Best products from r/OpiatesRecovery

This stuff helps me these days for anxiety and sleep: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015NLOMJK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's important to remember that this is temporary and you are kinda-sorta insane right now. heh. It's totally normal. It's really hard to work on anything too hardcore right now but you'll eventually feel a little better than the day before and that will keep repeating. Besides that kava, I like Skullcap and Lemon Balm a lot for anxiety but best to spend a little more and get the highest quality you can find. The subreddits "supplements" and "nootropics" may have some useful posts.

Well I was on sub for like 4 years and started at 24MG. I don't know what your situation was but I was super jacked after that. It took a solid 2 weeks before the worst of my RLS and aches left and several months later before I really felt that I was getting better each day.

If you can muster doing even a little bit of cardio somehow, I think it could help a lot. It's understandable that it's a struggle now but even just walking fast and breathing. LOTS of hydration is crucial! Drink water until your pee is barely yellow at all. And greens. Do you like smoothies? There are cool green powders that have helped me a lot, like "Capra Greens". You feel an infusion of nutrition shorty after drinking it! Nutrition will help your healing for sure. Also, some of our mood juice is actually created within our gut, so getting some of those GT's kombucha drinks could help as well as taking something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Jarrow-Formulas-Jarro-Dophilus-Supports-Intestinal/dp/B0013OUKTS/ref=sr_1_1_s_it?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1527368806&sr=1-1&keywords=jarrowdophilus

Do you have access to any sort of therapy? If you aren't down with the whole NA/AA thing that is OK but starting to talk to a professional of some kind when you are up to it can really help a great deal. I had to learn a lot of my coping from others. Look to others for help now when you can push yourself, please!!

Wising you the best!

Got it from Caroline Myss and her concept was in the A Woman's Way Through the Twelve Steps. I'ma dude, but it's still a great book.

Probably a bit more 11th step which I am not on. There's certain types of meditation where you only listen to your thoughts and non-judgmentally let them go as they arise (which reminds me, I haven't meditated today)...

But the idea is, IF every thought is a prayer, then self-actualization is more pronounced because every thought is focused and comes from that "spiritual" center. (Whatever spirituality looks like to you.) The power of intention or law of attraction...

For me, it's a set of ideals. Peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, joy, consolation, understanding, and giving. Gratitude.

I'm an atheist too, but of all the practices I have it's one of my favs.

Maybe you could do hot yoga?

I never really found anything that could truly get rid of the chills. I remember wearing 2 pairs of long johns, 2 sweaters, under all the blankets I owned, shivering on my couch while my mom did my dishes after I bailed out of detox. That was many years ago, but even now that I'm clean I still find myself getting chilly all the time. My new best friend is an electric heating pad. It is so, so nice to curl up with at night.

You might like this book. It touches briefly on some aspects of different spiritualities, but also combines personal life experiences and a bit of neuroscience, too.

I've been teaching myself how to read tarot cards lately. It's really interesting and accessible, and can provide you great cues to gain some further insight into your inner workings.

Oh yeah, if you want something warm to drink that might help take the edge off a bit, you can try valerian tea, or a tea blended with valerian in it. Be warned, though. If you get valerian on its own, it seriously smells like super pungent stinky feet. It doesn't taste like that, tho. Tastes kinda like catnip or spearmint. If you can handle the stinky foot smell, it does good stuff for agitation.

Right, I don't do the whole nomenclature thing, but labels are sometimes useful for describing exactly what "system" someone is using. Living in the now, so to speak, and not identifying with the mind are definitely great skills to cultivate. If you don't already utilize some form of cognitive behavioral therapy, like REBT, you should look into that because the two complement each other very well.

I'm waiting on:

Mindfulness in Plain English

Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity

Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook

They were from the /r/meditation book recommendation thread, and I've been trying to develop mindfulness skills more.

for me, prayer is trying to get in touch with something greater than myself I don't have to know what that is, and I try not to dwell on that part of it. Most days I have no clue about god. But I try to keep an open mind. Maybe prayer is just a roundabout way of talking to myself. I have given up trying to figure out what everyone else believes, and just set up my own belief system. Do what works for you. I think that the idea is to seek some sort of peace. This book has really helped me, it doesn't espouse the religion of Buddhism, but it has some awesome ideas in it. For me the second most important thing after staying clean is to find some measure of peace in my own head. Good luck and stick with it.

