Progress thread for ne

[LostSoul33]

Thanks Ne, I actually tried to send you a PM but it said that your mailbox was full. Maybe you don't want to delete the messages?

So with the Baclofen I started at 30mg for a week and went up to 40mg. In rehab they gave me a strong anti-nausea medication that I can't afford to buy now. Ive been taking dramamine and get really sick with anything over 10mg at a time. If I take two pills of Dramamine, I can handle 20mg but have trouble writing and can't remember a lot of things. I haven't mixed Bac with alcohol.

My Dr is prescribing Bac and fully supports me.

[LostSoul33]

Thanks for sharing that story, it makes me feel better about my god awful stint in rehab. I can't even get into how terrible it was, I haven't talked about it with anyone outside of my IOP therapist.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Oh no! I kid you not, I'm dealing with nausea right now. Every single time I titrate up by 20mg. This morning, I vomited. Deviled eggs! (Sorry, I know that is profoundly disgusting. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was worse to live it.)

Of course, I'm still drinking. I think I drank 3 beers and a glass of wine last night. And 3 days ago, I messed up and took 100mg less than my normal dose. (Please don't lecture. I'm trying.)

Long and short of it is that I haven't found a solution. But there are lots of anti-nausea meds on the market, aren't there? I'd never thought of that, actually. Will look into it for myself. I don't always vomit, but I always get very nauseous when I titrate up. (I'm not just inconsistent, I'm also rushing it and going up by 20mg instead of a lower dose.)

You could certainly try starting with a low dose, 10mg, and going up from there.

Please, oh please, tell me what state you're in? And if you're feeling really brave (I don't know why you'd need to be brave, though) what metropolitan area? But just the state is good. You might live in a small town in Minnesota with a metro area of 112 people. None of whom are alcoholics. You might not want to identify the metro area, if you're one of only 112. I won't judge.

The reason I ask is that I really want to know how far baclofen has spread. I know it's being prescribed in a certain area in Florida, because there was a study done there more than 10 years ago on cocaine addicts. I know it's in Philadelphia, NY, Boston area, Baltimore, Minnesota (a really progressive doctor there) and several major metro areas on west coast. So if it's made it to Peoria, Iowa, I want to know.

I live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, on the coast, and even though we have a medical school here, and a VA (Veteran's Affairs) hospital nearby, no-one has heard of baclofen. Very disheartening. But I'm about to change that.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Oh, and I'm really sorry for your rehab experience. Those places, man. They really should be banned. Or sued. Or both. Most of them, anyway. The vast majority.

I think it's Oregon that is the only state which insists that rehabs MUST prove that they are actually effective. (Maybe California? I can't remember. God I can't wait to get out of school and get back into this baclofen stuff!)
Can you imagine any other medical treatment facility that costs patients $1000/day that doesn't, and hasn't ever, proved that it works? It's so absurd it should be out of an absurdist novel on the order of Catch-22.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

And isn't covered by insurance?

Unreal.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Thanks Ne, I actually tried to send you a PM but it said that your mailbox was full. Maybe you don't want to delete the messages?

Exactly. I get attached to them. I used to be a member, and that allowed for 500 messages. I finally cleaned it out to 250, so plenty of space! But then I stopped being a member and now I have to clean it out to below 100 messages. I just haven't gotten around to it. And it stresses me out.

[LostSoul33]

Sorry you're feeling nauseous, I get sick from just about any medication so anti-nausea pills help keep everything down. Im still on the fence about Bac but until I find something stronger than Dramamine.

To continue my rehab rant that was $1,500 a day and was supposed to be very reputable, a lot of well-known people had been, celebrities, blah blah blah. Well to summarize, they were money hungry, over medicating, manipulative assholes who treated the patients like absolute crap. Not to mention, the place was run by recovering addicts that were known to relapse with the patients-. While I was there, one nurse mixed up two of the girls' meds and gave high doses of subutext to one of them and caused her to collapse/get very sick.. people were nodding into their food because they were so medicated, kicked out if their families didn't pay the installment that was owed that day, kicked out if they had an opinion about how shady things were run (no joke if someone complained they weren't there the next day), called families and told them their loved one wasn't doing well and had to stay for another 3 months when it wasn't true, pushed patients around (one nurse twisted my finger until it bruised), and they also had prisoners who wanted to avoid jail time (I actually thought every place did that), workers that stole things... I could go on for days.

PS - I rather not put my location on the internet but send me a PM when you get around to it.

[Stevo]

Hello Lost Soul,
I just wanted to jump in here after reading some of your posts as I can relate to a lot of the things that you have said about your rehab stay.Although things are different here in Australia,rehab was a nightmare for me.The manipulation and what amounts to neglect in my opinion seems to be a staple of the rehab culture.I have been in 2 and they were exactly the same really.In the last one at the end because I did speak up about their dubious practices,I was backed into a corner by the manager and told to tow the line or I could leave.
To my ears it was bend over and.... or f**k off.I wasn't prepared to bend over so I left.
Anyway I just wanted to let you know that I can relate and say welcome to the meds section,good luck with bac and you have certainly found someone in Ne who can provide great information and support.

Cheers Stevo.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Egad. Rehab. I hate when I read something in this forum about someone heading off to rehab. I don't want to discourage them, but damn. I have yet to meet one person who actually stayed sober. I am quite sure they're there. I just think they're the minority. Still, if it works for one person, and if it is enough to keep people with our disease out of jail, and SINCE IT'S THE ONLY OPTION... aaaaaaaargh. So frustrating. Fuels my fire.

