stole an entire box of oxy from my room
That's pretty low.
June 10, 2006
Roughly the date England last won a world cup match?
Oh good fucking lord. Who steals painkillers from someone who's in pain? (Now that I type that out, I'm sure it happens all the time. It just seemed incomparably lower than stealing from a pharmacy or a hospital or something.)
I'd be interested in your thoughts on Moderation Management. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/nyregion/a-different-path-to-fighting-addiction.html
"The program works if you work the program" right? I have an inexplicable desire to write a Sacred Harp song with a text of AA cliches. (This is not meant to denigrate AA, which I believe does save lives, but some of the cliches are funny-terrible. My favorite is "Poor me! Poor me! Pour me....A DRINK!" I like to imagine it with jazz hands on the punchline.)
1, 3: where the hell else do most people get their hands on any of the good stuff? even within my immediate family we have this problem with my sister's meds, which pisses me off a lot because she's in agony as all her ligaments deteriorate and her body disassembles itself. I love my bro and he's a good guy, but it's a really shitty thing to do. my prospective sister-in-law buys pills from my sister but it's her ADHD whatever...ritalin. meh, my family is a sharing family! of prescription drugs!
but people boost shit from their relatives in hospice care all the time. fuck, I've stolen plenty of pills from people's medicine cabinets, but generally the darvocet they didn't finish after that root canal 8 months ago. that's why I'm not completely indignant; there but for the grace of god go I actually have went there. but A WHOLE BOX FUCK YOU. damn, I would have even hooked her up if she'd asked?! at least she didn't get to my sis' meds.
I think AA is one of the two great American contributions to Christianity, along with the black church. The organized churches have way more to learn from AA -- especially the emphasis on honesty and equality -- than the reverse. Which isn't to say that AA only works for Christians, obvs.
Alameida! Glad to hear that you're well (-ish).
... we have this problem with my sister's meds, which pisses me off a lot because she's in agony as all her ligaments deteriorate and her body disassembles itself.
Eep! That's not okay.
jazz hands! yes, some of the stuff is bullshit, but even the bullshit sayings will strike you as containing merit at some random moment. as far as moderated use or whatever, it might work for some people, but I have to say I don't think the people for whom it works are alcoholics or addicts. that's just what being addicted to something is; you can't make your body do what you tell it. or else the appetitive horse gets the bit between its teeth and your chariot runs where you will it not, or something. the peculiar feeling of having let yourself down, on a promise you made internally to yourself, again, just is what the problem is, as far as I can see. if I could stop drinking after 3 glasses of champagne I would be draining my third glass right this fucking second. jesus, I don't know why all y'all aren't drunk.
Alameida, yippee!!! Keep coming back!
As to it works if you work it I just say it works. I try to avoid anything that tends toward elements of Calvinism (e.g., visible saints).
Who steals painkillers from someone who's in pain?
Thanks, Obamacare!
Have to say 6 is really confused as to gender of thief. Probably intentional altho I have to say odds of anyone here giving the stinkeye to members of ala...'s family in real life seem awfully low.
Wouldn't there be some left of the bottle or an overdosed sibling? Or am I really naive.
This is just to say
I have boosted the Oxy...
If I had some cocaine, I could totally finish that.
12: oh, it wasn't my bro although I (quite naturally) thought so at first and had hurt feelings; cousin. my brother has been known to boost. he always tells you if you do ask him, though, and further he would take like most from a blister pack maybe but never a box, that's some kid shit. 13: no OD's because people who steal your meds are just as decently skilled of drug-users as anyone else. dumb-ass theft don't mean dumb-ass taking 180mg or something.
My point is that if they didn't take it all at once, maybe you can get some back. Try having your husband impersonate Peter Wimsey and search the house.
Poirit with the moustaches dust covers. And we want pictures.
Try having your husband impersonate Peter Wimsey and search the house.
