Can You Go Back to A Life of Moderation?

If you have been reading my blogs or have read some of the earlier ones, it’s easy to surmise that although my credo is “anything that works” as far as quitting pain killers. However, I’m human and just like anybody else, I have my biases. I try not to let them seep through in my writing because that would be inconsistent with my advice to you all. I guess you could say that my bias is for those “addiction theories” that say that there’s only one way out…that’s it. Everybody is different and everybody can quit pain killers with whatever works…as long as you quit and stay sober right? As long as you get to the destination who cares how you got there. Obviously, if going on mass-murdering sprees or hunting homeless people soothes your cravings for Vicodin well, there are obviously common sense limitations to how you go about quitting. But between us normal people you get my drift ok?

Does this mean that you can substitute one drug for another one and quit successfully? No, I wouldn’t call that successful. Can you just hit the bottle really hard in order to quit Hydrocodone? No, that’s moving you in the wrong direction. Quitting pain killers means quitting pain killers. Now if you were like me and you pickled your pain killer habit with a healthy dose of booze, then that’s where things get murky. Can you go back after quitting? Can you go back to having a beer or two with your pals? Well like I said, it all depends on the individual but I think that many people have the capacity to go back to a certain level of normalcy. People have so many cross addictions and poly pharmacy (def: you take whatever someone gives you) addictions that it’s very hard for me to say definitively what is possible and what is not. But let’s take myself as an example:

As I mentioned in one of my first blogs (“I Don’t Want To Be An Addict”), the biggest fear that I had before quitting pills was that I was going to punch my card in for a new life of being an “addict” I hated that. I didn’t want my addition to dictate the rest of my life…I wanted to move on. I wanted to be normal again. I had this terrible fear that I would never be able to have a good glass of wine or a beer and that I’d always be that guy sipping Perrier with lime and the one that people would feel awkward when asking me what I would like to drink. “Hi George, can I get you something to drink…oh yes I remember…umm, well we have juice, sodas, milk, water. what can I get you?” Gag! This thought terrified me before I quit the pills. But I can now say that I have been able to revert back to the life I had before the pills and the reckless drinking. It has taken some discipline but it hasn’t been as hard as I would have thought. For one thing, I gave myself limits on how much I could drink per week and stuck to it. I also totally changed my drink of choice so that I wouldn’t be able to easily slip back into my normal usage patterns. I went from white wine to red. For some of you it may be going from Vodka to an occasional beer or two but again, that’s all up to you.

My limits were very clear and I soon lost the urge to get absolutely wasted every night. I allowed myself to drink 1-2 two glasses of wine 3 days a week. For the first few weeks I have to be honest; the nights without anything were a bit awkward and I had to make an effort to fill that void with something. Read a book, play a video game (gulp) …anything but drinking for that one night. And you know what? Knowing that I could have that glass or two the next day made it a lot easier to quit the pain killers. My brain’s reward center (You can read my previous blog on the Brain’s Reward Center Here) was satisfied and I felt like I wasn’t living the life of an addict…forever condemned.  Now let me say again, that many of you may not be able to do this and if you feel like you are slipping back into your old usage patterns, you may not be able to handle it. You might just have to get on the ‘ol wagon and stay there. And that’s fine too. Just get to know your limits.

There’s also what I would call a universal limitation to moderation that I think holds true for all of those that are addicted to pain killers. You will never be able to “go back” to taking an occasional Roxy or Vicodin. The pills are too strong…they are hundreds of times more addictive than alcohol and your tolerance will build so quickly that I don’t really think there’s a way to go back to “normal” prescribed doses of pain killers on your own. Plus, what’s “normal” about taking pain killers when you’re not in pain??? There’s nothing normal about that. There’s a huge difference in my opinion between having a social drink with friends and taking narcotic pain killers for the high. So NO, you can’t go back to taking pain killers…say “Good Bye” to that part of your life. And believe me when I tell you that you really don’t want to have anything to do with those pills anymore. What are you going to do? What are you going to miss about those pills? Are you going to long for the depression, rage, loneliness, guilt and pill counting? Of course not.

So the answer to the question that I pose in the title of this blog is “Yes”, some people CAN go back to a certain degree of normalcy. You don’t have to be relegated to total sobriety for the rest of your life. But you must discipline yourself and make sure that you remember that you don’t have many chances when it comes to moderation. You’re playing for keeps this time. If you can’t control yourself and have that occasional drink with friends…if you break your trust in yourself, moderation will no longer be an option for you. So protect your right to have that drink. Earn the right to pop open a beer for a game. But moderation comes with an asterisk…you’re on probation.