Thanks for the vote of confidence and the post, Stevo. I mentioned you in an earlier post about your anxiety seeing your mom. I hope you're feeling more comfortable about that...Tough situation.

Lostsoul, I'll let you know if/when I find anything out about anti-nausea meds. Probably won't be until next week.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Oh, and I've spent the last hour emptying my PM box, so send me some! YAY! New messages for me to take years to delete. ha.

[Mom21961]

Oh, and I've spent the last hour emptying my PM box, so send me some! YAY! New messages for me to take years to delete. ha.

I was thinking you could cut and paste some of the ones you want to keep into a word document for posterity

[Ne/Neva Eva]

I was thinking you could cut and paste some of the ones you want to keep into a word document for posterity

Yep. Thanks.

[_serenity_]

It is truly messed up that it embarrasses me how bad I was, even now, when the truth is that the rehab was unbelievably atrocious and no place for human beings. I've never experienced such disrespect from professionals in my life. There were therapists who were still in college! Still in COLLEGE, ffs. But that's another story. (Se______, you could probably relate. That brings me comfort. :hug: Will delete if that makes you uncomfortable.)

I can DEFINITELY relate. My second rehab was a HORRIBLE, nightmarish facility in a terrible neighborhood, and it employed "scream therapy." Seriously, every single day involved patients being screamed at by counselors and staff. It was supposedly a "theraputic community" but in reality it involved a constant, seriously every-minute environment of abuse and power trips by poorly trained "counselors." And other patients were encouraged to join in on the constant attacks on the patients. My roommate committed suicide. When I was there, I truly felt I had no other options and really tried to give it a chance. As a quiet, sensitive, introspective, introverted type I was able to blend into the background and avoid the attacks for a while. But when reality closed in and it became my turn for the attacks, I had no options and no friends to turn to. I ended up running away during a "scream session" directed at me, and I ended up homeless for a few days. There are no words to describe my homeless experience. I won't even go into it here. Suffice it to say, I was permanently turned off from rehab after that.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

There aren't words, Serenity, to describe how sad and angry that makes me. It reminds me of some of the articles and the book written by Maia Szalavitz, who was an addict and has written about what happens in military type "schools" for boys. Horrifying.

I'm really sorry, my friend. And for the rest of us, too. But that sounds particularly horrendous, especially for you Serenity. I know it's years too late, but :hug:

[Ne/Neva Eva]

I've got to clarify a few things.

The first is that I didn't graduate high school on time, because I had to finish work I didn't do during the school year.

That said, I failed my freshman year of high school because I skipped two of my exams. My new friends, the cool kids who drank and smoked pot, didn't have exams that day and I got high for the first time with them during my english and history exams. I failed those classes for the year because I got zeros for the exams. Which is particularly ironic since those are (obviously) my favorite subjects and I have always done well in them.

So it took me five years to get out of high school. Which used to shame me and now I think is funny/ridiculous/ironic. Fortunately for me, sort of, I test very well. So it didn't hold me back academically. My inability to finish things has held me back academically. Well, that and booze.

More clarification.

You know what I did do? I spent almost $40k in a year. Without telling him. Without even realizing it! I was that disconnected from my life. Imagine how disconnected I was from him? And I didn't even know it.

That's how close I was to a complete meltdown.

I want to clarify that I didn't just up and spend $40k on random stuff, and it wasn't that my husband didn't know about it or that the money being spent was a secret.

I spent it on home projects, for the most part. He knew, we talked about it all. It's that I would have been much more circumspect if I'd actually been paying attention. Now we have 3 major-ish home improvement projects going on that we won't finish until the spring. Very frustrating.

Oh, yeah. And our puppy overdosed on baclofen that she found in the cabinet drawer under the sink. That was a VERY expensive ($$$$) emergency vet bill, I can assure you. A story for another time.

Oh no! I kid you not, I'm dealing with nausea right now. Every single time I titrate up by 20mg. This morning, I vomited. Deviled eggs! (Sorry, I know that is profoundly disgusting. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was worse to live it.)

I posted elsewhere that I'm not dealing with any side effects that are particularly bothersome. The post I quoted contradicts that in a way, so I want to clear up any misconception.

Nausea is a pretty rare side effect. If I took my baclofen regularly, on a schedule, and with food, I wouldn't feel nauseous, much less vomit. But I don't.

Some days I'll forget my last dose of 100mg! Then the next day, I'll go straight back up to where I was the day before. Some days, I'll forget my middle dose and take a ~200mg all at once at night. I'm usually going to bed, so I don't eat with that dose. That makes for a very hairy morning.

I totally understand why Lost Soul is reluctant to try it again. Feeling nauseous and sick is a lousy way to spend a day. On the other hand, I know in my case I could do something about it. I also know I can't be sober, much less completely abstinent, without the help of baclofen. Even with almost four years sober under my belt. Plus, I've experienced indifference and I won't settle for anything less.

Many of you won't understand that. I understand your confusion. But I know what's best for me. I also know what works and what doesn't, for me.

However we get the disease into submission is the best way to do it. If you are still suffering and drinking against your will, keep trying different things. (Trying the same thing over and over if it doesn't work isn't always the best way, you know?) I hope you'll get there soon.