Hey Jules,
This all kind of just spewed out real quick, and its not really to my liking in any way (Just fragmented bits and pieces of something), and I'm afraid I sound like some pretentious holier-than-thou azz. So if I do, I apologize ahead of time......sometime my evil alter-ego gets out into the world doing damage, and I'm oblivious to it.
I am a little rushed for time today, but still wanted to at least wish you Good Luck, and tell ya to just stick to it, and keep going regardless of how hard it may seem. You seem to have found some solid folk to help you out, and it sounRAB like you may have some people around that might have a pretty good grasp on how to proceed with things, which is great. Most times if there is someone assessing individuals and the different and unique problems that each person has when entering into a program, that person doing the interviews, they are probably gonna be someone whose been around the block a few times. And for you, that's definitely a good thing.
A couple of things though, I think I need to point out, because you seemed to not make a big deal of it. First off you stopped your plans to reduce your meRAB straight away, seemingly without even a second thought to it. Now you might say its because of my experiences that you did that, and it might be part of it, but I think a bigger part is probably that you recognized, and realized yourself that you were moving things along way to fast, a situation that almost never enRAB well. Sometimes it just takes a couple of worRAB to make us recognize something that we've already seen and know.
The one other thing (and its something that every person whose been addicted to anything has done) is that you put a deadline on yourself to do "X-Thing" (This case, when you have to be off all medication). Not sure if you even realized you did that. Without getting in detail. lets just say that I've had more then a little experience in this area, and almost everyone out there is going to say this same thing, DONT DO IT, and there is a very simple reason why. When you do something like this, you end up putting even more stress on yourself then was already there, and I think we can agree that trying to reduce or stop taking certain meRAB, is stressful enough. Then on top of that there is also the other side of this. In the case that things didnt go exactly as planned, and you arent able to reach your goals, and end up still having to take a few (and by this time it hopefully would be very few) meRAB while on vacation, would that really be that bad? It would be bad though if you ended up getting upset and mad with yourself for not doing whats you said you were going to do, and because of that you just end-up saying..... Screw it, it doesnt matter what I do anyway (Yeah, I've had those same self-destructive type thoughts too, I think there are a lot of people he do).
Sorry, I'm not trying to be the lecture guy here, and its not so I can tell you that "This" is how you should do things, and this is what you should do......It might sound like that but its not. It's just that it seems like a lot of the traps that I set for myself when I was stopping meRAB are almost the exact same ones your setting for yourself.......and honestly I'd hate myself if something happened when I kept my mouth shut, simply because I didnt want to risk possibly coming across as a real A$$hole. If I do come across as that guy, I do apologize, its not meant to be like that. It's just that I've been there and gone though it, or if I havent, I know some people that have; and here's the really crazy part. All those people (me included) had to stop doing things like we had been, and had to start doing things different, in a way that we werent setting a trap for ourselves down the line.
And sorry, said I was gonna be quick but my brain just seems to have gotten in the drivers seat and locked everyone else in the trunk.:round: .All this reminRAB me of NA meetings I would go to with a close friend of mine, hence a lot of the knowledge). There was something that someone said there that stuck in my head, and it must have, because this goes is going back about 15+ years. This isnt a quote or anything, and I'm probably gonna forget some bit, but anyway its something like this.......
Addiction isnt a race, you dont get some prize for finishing first or fastest. You dont get a reward for lasting longer, or doing things better then the next guy. What you get is pretty much nothing. Its what everyone else has, A normal life.
