Andy Bell

[Jean]

Andrew
You are in my thoughts and prayers.  You are also doing the best possible thing you can do for yourself and your family. I don't often post here but your story really got to me.
Jean
rak since'84
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Andrew P. Bell 
  To: Amputee Information Network 
  Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 10:05 AM
  Subject: Andy Bell


  Dear List,

   

  Hi there.  Sorry to have dropped a bomb and then skedaddled...about 4 hours after posting my last message I checked myself into a detox program.  I just got home about 45 minutes ago and wanted to send an update to you all.  Thanks for all of the suggestions-you all came to the same conclusion that I did: get help, now!  The fact that it took me 16 years to come to the same conclusion that it took all of you 5 seconds to formulate proves to me that I was, umm, NOT taking very frequent "looks in the mirror" if you know what I mean.  I know that five days isn't much in the way of being clean, but I suppose that Rome wasn't built in a day.  I've been on pain meds for close to 16 years, and this is the longest I've gone, in quite a few years, without any narcotic "help."  The doctor at the detox center wasn't very much help with his advice: he told me that I'd probably "always need to be on some kind of narcotics" to manage my pain and that I just needed to learn how to take them as needed and as prescribed.  I don't think he's dealt with very many patients that were NOT heroin addicts.  I was the ONLY inpatient that was NOT a heroin addict.  I was so surprised by that-I had no idea that heroin was such a problem.  I'm completely drug free at this point and I understand that the first few days out of detox are the worst insofar as relapses are concerned.  I haven't seen my wife or daughter yet; work and school.  I have to remember that I'm doing this for them as much as I am for ME!

   

  The first three days not taking the pills and the patch were pretty, uh, uncomfortable, and I wasn't allowed to just sleep through it (I had to attend 5 NA meetings per day, in house...) so I got the full exposure to the detoxing.  I don't want to ever have to do that again.  I am not going to try to quit forever-just for the next 15 minutes, and the next 15 minutes, and the next 15 minutes-until I can start taking bigger bites.  I'll keep you updated; for right now, I have to find out where I can it an NA meeting, today.  I have the schedule-I just have to use it.

   

  Thanks, everyone, for listening and for caring.

   

  Andy

   

  Andrew P. Bell

   

  The computer industry mimics our "binary" lives: 

  you're either a "1"-- alive, or a "0"-- dead!

   

   
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