too.
Get yourself to a NA meeting NOW while you are free from the withdrawal symptoms. If you are not a God person or whatever just pretend that when you say God or Higher Power or whatever, that you are talking to that inner voice that knows what is right and wrong.
You have a really nice writing voice. It would be a shame for that to be extinguished. GO TO A NA MEETING TODAY!!!!!!
Try Kratom, it’s a herbal for sale on Ebay of all places and around the net. It’s suppose to work for opiate withdrawal but it can also become addictive if used frequently.
You’re a very good writer. You have a talent for absorbing the essence of each moment, and putting that essence into words that anyone can experience. Quit while you’re ahead. Once you get the monkey off your back, keep him off. Don’t become another statistic.
Did anyone tell you that you have the potential to become a great writer. And I’m not kidding. Your writing reaches out, and it’s so intricate and well-put. I hope you quit for good man, maybe write a book about your experiences. I sure as hell will buy it
Go on the internet and find a suboxone doctor. You first visit plus the pills will be about 300$. The problem with quitting opiates is PAWS (post acute withdrawl syndrome) the skinny is 1) your body doesnt make opiates anymore and 2) you have tons of extra opiate receptors now. So when you finally are clean, after 1-3 weeks of awful “physical” withdrawals, you now have months to years of mental ones cause of the 1+2 from above.
Suboxone saved my life.
I got hooked on morphine, painkillers and benzos… people say just stop, but its not that freakin easy. If i had known where to get easy drugs in those early recovery days right after i was released from the hospital, i would have been right up in those clouds again. It took a great rehab to relearn all the emotional coping skills that i had passed over with drugs. It was the hardest thing i have ever done. But if i had the choice, i wouldn’t change my past. The greatest lessons come from the worst mistakes.
Suboxone saved mine too… and now its my internet handle for everything.
NA = Narcotics Anonymous
You will find many soulmates there who understand what you are going through. You will mutually, as a group, help each other. There will be people you can phone any time, when you feel like you can’t get through the night.
I went through a related kind of addiction and I’m here to tell you that the 12 steps DO work.
Same story as me man, except, instead of drinking poppy tea, I used to make paper airplanes. And I didn’t itch so much as get lost in the K-Mart. Other than that though…
I will second or third the benefits of Suboxone. I found some Suboxone at http://www.recoveredlife.com and I am able to manage both my pain and ‘acute abstinance syndrome’ from all the vicodin
Fiction.
Two things: 1) Peter Thompson is alive and well, last I heard, and 2) this is most certainly not fiction.
Your recidivism is all but assured not because the poppies are available, but because you haven’t realized that all the feelings the opium gives you are actually within yourself. Opium tricks you into thinking that you are less than you are. You can go back to paying a high price for a profound experience, or build your own life with your own tools. Certain herbs work side by side with you, others offer to do your job for you. You are always assured of a result when you perform the work for yourself.
“doubt it can kill me” you sir need some fucking drug education on opiates. you can DIE from an overdose easily, especially with the unknown doses you’re administering..just because it’s not heroin & you’re not injecting it doesn’t mean it’s any safer.. you’re getting the same physical & emotional dependence.. you need help man, you know there’s rehab clinics that offer drugs (methadone or suboxone) that can block your opiode receptors and trick your body into needing opiates, all while feeling very mellow/relaxed…seriously get help.
Thompson is pathetic, true, but not at the devices of any but himself. Take the poppies out of the picture and you still have an individual gorging himself on candy and food. If he hadn’t found the poppies he would have stuffed himself with something else.
I’ve used poppy tea daily throughout my menopause, nearly 2 years now, and as an aside, I love a buzz, however, I only need to drink the tea of one plum-sized pod to gain my chosen effect; as a heroin addict years ago, I had a tolerance that required measure enough to drop 11 men dead. Sixty, then 200, pods? Please, the man is a swine.
Consider the consequence of a comparable over-indulgence of alcohol. Death by alcohol poisoning notwithstanding, shall we presume the high potential of injury or death to others by virtue of a bed-fire started by a drunken fatman smoking cigarettes and eating Peeps unto unconsciousness, or a car accident on his way home from The Ground Round? And who would you rather interact with, a drunken buffoon, or a buffoon who is highly relaxed and unnaturally free of anxiety? Who would you rather have in the same room as your kids? Consider the same questions in respect to obscene over-caffeination.