The pills are attached to the Christmas decorations masquerading as mistletoe berries! Truly, all human problems have been solved in cosy whodunnits.
4: Me too. Currently abstaining for a year, but interested in revisiting the topic after that. I haven't been having what I would call cravings, but I miss having a glass of wine with a nice meal or a beer with pizza. If the Mrs. and I divorce (in counseling at the moment), I can't imagine the dating scene without alcohol.
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Cocky ER attendings suck.
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Are they referring you to someone who can treat the nosebleeds properly? (Under the ignorant assumption that what fixed Sally will fix you.)
21: As long as the person you're dating can drunk.
A friend of a friend just started to sober up after 4-5 years of pursuing drunkenness with quite a bit of verve. I'm pretty sure I saw her come into a bar one time, obviously 3 sheets to the wind, get served, and then get led away by a friend.
It's interesting that I'm not an alcoholic. But then, what is "an alcoholic"? I've known plenty of people with a drinking problem who are beyond "high functioning" -- and actually, very few who got to that total boozehound level that Dr. Bob talks about in the Big Book. It's weird.
I've thought about giving up drinking, but it would essentially be just to punish myself although also to lose weigh, and that may actually be more addictive.
It's funny, it's definitely true that it feels like there were more high functioning alcoholics back in the day (Roger Sterling wasn't real, but the multiple cocktail lunch was, you hear plenty of stories of great trial lawyers who were drunk every day by 4, Daniel Patrick Moynahan was constantly shitfaced, Churchill, etc.). The obvious explanation is that treatment is more readily available and so there are fewer alcoholics, which is a good thing. Alternate explanations are that alcoholism is more stigmatized so potentially high functioning alcoholics never get a chance to function at a high level, and/or that work really has become more demanding, particularly the requirement of constant availability by phone or email, such that it has become harder to be an alcoholic and function successfully. Probably all three explanations play a role.
Halford, how does alcohol figure (or not) in the paleo scheme? Does it count as an evil starch never to be consumed?
I think the non-alcoholic majority has sobered up a lot since the Mad Men era, so the alcoholics stand out more.
I talk about my parents, who were working in the era of the three-martini lunch, and Dad definitely has stories about working drunk after lunch. He never, I think, had a drinking problem, because his drinking always tracked what was ordinary in his social group, and when it stopped being normal to be drunk at work he never was. But because he was drunk at work a couple of times a month in the sixties, the high-functioning drunk in the same office who was drunk at work four days a week didn't seem nearly as strange as he would now.
29 -- Some strict paleo people don't drink but most do and it's generally seen as an OK indulgence as long as you're not drinking a lot of beer. Tequila is the preferred spirit (look up the "paleo margarita") and wine is drunk a lot. Personally I still drink whiskey and wine bc that wasn't gonna change. As always there's no single "paleo diet," it's more a hypothesis about nutrition and weight loss than a specific diet plan, and you can find different people saying different things.
My grandfather was an excellent lawyer (partner at a white shoe DC firm, not that that's dispositive) who had three martini lunches pretty much every day. His (terrible) second wife eventually got him to give up hard liquor (he switched to Dubonnet, since it was the most alcoholic thing that counted as wine) because the hard stuff made him mean, but I don't think it ever affected his work.
30 might well be the whole explanation. My grandfather definitely wasn't an alcoholic, but according to him it was normal for large business deals in the 1950s to be negotiated (and drafted) with everyone at least slightly drunk. Frankly this seems harder to imagine for the nonalcoholic than for the guy having the breakfast vodka rocks at the 6am bar.
Thank you, tequila - of course! Hard to imagine I didn't anticipate that.
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Back in the ED 5 min after leaving.
ER attending does not want to page the ENT even though that's what my PCP requested.
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Bostonienne, do you have someone with you who can be assertive? Difficult to effectively insist on ENT with hot fresh blood gushing from your face.