L-tyrosine is just further down the metabolic line, also precursor for dopamine. I prefer dlpa myself but either would help ya out. I took both for a time. Dlpa is also a precursor for tyrosine itself.

https://www.amazon.com/DL-Phenylalanine-500mg-DLPA-120-Capsules/dp/B00F9EYA76

I like that brand, piping rock has good inexpensive supplements.

Edit: you can take up to 1500mg per dose, 2 or 3 times a day if needed and then just use less as you feel better. You can take long term but it loses effectiveness after your body adjusts. That's good, because when it stops working you no longer need it usually.

Also, for what it's worth, rhodiola also helped me and I continue to use it today. Just throwing it out there, it relieves stress and provides energy, can be super good for fighting through paws. I had to kick a 10 year sub habit and these supplements seemed to help me a lot after so many failed attempts to get past the 3 to 6 month mark

The video here is just a segment of an actual hour long DVD created by Dr. Kevin McCauley. I am posting the segment that I believe covers the science behind cravings as it relates to the role of dopamine reward in our brain. I am on mobile so I hooe this comes through:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kVoYpiiy7jg

Also, this video is amazingly educational although it can feel a bit cheesy at times. The whole video can be found at Amazon and I highly recommend any person struggling with addiction watch it and just learn what Dr. McCauley is teaching us about what he discovered.

There is also another video he makes called "Pleasure Unwoven" where he goes deeper into addiction and also how the United States Navy Pilots treat it and how addicts can use that model to help themselves stop from relapsing. Really powerful.

https://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Unwoven-Explanation-Disease-Addiction/dp/B003AC98V2

I understand what you are saying. It is frustrating, feeling like you are constantly fighting an internal war against yourself. I second DF. Seek outside help and support. The only reason not to tell your parents is you're worried about facing the consequences of your actions, not because you're worried about them. You're doing the thing they were / are worried about, you're just not being honest about it. Especially if you are still living with them or otherwise receiving their support, you owe them the truth. "The truth shall set you free." It will be a relief to stop living a lie. If your parents are anything like mine they love you very much and just want you to get better. The reason it is important to get help is because, to oversimplify it, your brain is compromised from within. You cannot rely on it alone to get you out of addiction.

I'd honestly suggest picking up a few books on addiction. They really helped me understand what was going on inside my brain and clear up a lot of the frustrating mysteries, not to mention reading helped pass the time during detox. Check out In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Oh man dont worry about it, happen to lots and lots of guys, when i first got clean off opiates everything was super sensitive. GD paper cut felt like a butcher knife to the knee! It takes some time but eventually goes away. You have numbed your body for so long everything will be super sensitive until you mind can recover. try this for the time being https://www.amazon.com/K-Y-Duration-Genital-Desensitizer-longer/dp/B01K5S5KWE

It's mentioned on the sub fairly frequently, honestly it's the best book on addiction I've ever read. Made sooo much sense, explained so much. Can't recommend it enough if that stuff interests you.

https://www.amazon.com/Realm-Hungry-Ghosts-Encounters-Addiction/dp/155643880X

Doing well today. Got group tomorrow. We use MRT and for step 6 we have to do like community service, so I've been trying to figure out what I want to do for that. Otherwise, we just watched a very insightful movie last week that, although cheesy at some points, really sheds a lot of light through science on the disease that is addiction. I haven't been able to find a place to watch for free online, but here is a link to the amazon page : http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Unwoven-Explanation-Disease-Addiction/dp/B003AC98V2

buy this

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https://www.amazon.com/Narcotics-World-Service-Office/dp/1557767351

Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate are my suggestions.