The problem is the person and sometimes the person under the influence of the substance, not the substance itself. The sanction of different substances is pretty arbitrary and has little to do with danger to the individual or the population in whole. The poppy is a benign, beautiful little flower with an important job.
In a posting of Thompson’s article some 4 or 5 years ago, a reader questioned the author’s motive for writing and submitting the piece. They speculated that Thompson was attempting to fob off the management of his scurrilous appetite upon all of us. By drawing attention to the resource by which one may acquire the produce to practice, casting himself as victim in a woeful tale, and subsequently revealing that he’ll continue to perform in that capacity because, ostensibly, he’s unable to stop, it seems he’s imploring the regulatory body to muscle-up, crack-down, and thus assume ownership of his dysfunction. How dare he presume to deprive me at the behest of his own loose moral-sphincter.
Shut up Thompson. Stop your infernal belly-aching and get help. There are clinics staffed with professionals who understand you, and the milquetoast you paddle around the plastic cereal-bowl that is your life upon. Do not, I implore you, be taken in by this man’s loathesome sloth of character. He’s addicted, he’s the problem, he needs to take ownership of his life and turn unfortunate choices into golden bricks.
We must not let the Elysian Fields be appropriated by the police. They’ll ruin it. They’ll close it on weekdays. They’ll make us buy tickets. They’ll carpet the wood floors. They’ll decorate with crepe paper and folding chairs. They’ll serve spongecake and casserole under fluorescent lights. Please. Shut this man, and others like him, down. Protect your right to choose.
Sorry to ruin whatever it is you think you have to gain by this being a work of fiction, but it is most definitely non-fiction. Three years of a man’s life.
H was easier to quit than PT, at least for me.
what a writer! what a read! so fluid. I was stunned to hear of the restless bowie knife daydreams. I’ve often had the same fantasy, but mine was from alcoholism, not the poppy. and I imagined pushing a knife up through my jaw and into my brain pan and twisting it in there. that’s how I know when it is getting bad, when I start to daydream about carving my brain out from the inside with a bowie knife. otherwise, things are good, did exercise, met a girl, don’t drink as much, don’t have time. but guaranteed the moment something big goes wrong again to sabotage my precarious equilibrium, it’ll be right there waiting for me again. still, I envy you poppy people; one of your side effects is becoming very good writers. or perhaps opiate writing just reads well to me from inside of my hazy alcoholic mentality? I definitely envy the control. booze life is sporadic and spurt ridden; lots of ups and downs, high highs coupled with jackass behavior and lots of embarrassing hangovers that render one worse than useless. not mellow and continuously meditative like the poppy seems to be. In the end it is the fellow who can squeeze the most out of their symbiotic addiction, distill the most information. The DeQuincy quote notes: opium greatly invigorates self-possession. sounds like a greater yield, but obviously for a greater price.
nice job naming your source idiot. some of us have used pods for years as tort shy doctors refuse to write scripts for something as benign as T3s. Ebay has proved a cheap source for pain management for a body ravaged by 3 auto accidents. Doctors treat me as if I’m some sort of street junkie trying to score. I tell them up front, “I want pain relief.” I’m not looking for oxycontin or the like. Ebay has been a safe haven when i need it. And they are half the price of internet vendors for the same product. So now, thanks to idiots like you that have the inability to put down the pipe along with the loose lips of a tabloid reporter, I now have to rely on overpriced pain management.
I don’t use them all the time. I don’t use them, like you, to get high. I just use them when pain becomes the focus of my life.
“As long as someone sells the pods, and nobody cares to stop them, my recidivism is all but assured.”
Really, come on. I have been an addict before and I understand where he is coming from. But maybe he should have stopped before reaching 60 a day. Any sane person that has done this knows that half that number is crazy. But the real kicker is the quote above. I would say legal or not this guys chance of “recidivism” in any drug would be “assured”. I say keep them legal and this guy needs rehab.