30: My father would do the three martini lunch routine for several months, then go cold turkey for a couple of weeks just make sure he could, then repeat that cycle for his entire working life. I don't remember him being even the slightest bit uncoordinated or having a personality change ever.
It's much easier to get buzzed and go do a task that requires concentration if you can smoke unlimited cigarettes.
He tried. I tried. It's not gushing now. I just feel sick from the Vicodin they gave me.
If you don't want the Vicodin, I know someone who will steal it from you.
Bostonienne, that sucks.
I think of Narnia as having a .nrn TLD.
goddammit bostonienne that's total bullshit. I'm so sorry. sometimes medical peeps want to get rid of you more than they want to help you for reasons that may be entirely unknown and unrelated to you. my sister has been getting a similar run-around from a clinic here on the vineyard that hasn't yet (this is day 3) let her see a doctor or give her the steroids and kablammo antibiotics she so blindingly needs for the 3-week-old dog bite in her hand which has a hard 8mm nodule in it, is painful when palped or when she closes her fist, and is HOT TO THE FUCKING TOUCH. classic my mom underplaying it quote: "well there are no red streaks running up her arm from her hand." mom, 'not about to die this actual minute from septicaemia' is so, so not a cool standard for whether some shit is infected or not. they wanted to do an x-ray to see if it was a bone chip. it's not a bone chip. yay! so now how about giving her some antibiotics maybe? US doctors are allegedly throwing cipro at every four-year-old child with a transient viral infection, and they can't be bothered to give someone medicine for an animal bite that has been painful the whole time and is congealing into lumps of pure revoltingness? fuck them.
and why my sister? seriously, was she hitler in a past life? I cannot even begin to describe to you how unlucky this wonderful, loving, beautiful woman has been her whole life. we used to pretend she was a superhero when she was my older daughter's age. "girl 13--the unluckiest girl in the world!" she was supposed to have a counterpart. "nothing bad ever happens to girl 7!" we never met girl 7. just girl 13 still, with her waist-length dark-brown hair, and her huge grey almond-shaped eyes, with a blue-black ring around each iris. the whites like paper, always, like a baby's. last year we found out that's a symptom of a new, different rare genetic disease. it was the first time the geneticist had ever seen it in real life. she was excited. sometimes people are fucking idiots.
I agree that as society's acceptance of being drunk after lunch at work ebbed, alcoholics found themselves exposed. people used to get their drink on more in every setting. my grandfather had cocktails before lunch if he wasn't working, as if it were dinner. just one; his mother was an alcoholic and he hated it, so he was a moderate drinker. but in his generation being a moderate drinker still meant being a continuous moderate drinker. my mom was a high-functioning alcoholic--she was the head of a whole branch of real estate acquisition for MCI, getting them places to put cell towers and stuff. she was also drinking a bottle of bourbon a day, plus a bunch of valium and demerol. she was a great negotiator. she's like me in one lucky respect, that we've neither of us had a drink since our first AA meeting. I used to go to class drunk in HS, like physics particularly, for scheduling reasons. an alcoholic friend of my step-dad's lived right by campus and when I had adjacent free periods I would walk over to his place and wake him up, and he would start drinking bourbon right then, and he would give me beer. you drink a 6-pack of beer as a 115-lb junior and you will be some drunk. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. if my kids do 1/10th of anything like that I will DIE OF DEATH.
My colleagues' husband got a bunch of nosebleeds which were eventually controlled via blood pressure meds. He'd lose his temper at his son and his nose would start gushing.
42: That's all around shitty medical behavior. The last seems like the sort of thing that one could suppress and then excitedly discuss later with colleagues, out of earshot. Hope your sis gets her antibiotics soon, stuff like that is no joke. (Meantime, not a doc but had a hand infection several months ago and the doc recommended soaking several times a day in water as hot as I could stand. In addition to the topical AND oral antibiotics.)
39: I hope you get it resolved soon. Sorry you're not getting someone who will do what you need.
I don't know why all y'all aren't drunk.