Family bought me the book "In The Realm of Hungry Ghost" to read in rehab. Half the book is about the Dr Gabor Mate's opinion of why we get addicted to drugs (very progressive) and the other half is encounters with patients he has worked with in Canada in that area that was declared a "drug using zone". The whole book is really amazing. Best seller in Canada

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/155643880X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523529568&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=in+realm+of+hungry+ghosts&dpPl=1&dpID=51D6lUfiR8L&ref=plSrch


One of the top reviews on Amazon of the book:

Doctor Gabor Maté left a thriving private practice to counsel addicts in one of North America’s most brutal neighborhoods, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He has immersed himself in addict subculture, the battles won and the tears shed, and has come to recognize his own addictions, though not to substances. He’s made one important discovery: it’s hard to hate people you know. So he introduces readers to his hard-bitten, suffering clientele.

This book, a thick tome that rewards careful perusal, starts as a form of group autobiography. Not that he claims his patients’ stories as his own. Having worked among Vancouver’s poorest, most despised citizens for a decade, he remains an outsider, returning to his suburban home nightly. Yet he knows these survivors’ stories well enough to write of them: "The misery is extraordinary in the drug gulag, but so is the humanity."

The gulag metaphor isn’t incidental. Not only have Maté’s clients disproportionately suffered incarceration (some, he says, have spent more than half their adult lives in jail), but many face extended imprisonment within their own minds. Most come from backgrounds of abuse and neglect. Many of Maté’s First Nations patients have generational trauma and Reservation Sickness back to the first white encroachments. Drugs cannot explain their behaviors.

Where these people come from, what tragedies and Sisyphean challenges formed their outlooks, proves inextricable from their addictions. Nearly all were broken before they touched drugs: "''I'm not afraid of dying,' a client told me. 'Sometimes I'm more afraid of living.'" This gives Maté his direct line into science. Transitioning from storytelling, Maté becomes an incisive researcher, distilling massively complex science into plain English without losing power.

At some pivotal moment in childhood development, Maté writes, addicts lack the unconditional love children require. It’s actually more difficult than that, but stripped to its rudiments, all people suffering long-term intractable addiction didn’t have loving guidance, as children, to control their emotions. Children, by definition, cannot handle stress independently. Our developing brains outsource self-control to responsible adults; if such adults aren’t around, our brains adapt accordingly.

Not for nothing, Maté observes, to many addicts compare the heroin rush to receiving a warm, lingering hug. The un-nurtured infant brain never develops the ability to guide itself through stress; fundamentally, that squalling child survives, desperate and scared, within every addict’s brain. The deprived infant becomes the terrified adult. "The dominant emotions suffusing all addictive behavior,” Maté writes, “are fear and resentment—an inseparable vaudeville team of unhappiness."

Don’t start feeling self-righteous, though, because you don’t wolf narcotics. Maté describes equitable structures in behavioral addictions, like abusive overeating, philandering, and thrill-seeking. Some of Maté’s most engaging chapters describe his own struggles with workaholism and binge-buying music CDs. "What seems non-adaptive and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we had to go through then."

It’s difficult to read certain chapters without powerful twinges. Many women addicts he counsels, Maté writes, obsessively collect teddy bears among their drug-fueled squalor. Others have lost their children, but cannot bear to be parted from their small furry animals. Remember, he’s describing the poorest, most despised people in Canada, and all they want, amid the burglaries and self-mutilation and prostitution that subsidizes their drug dependency, is something to love.

This makes current approaches to drug prohibition doubly costly. We pay social costs to capture, prosecute, and imprison junkies, yes, and civil libertarians have long protested this lopsidedness. But the trauma of imprisonment compounds the conditions that created addicts’ problems to begin with. Nobody taught these people how to endure being alone with themselves, so what, let’s throw them in solitary? Who does that help?

As Maté describes it, criminal justice approaches become just plain mean. But more: we deny addicts social services, meaningful jobs, and basic medical care. This makes no sense, as Maté writes: "If our guiding principle is that a person who makes his own bed ought to lie in it, we should immediately dismantle much of our health care system." Yet somehow, we accept that further dehumanizing people already stripped of common humanity will help.

Addiction isn’t a story of “those people.” It’s the story of how we construct ourselves, and help construct other people, every day. Maté essentially paraphrases Thomas Aquinas when he writes: "In the final analysis, it's not the activity or object itself that defines an addiction but our relationship to whatever is the external focus of our attention or behavior." This means us.