I completely relate to the author, and bravo to the writing. That being said— Get the fuck over it. I’ve been through withdrawls. I’ve shot up. I’ve done every drug there is to do, and then a few extra— and I know you’re right there with me. That being said, again, get the fuck over it. Dope is dope. It will always be dope and it is NEVER EVER going away. No matter how much you wish that banning opium poppies would change the world, kids (and me) are just going to go get loaded on heroin and oxy instead (yaaaaayyy for big Pharma!). Leave us out of the spotlight. Leave us out of the headlines. The only thing you’re doing, is pushing more people to buy stronger shit on the street. But whatever– it’s all big money…. and if history has ever taught us anything, it is that the money, and the guns- always win.
thanks-
Beautiful.
Your article is amazing, I learned a lot that I didn’t know. But please don’t give in to the addiction, people can help you. I can help you. nstenlund (at) gmail (dot) com
Great Story, I was very move. I my self was a junky for over 8 years, now I am over 60 and have found Marijuana, that is almost Narcotic, without the addition. Mabey you should try some of that, and get off the opitum.
Wow – good story, well, not so good for you, but, I mean, good writing, and very interesting and affecting for me… I’m also some sort of a writer, and also, as you once did, just discovering the poppy tea thing – I’ve been keen on all sorts of substances since about fifteen, but not as hardcore as you, my brain will only tolerate so much abuse and then I have to give up whatever I’m toying with at the time; the only things left for me to play with now are alcohol, that old chestnut, and opiates… I came across your story while searching out the addictive potential of said poppy tea, and now consider myself suitably warned – I really hope that (a) I never end up in the position you found yourself in when you wrote the story and (b) that you somehow manage to sort yourself out and do something with your writing – you have potential which will take you further than being hopelessly stoned on foul poppy slime in a shitty motel room somewhere, should you happen to use it someday… Good luck mate, and much Love
Well, your story is definately entertaining to say the least. But what I dont understand is how poppy tea can become such an addiction as you describe. I have been, or had been, addicted to opiates for the past six years, at least up until 3 months ago. The last three years of which was injecting oxycontin.. up to 320mg a day to feel normal. And you of all people should know not to blame your addiction on any other source but yourself bro. As it stands, it is legal in this country to use poppy pods for floral arrangements, as it should be… Addiction can only be blamed on yourself as Ive come to realize and admit. So basically Im responding to your story because I am upset about the fact that you blame your addiction on ebay. Anything can be abused, and as a life-long addict you should know that. So, in conclusion, I just want people to know that they shouldnt be too quick to blame ebay for this persons addiction, Its like blaming McDonalds for being fat.
Awesome writing abilities, every word seems to speak a sentence. Peter you are a heavyweight writer, just don’t get too distracted.
I just wish the local smackheads had a quarter of your intellect.
Poppies are now banned on Ebay, but still available online.
Enjoyed reading, but agree with some comments that there most definitely is a way to use drugs responsibly and I know many people who do. It is interesting to hear the accounts of you, who clearly can not, or have not been able to control it. I think your problem is that you were chasing highs for awhile, and so that is how you approached becoming inebriated on a drug, you chased the next best level it had to offer.
Although a better approach is before starting a relationship with any plant or drug is to research it. Come to understand how to best use it and start off small. If you know something can be addicting, don’t do it enough to let it addict you, if you feel you are becoming addicted stop. If you cannot do research, and use responsibly you have no right to use, and have only your own naivety to blame for your circumstances.
I am sorry you reached this low a point, but you should stay off pods until you can look at them a different way, reset your tolerance and go on a healthier diet. Embrace healthy, rejuvenating ways of life. Being addicted to pods your entire life is NOT a choice, that’s just suicide and you know it dude.
Two volunteer poppy plants are about to bloom in my yard… yeah, after research, they are most definitely of the opium sort… at first, I was excited; but after reading your “confession,” I can’t wait to eradicate ’em. Thank you for sharing and helping to save me from addiction. I wish you health and in finding the charge and joy that comes from life and not from destruction.
When people run into personal trouble it seems like they ruin a resource for everyone else. Just because person “A” has trouble with self control and reason person “B” gets punishes. It shouldn’t be that way. But, when someone starts spouting off at the mouth that is exactly what happens.
If you have habbit or addiction issues, yes. You should seek help. Someone mentioned Suboxone. That is a great weaning aid. So is Methadone and bupenorphine. I find it somewhat amusing that so much was being spent on pods. Pods don’t have much active alkaloid. That is why they can still be sold. If you would have spent an equal amount on street heroin instead, you would have been 10x higher for 10x longer. But, for you that would have been much worse.