Good idea, I'll get on that.
I like your can-do american spirit, gswift! go for it! I don't even give a fuck if you're working. maybe you better not be on a motorcycle? yeah. safety, like, twelfth. so, not on a motorcycle, and don't shoot some other drunk asshole, but otherwise I now pronounce you 'good' and 'to go.'
39: I'm missing the connection between nosebleeds and Vicodin. Did you get clobbered?
Social norms are a huge factor in consumption. A long time ago now, normal for my social group would be to smoke a hAndful of joints a day socially, drink maybe 1/2 a case or case of beer the same way. Then every night we'd "do" something (the previous didn't count), but that would change: maybe a couple/few 8-balls, or a gram of MDMA, or 500-1000 mics of acid, or a bottle of vodka , maybe just a few dillys and enough beer to make the world go sideways. Maybe just play roulette with whatever scrip someone had manage to lift. Mostly we stayed off the needles for fucked up reasons, but not much else. That was every day unless you were drying out or constrained.
I walked away from all that (mostly) intact but years later I looked back on it and wondered how the hell we did it, and why more of us didn't die in the process.
Now I'm older and self medicating against some chronic aches a bit with drink. Sometimes I wonder if I'm going to end up like one of those sad old drunks I used to know. I mean, I don't feel it, but sometimes I wonder.
That's not social norms. That's being too old to not die.
You mean the old drunks? Maybe.
But the earlier stuff, we were kids. Or near enough. Literally everyone I knew was on something most of the time, most days. You have something in your pocket, share; everyone partakes.
Now my friends I were trash, we all stole things or sold things or bodies we shouldn't but still - How is that not social norms?
I don't know why all y'all aren't drunk.
I love this joke from my brother-in-law so much I feel compelled to repeat it every time the topic comes up.
AA has saved my dad's life, and the lives of the people he probably would have killed while driving drunk. Hearing the standard recovery platitudes from him gets kind of old, sure, and I've unsubscribed from his cheesy motivational Facebook posts, but I'm incredibly grateful for how much the program has helped him.
Apologies all, not the place or time.
Alameida, I'm happy it is working for you.
47: I have Wed-Fri as my days off so I'm good to go. I love that joke in 52 but maybe that's just because alcohol is my BFF.
I've occasionally wondered if I love alcohol too much (both grandfathers drank themselves to death) but so far it doesn't seem to be an addictive thing with me. Like, I don't really drink when we're tent camping in Yellowstone, Glacier, etc because getting up several times to pee in the night is a huge pain in the ass. And I don't ever wonder whether I could get away with a drink or two before or during work.
Can't you pee in the empties and pour them out in the morning?
They also make special piss bottles for just that problem.
I'm pretty sure my wife would smother me in my sleep if I start peeing into bottles in the tent. Now I'm wondering if pee in the tent violates any of the "be bear aware" rules in grizzly country. Damn it, I'm running out of gin. Boxed wine, tonight might be your night to shine.
No, the joke is funny! I just needed to chime in with my dad story because he just came to visit, and my pride in how well he's doing has started to eclipse how irritating I find his motivational sayings (and, I suppose, how pissed off I was at him for his irresponsibility while drinking).
Sorry for missing this thread, I was working my way through a bottle of champagne (I mean, with help, not on my own, that would be strange).
re: 56
Yeah, that's probably me. I really like drinking, but I don't particularly like being really drunk. And I don't usually drink at work, except when we have fancy guests, as I just don't like the way the afternoon goes after a lunch-time drink. So, the continuing narrative of my life is that year on year, I drink less and less. I expect I probably still drink more, or at least more regularly, than a certain current of wowser puritanism would sanction, though.
Oh, yeah, small Narnian god-daughter (last seen wanting to fly fast jets) still wants to fly fast jets, especially now she has an RAF Red Arrows flight suit. Did you know they made flight suits in child sizes? Well, now you do. Inexplicably they don't sell them as a package deal with child-size Ray-Ban Aviators. Oh, well, that can be Christmas.
