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The other night, I started itching my lower leg. Like, really itching. Like, itching to the point where later that night, one of my kids asked if I had been wrestling with a puma.
What happened? Why was I itching so much? No idea! It might have been a bug bite, or maybe I had a brief allergic reaction that caused a half hour of clawing at my own skin. I don’t know.
But it reminded me of the insanity of addiction. Back when I was deep in the weeds with painkillers, I would take so many that I ended up itching and itching and itching my arms and legs, to the point where I would be bleeding.
People would notice, too. I had been running a scam where everybody in my life knew I was occasionally taking pain medication for my chronic foot pain. But their definition of “occasionally” was probably that I took painkillers a few times a week. My definition of “occasionally” was that I would take painkillers a few times per hour.
Here’s the thing: I wasn’t actually allergic to painkillers. I didn’t have any problems whatsoever when I was taking painkillers according to a doctor’s directions. It was only when I went from two pills every 4-6 hours to 15 every two hours that I had problems.
Hmm, I wonder if taking 8 times as many as prescribed might have been the issue?
It was the same thing with alcohol. I had no problems drinking 2-3 beers, or even 4-5, in a night. But—shocker!—I began to have allergic reactions when I would drink 15 beers and chew a can of Skoal and mix in some muscle relaxers and then eat some sketchy food at midnight. Must be the allergies again!
My solution to the painkiller problem? The same as I always did, which is to not change that behavior at all, but just add in other wacky remedies. For the itching, I began taking Benadryl wayyyyy more than the package said, and I also started to buy Benadryl cream and put it all over my arms and legs. I spent most nights nodding off on the couch while also dripping cream all over the cushions. Gross.
And on nights where I got really drunk, I didn’t do the obvious thing, which is only drink 2-3 beers. Nah, that would have been too easy.
Instead, I tried periodically eating a piece of bread between beers. So by midnight on many days, I would have 10 beers and eight pieces of bread in my stomach. And guess what… I usually ended up hugging the toilet bowl even worse than before, without the bread in my stomach.
Ugh, I am so glad I don’t live like that any more. I know this edition of my newsletter isn’t the most helpful, other than “Geez, I’m so happy that isn’t what life is like in sobriety.” But hey, sometimes that’s the best kind of help, isn’t it?
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
"Today, it is so nice to hear the birds chirping in the morning. I can remember a time when they used bull horns."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2007, by John E. of Palm Springs, California)
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