Lastly, people often spout off about addiction and drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine. I laugh because while you can have a coke or meth habbit, you CAN NOT become addicted (by definition.) Once you see opiate addiction you truly understand what addiction is. It’s hell. Think of night of the living dead. It’s a lesson about pain. And, for each ounce of opiate you’ve done the drug takes it’s pound of flesh.
You do not need any recreational drug. But, if you must use, don’t use opiates (or opiods) more than once a week. If you can manage that, typically, you will not develop a physical dependance. Check and see if the drugs you intend to use are addictive (if you can actually find unbiased info.)
Benzo’s have a pretty bad withdrawl. And, the worst I’ve seen, is alcohol. People die from withdrawl from alcohol. If you use, use common sense and be responsible… …and don’t be a jackass and cut off sources by being a whiny ass in a newspaper.
I have to correct the writer above, from personal experience. Poppy pods are VERY strong in alkaloids, each pod has the euphoric equivalent of one percolate, but lasts longer. Second, cocaine is every bit as addictive…it literally re-maps your neural pathways in a coke dependent system. Take it away and your brain ceases to function…period.
Second, I was in the same situation with those pods for 3 years. I’m off them now, I earned a graduate degree and am succeeding in life, even with women, who, when I was using, were not important to me at all. My advice to a person in this situation is: taperdown, switch to suboxone (never use methadone, its worse than heroin), get off the suboxone and force RIGOROUS exercise, and start dating, a lot! That take your mind of drugs completely cuz you want to be sharp.
Finally, I really don’t believe your story. Your writing is to good…your a professional writer playing a part to see how good you really are. Its fiction, I’ve seen it online before. You probably know someone that this happened to, and started from there. Good job btw, you snowed a lot of people. But NO ONE can stomach 60 pods a day. You’d have either died of constipation, or you’d be coma-toast, literally. Regardless of tolerance, there is a limit to what your liver can process. Not to mention your kidney’s would have exploded for urinary retention.
Again, good effort with the fiction. Well done!
not percolate, percocet (oxycodone). 🙂
An a comment on the magnesium buff. Maybe there is some truth to the article sited, but consider the source. Its published in a journal called, “Magnesium Research”! Impact factor of 1.21. Very suspect.
And to the emotional freedom techniques (EFT) proponent; there’s poor evidence at best. Anything that promises everything is most certainly fraudulent, and preys on the desperate people with incurable conditions. A snake-oil cure-all? I call BS.
I can’t resist, this one really cracks me up. On the magnesium research subject, the foundation’s webpage makes nothing but assumptions about what Mg2+ might do for addiction, with no actual research to back it up. There listed article, which deals with neuropathic pain (where they’ve listed a title but no summary) was a complete washout!
Placebo effect strikes again! I found the article, here is the abstract:
Oral magnesium treatment in patients with neuropathic pain: a randomized clinical trial
Author(s): Pickering, Gisele (gisele.pickering@u-clermont1.fr) ; Morel, Veronique; Simen, Estelle; Cardot, Jean-Michel; Moustafa, Fares; Delage, Noemie; Picard, Pascale; Eschalier, Sylvie; Boulliau, Sylvia; Dubray, Claude
Source: Magnesium Research Volume: 24 Issue: 2 Pages: 28-35 DOI: 10.1684/mrh.2011.0282 Published: JUN 2011
Abstract: Studies in animals and in patients have suggested that magnesium (Mg), a physiological blocker of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, could have an antinociceptive effect in painful situations. This randomised, double-blind, controlled trial in two parallel groups aims at studying oral Mg effects in patients with neuropathic pain. It explores the impact of Mg (6x419mg Mg chloride/capsule per day for a month), versus placebo (lactose) on pain [Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory (NPSI) and numerical scale (NS)], and on quality of life indicators after 4 weeks treatment, in 45 patients suffering from neuropathic pain. After 4 weeks, NPSI, NS and quality of life are not different in the Mg and placebo groups, while the frequency of pain paroxysms diminishes and the emotional component improves in the Mg group compared to baseline. This clinical trial displays a large placebo response and could not demonstrate any significant difference in pain alleviation after a month of oral treatment between Mg and placebo in patients suffering from neuropathic pain. Frequency of pain paroxysms and emotional impact will be explored in future studies as they constitute major aspects of pain alleviation in chronic pain conditions.
