5 years ago, when I first woke up to my body ordering a stop, I was very scared .... After our separation from my ex partner, I started building a new woman from the ruins. With 17 kilos of overweight, a pile of phobias, and plenty of barriers fed into my brain, the project started. It didn’t seem too simple, and it wasn’t. With 6 children, working from home, and attending my course weekly. I also tried to maintain the household, to take care of the garden a bit, and then ...
... that morning ... I got out of bed and then had to sit down halfway to the bath. Terrible pain ... that day it went all day. 10-15 meters, sit down, rest for 2-3 minutes, then 10-15 meters again. Needless to say, nothing was done that day, but really, it worried me the least. I was standing there, more specifically sitting alone with the 6 kids, the next day I should have gone to school in London, and a week later I should have driven 300 miles to take the kids on vacation ... what's next? Need to know about us that there are no grandmums, granddads, aunts, uncles within reach. One half of the family is in America, the other half in Europe. I talked to my doctor and it looked like it wasn’t going to be a quick diagnosis. CT, X-rays, all kinds of examinations, while in order to be able to do my daily tasks at all were given morphine. Of course, painkillers were not the answer. If you have lived on morphine for weeks, you know the effect, if not, I will tell you: it even becomes difficult to perform a daily routine, exhausted, lack of energy, unable to concentrate. Not to mention the terrible but common side effect of this ‘medicine’, depression.
That Saturday night I was depressed before and after, it happens to everyone, but that night was different.
You sit in the dark and a new thought strikes your head next to your usual 'I'm a looser. I'm worthless' thoughts ... maybe your kids would have an easier and better life without you. And it’s spiraling, and it seems more and more logical, because you rarely laugh these days, most of the time you’re tired, you’re little with them in the form they used to be ... and then and there I knew, this has to end right now.
I can call myself lucky that night, though last midnight, the person I called picked up the phone ... a senior psychologist at one of the biggest hospitals in London, my teacher, my friend, my mentor. 'Put this medicine down immediately,' he said. Normally, such drugs are usually withdrawn gradually, used in smaller and smaller doses, but because of the situation, it was safer for me to stop immediately. And I'm not alone with this: morphine and opioids increase the incidence of suicidal thoughts by 40-60%. What’s even more awful is that there are 75% more people who actually act, that is, they will commit suicide.
3 days in hell I do not wish anyone for the coming days. Withdrawal symptoms are horror, weakness is disorientation. At one moment sweat, heat pours away, blanket bends down, cold drink. It doesn't take even 5 minutes, you shake the cold, you freeze, and it's over and over again while you're shaking and you think how easy it would be to solve this if you took that one medicine ... but no, I can't get into that situation again where I was. At first I had great luck knowing what to say ... Of course, depositing morphine was only the first step on the road. The pain that remained
unresolved there, the limited possibilities caused by the pain, were all waiting to be resolved. But I can tell you I got a second chance. Every day is a gift ...
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