Top Ten Reasons To Quit Pain Killers In-Depth: Reason #5

Reason #5: Your Friends Miss You!

This is a bit of a double-entendre. i.e. I’m saying several different things with the same sentence. Since your life has revolved around the pills, everything takes a backseat…waaay in the back. Back behind the pain doctor, the pharmacists, the prescriptions, the refill dates, the counting of the pills, the re-counting of the pills…counting the pills once again, your dealer, your ritualistic dosing schedule, the obsessing about the next dose and so on. Basic survival (Eating, sleeping) comes grudgingly next (OK, I’ll have just ONE hot pocket ok???!), then comes the family, the job (need money for pills, doctor visits and co-pays) and finally the friends.

Wow, that doesn’t leave much room for the friends does it? And here’s the thing, I’m not talking about just physically being with friends, we can all do that relatively easily. I mean actually BEING there. The real you; the real friend that they decided was someone who was going to be important to them and vice versa. Even if you’re now hanging out with friends on a frequent basis, you’re not really engaged because you will make them go away if they disrupt anything having to do with the drugs. If you’re honest with yourself, the friends that you are with the most now are ones that provide the least path of resistance to the drugs. Maybe they take them too or maybe they are so out of touch with the real you that they don’t take notice that you are completely vapid, lame, boring…aloof.

What a shame…

There’s even point when the friends that don’t get in the way of your pills become a real pain in the ass. And the funny thing is (not really funny as in hah hah funny but more like weird funny) that you are totally aware of this from beginning to end! You are achingly conscious of the fact that you are slowly becoming a person with no friends. Without friends there is no fun…

So, you know what’s going on and you know that you are losing friends or at least you are alienating them from your life. yet you do nothing about it. It’s a paradox because you are so guilty about being “lame” and you are so nervous about trying to patch things up that you hide in your little bubble even more! That builds on itself and can even lead to taking more and more pills. “Eh, wow, How long has it been since I’ve called John?! He’s called a couple times but the calls have now tailed off. I think he’s probably given up. I think he probably knows how screwed up everything is (Narrator: He doesn’t…that’s one of the problems) and so now he’s moved on (Narrator: He hasn’t “moved on” but how many times do you ring a door bell before deciding no one is home???!) and I don’t have the energy or the will to try and patch everything up! Anyways…I have 60 left, so that will get me to Thursday…”

You can’t take anything with you to the grave. All you’ll have are the friends and family that you leave behind. You need to take back the person that your friends decided to bless with the gift of kinship. You need to earn back their trust that you care enough about yourself that you’ll care enough to have them around. Your real friends will take you back willingly…all that they ask is that the person that they once knew is the friend they still have. Ironically, that won’t happen until you stop worrying about them and start worrying about getting yourself and your happiness back.

Wake up…take the first step and I promise they’ll take it with you.

-George

Links to other “Top Ten Reasons To Quit Pain Killers In-Depth” Posts:

Reason #1: “The Highs Are Getting Lower and the Lows Are Getting Longer”

Reason #2: “Your Work Is Suffering”

Reason #3: “You Can’t Remember All of the Good Stuff”

Reason#4: “Your Children Know And they’re Concerned”