Thank you all for sharing. The sentiments here remain true, and will for a millenia still. Many of us have “been there, done that” and probably will again [for better or worse]. All the best!
I read this article in 2009. I saw the title this morning, and the whole story rushed back. I immediately imagined a person standing in their kitchen breaking open a poppy pod.
Fantastic writing.
Wow. This is some of the best writing I’ve seen in a long time. Do you have more???
In Europe, poppy pods for decorative use are soaked in chemicals to make the resulting tea terribly bitter. Only the most desperate heroin addicts will use it for those few times when their methadone prescriptions are expired.
Peter, get on suboxone, it will save your life, your marriage and you don’t have to go cold sober, at least not immediately.
I enjoyed reading that but as unfortunately I belive this is fiction. As any other Opiate addict would know, if you were clucking form Poppy Tea and had funds/transport, you would of without doubt hit the streets looking for H, or a clinic looking for Sub/Methadone.
Also, to add some objectivty getting on Methadone saved me. Good luck people and remeber at your lowest point, ANYBODY would accept with ramptuous glee what the plant offers if presented to them in the ‘right’ way for them.
One word man, Methadone – I was in a near fatal car accident years back when I was only 15 – started with lortabs, before long the doc had me on oxycontin – that was the beginning of the end… shortly after that point I was snorting the damn things, both my parents were also on the medicine for chronic pain, so our house was like an opiate addicts paradise of pharmacological goodness 😛 I was tapered off by my doc, but i just started taking my parents meds as they were prescribed 300 80 mg pills and 300 40 mg pills EACH, neither of them took nearly that many, so I just took theirs, ended up stealing a lot from them, my parents.. yeah, I was abusing opiates for years, like it was going out of style.. up until I started shooting them, then I found methadone clinic, it took a while but I got clean with only 1 relapse in the beginning of my treatment, now I feel a whole lot better. : BUT… if I could do it all over again, would I? ….. no… just…no…
This dude is a fucking crybaby he is desperate for attention. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. eBay is not to blame, you are. Withdraws from poppy tea are fucking child’s play compared to Any other opiate. Try kicking shooting heroin and you’d be begging for your little poppy tea withdraws back. LMFAO!!!
And btw, Methadone and suboxone are made for real opiate addicts. Either drug, Even in very small doses used to kick poppy tea would completely defeat the purpose. the methadone or suboxone would actually get you way higher than you have ever gotten off your tea. Any medical professional would tell you to just kick it cold turkey. It’s an EXTREMELY mild detox.
All that pain you think your feeling is in your head. You’re fiending for your tea. If you convince yourself that your deathly ill, you can actually make yourself feel Like you are. Relax, quit psyching yourself out, and thank god that your drug of choice is probably the weakest opiate with the most gentle withdraw possible.
My only advice to you would be if your going to relapse try some real drugs next time. (:
This was a very hilarious and informative article about drugs that I’ve read in a long while. Similar to Hunter S. Thompson. If this Peter Thompson wrote a biography, I’d definitely fking buy it.
i read this years ago before i knew anything about drugs. now it is too real…though i wish i ordered some pods when i first read this
Fantastic — and quite hilarious — accounting of your experiences Mr. Thompson. If your predicted recidivism results in another burst of literary brilliance, then I’m all for it. To the posters: this is literature, not a blog. Who are you all to tell him how to live his life? You know him? You care about him? Leave him the hell alone with your unwarranted attacks and unnecessary sympathies; comment on the writing, the subject, not the author. Contrary to your beliefs, not everything relates back to you. Please keep writing, sober or not.
You gained weight? I’ve lost six stone in two years by cutting out alcohol and red meat, walking a couple of miles a day, and using alternating codeine/ poppy too replace alcohol. At my last checkup my blood tests showed me to be pretty much the healthiest 45 year old my doc had ever seen, my ldl cholesterol was 1.2, , blood glucose 3.4, all lipids etc well at the bottom end of the scale. So I’m not recommending it for every one, but crazy as it sounds, moderated opiate use (every other day for about 3 years) have made me the healthiest I’ve been since my teens.
Great, relateable story, and AMAZING writing!
Pod tea is just as addictive as any other opiate. The morphine content ranges from 10-20% of the alkaloid profile, and if you were drinking tea from 60+ pods at a time the withdrawal would be just as severe as any heroin habit. I am a long term IV heroin addict myself and often use pod tea as a substitute, 15-20 big pods will get me feeling GOOD.
Also there are 20+ alkaloids in opium (essentially what we are talking about but in liquid form) this wide alkaloid profile also adds to the withdrawal profile. It is by no means an “easy” drug to quit and writing otherwise in a public forum is nothing but irresponsible, you could ruin someone’s life or quite easily kill them spouting inaccurate nonsense like that.
Just to be clear – pod tea is opium and it can kill you, especially if you are opiate naive or even just careless with your dosage. Be careful people, whether or not this is fiction is not really relevant to me, spreading safe and accurate information about opiate abuse and addiction is.
To the person with the name “A Real Addict”… are you fucking retarded? Have you even ever took poppy tea? Just fyi- some are stronger than others. A small dose is like 10 mg of fucking morphine. In the past, I have tooken enough to fucking nod out on. The withdrawal is real. No, it is not just some psychology bullshit. I’ve felt withdrawal after 24 hrs without it. My fiance has felt the same but even worse. OF COURSE, IT’S NOT AS BAD AS METHADONE. Methadone is worse than Heroin! NO. NO doctor would ever tell you to quit cold turkey if you’re on a high amount. Stop being a condescending asshole just because you’re a real drug addict. That doesnt make you fucking cool or give you the right to bully people.
Jesus dude lighten up. Live and let live. From what i read… you got hooked on the brown bud like a 16 year old gets hooked on Marlboro’s. Sorry your not enjoying life but ease off hero. Go live a life guy
Is this the same guy? http://www.newsreview.com/reno/weird-scenes-inside-the-drug/content?oid=19648
https://www.newsreview.com/reno/peter-thompson/author
This opium article was wonderful prose to read, a sad warning though ):
Good to have somebody leaving warnings from further up the road! Looks like you almost joined the cast of Grim Fandango. Excellent heads up.
No way anybody can be so strung out on pods.
It’s not like heroin.
I did them for months straight, then I stopped because it was so expensive.
A little kratom took care of all the withdrawals.
This article, if anything, has made me want to try it! I live in a depressed trapped existence! I blow all my ,money on pain meds. Would rather be a pod head. If it kills me, at least I’ll go out with a grin on my face!
Wonder what ever happened to the writer. I’m not much for reading long articles but found myself hanging on every cleverly written word!
Now off to make a pod purchase……………………..
I trained on a mountain top with the Zen monkey tribe.
We clean our bodies by eating sand and ants. When clean we get high by reflecting the moon light off our toe nails up our left nostrils.
We are healing and a fart is the devine
Even if the sale of pods is stopped, you will find another drug to abuse because it is clear that you have always been just a desperate addict, your addiction is not your problem, it is a false solution you’ve created. Maybe you should stop being a baby and man up to face what was really causing you to make a drug store of the grocery store at such an early age and stop ruining sources for people who have real physical pain and need a cheap and convenient way to control it!
Hello? Nobody should get addicted to anything in the first place, not even painkillers (fantastically written, by the way), or suboxone, or anything else. All you freakin’ people who say you should try marijuana instead or some other dumbo stuff you can get addicted on, that is all freakin’ trashtalk. GO TO A REHAB FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE!!!!!! Surely I say to you, drugs kill, and only retards think otherwise.
My goodness, just pray to God about it and ask someone for help. It won’t hurt you, and it’s the best help you’ll ever be able to get. Mark my words. STOP. TAKING. FREAKING. DRUGS!
Wow. You’re a wonderful writer. I have years of addiction under my belt. Thankfully, Kratom really seems to help alot. I do hope you’re well.
No kidding!
By no kidding, I mean I’m echoing the sentiments of the writers comments below me. The funny thing is that I almost wrote “sediments” instead of sentiments and I’m a fabulous speller!
I’m so good at avoiding a Freudian slip because I’m literally not even that high yet but figuratively, I am.
I know how this happened because i hadn’t meant to get caught up in reading an article but I definitely didn’t notice I was unconsciously writing a comment as I feel myself tapping my iPad keyboard and feeling my fingers slightly sticky on the screen.
I just realized all I planned to do was do a quick opportunistic search for a random recipe in the hopes of finding a different result than I planned earlier.
I just walked inside my house, I’ve been scraping latex from from freshly harvested poppy pods and stems from my garden and I had a new idea.
I ended up here instead and I’ll say it again, I echo the sentiments posted below.
Great writing Peter Thompson!
I bet I’m going to enjoy this search thread but first I’ve got to wash some alkaloids off my hands!
Wow. This is amazing. I desperately need an update on this guy’s life
Have you tried Kratom?
Ty for your story. I am sad about what you have been thru – the agonizing suffering. I saw what “synthetic more than natural” heroin did to my sister over 24 years ago. I had her with me to help her detox since the ER in Tx at that time stated “ they couldn’t help”….. i am a much much wiser and AUTHORITATIVE individual now. I, digress. When i witnessed her suffering i got on my knees and begged her to tell me where i could buy some for her. She weakly declined. I cried. She had Hep C. Eyes and skin color a terrible yellow. I KNEW HER JOURNEY WOULD BE OVER SOON. After 2 weeks she was well enuf to want to go back home. I drove her. 2 weeks later her afflictions ended in form of a heart attack. She is Home. Away from the great sorrows that she numbed with the synthetic e.g. severe SA and DV.
AND YEAH FUCK COLUMBUS DAY – He didn’t “ discover” America…..
People – WHY SUCH HATE? WHY? Isn’t there enuf HATE in this entire planet. Is it worth bursting a brain cell over a story whether true or not …..Live and let Live.
HATE IS POISON AND A WORSE ADDICTION than the natural provisions that the EARTH provides. Yes, if we choose to use the natural vegetation use responsibly.
WE ALL HAVE A CHOICE.
Wonderful writing. I’m on the precipice here myself and trying not to fall. But I’ve been here before and I know how difficult it is to catch yourself. I absolutely adore this author’s writing skills ❤️
The tragic Mexican food factory accident that recently occurred has left the entire community in shock and disbelief. On the morning of May 15th, a massive explosion occurred at the Mexican food factory located in the small town of Xalapa, Mexico. The resulting destruction caused by the Mexican food factory accident resulted in multiple casualties, leaving the community devastated.
What an amazing story! Somehow I’m shocked that I’m not the only middle-aged and married human being living like this. And bo oh boy, you covered every last bit of the experience. I’m always saddened by these types of articles when I read how the person was able to overcome their addiction in the end. Because in my own head, being sober is such a miserable, disgusting existence, I honestly can’t conceive of a life without tea. And I’ve come to a similar conclusion as you- it probably won’t kill me…. Great effin article! Because it’s real. I’ve literally never read anything like it. Thank you!
—Btw, I’ve learned to hate all holidays and order religiously only through UPS. When you’re trying to live a normal life AND nurse an addiction, reliability is paramount
if anyone is struggling with synthetic or natural opiates their are many othet natural plants that are not addictive that can help with pain, inflimation, depression and anxiety…
try wild lettuce, kava kava, califonia poppy, chamomile, cramp berry, wood betony, passion flower, lavender, lemon balm to start… i was on pharmaceutical pain management for 10yrs and lost my dr (no fault of mine, 250 people lost their prescriptions), i turned to the street and was a homeless herion addict for 6ys… i got on methadon for 2 yrs and used herbal tincures to get off that.
i still have chronic pain due to ms, a military injury and a life or reckless activity… my body is mostly healed from intravenous drug use…
natural medicine can be used responsibly, if your gonna go the pod route, i suggest taking the pods, heating them in water, straining it and heating it down to a paste, let dry and then smoke
I appreciate this article because it illustrates the fact that, people who are going to become addicts become addicts. They need the psychological high to escape some part of their life.
The vast majority, like over 90% statistically of people who take opiates for acute or chronic pain don’t become addicted to it. I took it for 25 years on and off prescribed at the time when they’d give refills, and half the time didn’t even fill my refills. 4 times I told them to reduce my dosage due to the sedation and because I could get by on less. It was good for my thyroid problem as well as female system, it kept my period very regular, and of course kept me working with acute and chronic musculoskeletal pain injuries.
Just prior to the war on opiates after anither injury as a Structural Steel welder I got sent to a pain mgmt clinic, and took it almost daily for 3 years, could go off for any amount of time a day a week, I still had not ever experienced a physical dependency or “withdrawals.”. I put in quotes just to signify what everyone’s thinks of when they think of ceasing chronic medicinal opiate use. As if everyone goes through that, that’s not true by far.
I went back to the VA, HUGE mistake, the war on opiates was full blown and they were tying the doctors hands to treat patients properly as the doctor deemed appropriate. I was on nothing for the next nine months except the same old Meloxicam, Gapapentin Robaxin that I always used over the years with the opiates. I didn’t ever experience this reduction in pain as they say you get after 4-6 weeks off opiates. Even after 9 months…The pain just got so extreme I had to quit work. The VA put me on teensy tiny doses of Suboxone, to build me up to a therapeutic dose, I became a zombie, in bed painful and apathetic every day with them telling me I just had to keep taking it to build up my tolerance. I had no constipation or zombie behavior with hydrocodone or Percocet in the past. I had SEVERE constipation, apathy, sleepiness that I never got used to after to years. I started to get this severe aching, not in my joints, but in my bones and muscles that I still fight off it. Since taking Suboxone NOW I understand what widespread pain is, not just Intervertebral disc disorder pain punching nerves.
Synthetics ” opioids” rather than opiates are the devil. like Suboxone. I told the doctors at every “teleappointments” once every 3 months I was a zombie not working now.
I finally just quit taking after 2 years and boy did that piss the VA pain mgmt doc off. I just quit, had mild Suboxone withdrawals for 3 days for which I took Kratom, now for 6 months I’m in nothing in severe pain and have no clue what doctor to go to for fear of being sent as “seeking” as Im already on Celebrex which is of literally no help, Robaxin and Gapapentin, but honestly they’re shit, over 30 years I’ve taken every one of these type medicines. Meloxicam helps my osteoarthritis in my hips from running 6 miles a day for years, but nothing else. That’s the only place I have osteoarthritis.
My story is the story of the majority of chronic and acute pain sufferers who don’t have that addiction gene, who like their lives, but have this pain and the physical chemical makeup we have, and are left helpless, because politicians are SOOO worried someone might experience euphoria. ( I don’t, I get mild sleepiness when everyone else gets a high, whatever, people are different).
Shoot they give our pets GABAPENTIN for acute pain because they’re so afraid of people taking the animals meds the animals don’t get the help they need. It’s Paranoia, and they the drug problem is worse now than ever. How many chronic pain sufferers now have gone to illegal channels for pain relief and ended up dead.
It’s time we do like Woody Harrelson did with marijuana.
Cool story bro. Very well written.
60 pods? You’ve got to be kidding me. Are you really that strong? I’m happy if I can survive a tiny spec of raw opium smoked in a joint… Love the comfy pillow feeling it gives me in the cranium though. Everyone knows this feeling. Have you ever been to the doc and he put you in an induced coma? This is the same effect but without the coma. You don’t want the coma… Dose it wisely. Start very small. Like microscopic dose.
Is it true that if you ingested too much raw opium and you fall asleep, chances are you won’t ever wake up? Damn! So the solution is to stay awake until the high is over or what?! How do you detox it if you accidentally overdosed on it? Any instructions by some professional opium users would be much appreciated, thanks!
How about the laudanum? That stuff should be more easy to dose properly without killing one’s self. That used to be available in every pharmacy like a hundred years ago… How about a of a drop of laudanum diluted in a gallon of water and only drinking a small cup?
My grandma always told me stories how she got the pacifier dipped in opium shoved in her mouth as a baby so she would stop crying. Is that a myth?
Last question for the Kratom users: How do you ingest the Kratom? I want to try it. Also thanks to that other dude who mentioned Californian poppy. That’s the next one on my list after the Kratom that is.
Isn’t nature just beautiful? You don’t want to overdo the raw opium and off yourself by mistake as nature has so many wonderful medicinal plants to offer that have yet to be discovered by the addict.
Live long and prosper
Where has Crudus been for 30yrs? Tired of seed tea & straw nut blah blah blah, blah blah blah- blah blah…is there no ‘tex around this piece? Unbelievable the lengths people have to go to bc of nixon & Nancy. Un-Fn-believable. They got us all brainwashed, when will we learn & end prohibition