I need someone to tell me the Mandarin for "You can be my wingman any time".
I would have been ok if I'd skipped the Vicodin. Left and puked on the way home after having puked there but I made sure that they gave me zofran.
I went there from my PCP's office by ambulance. Next time if I'm at home and it's not life threatening, I'll go to the suburban location.
Some saline and IV pain meds would have helped.
My nose hurts right now and I have a headache. No NSAIDs for me. Tylenol I guess it is.
You know, in my low-intensity section of the ED they were giving out a lot of Percocet.
48: when they cauterize and pack your nose, it hurts a lot.
Cauterizing with silver nitrate is not so awful. I teared up. And the second time they had to do it it wasn't as bad. But having them blow up a tampon inside your nose is unpleasant. It has to stay in for 48 hours.
If they run out and use a pad instead...
I dated a hemophiliac guy who kept pads in his emergency pack. Which he didn't necessarily take with him. It is astonishing how much tightly wrapping and icing a bruise helped him keep the injury in check. I became a true believer.
I was more making a joke about how large of thing a doctor would try to shove up your nose.
72: I'm not an expert in these things, but you might be missing the pad/tampon distinction here.
look up the "paleo margarita"
I love you as a brother in Christ, but no. Never.
Reading an Alameida post feels like going to a tent-revival meeting. I almost feel a little sweaty and want to shout "Hallelujah! Preach it, sister."
In the last year, I have represented/been around 4 or 5 hard-core alcoholics who have been stumbling. I think much more highly of AA now.
67: Ah. Now I understand the sequence. Good luck with this.
75: A friend once took me to his AA meeting and that revival atmosphere was really there. 'Twas a very impressive display of desperation and courage.
Actually, it was the lawyer who represented my dad at his disbarment who got him into AA in the first place (the lawyer being a mber himself).
Congrats, al. AA has been really great for my dad, for decades.
The saga continues. In the ER at the suburban location of the medical center (much quieter) getting Zofran and IV fluids.
IV fluids? How much blood did you lose?!1!! (In other words, that's awful. How many days do you need to spend in the ER before they admit you and do whatever's necessary to fix the problem?)
80: It's alarming how much you can lose before the bleeding stops. I've had periods of spontaneous nosebleeds and once woke up in a pool of blood, like, liquid and everything. Not quite a pint, but easily more than half that.
Good luck with it, Bostonienne. Hope the cauterization works.
If this is the medical venting thread, I finally got to the bottom of this bill that's been kicked around since last November, when we took Hawaii to an urgent care facility in California for an ear infection.
Insurance kept telling the facility that it was being taken out of my deductible. I kept saying that by November, I'd paid off my deductible.
It turns out there is a separate out-of-network deductible of $1500. You know, because people need some separate skin in the game, not just their in-network skin in the game, so that they don't get too many jollies at the hospital while on vacation.
The insurance industry needs to curl up and die. Meanwhile my father-in-law thinks it is just unholy that Obamacare is making him get maternity coverage, isn't that hilarious.
80: I got discharged from an ER and came back. The IV fluids are because I got dehydrated and was vomiting. So Saline and IV anti-emetic.
This is going to be $325. One PCP co-pay and three separate ED visits.
I'm afraid that they'll try to charge me twice for yesterday. I walked out of the ER and 20 minutes later it started to bleed again, but they hadn't taken me off the board yet.
82: The one good thing about my insurance which has a shitty MH network is that if you are more than 50 or 75 miles from home you don't have to go to an in-network provider.
Oh, no, Bostoniangirl!!! I hope this gets better
Meanwhile my father-in-law thinks it is just unholy that Obamacare is making him get maternity coverage, isn't that hilarious.
Tell him he can't see the grandgeebies until he pays his deductible in full.
Oh, no, Bostoniangirl!!! I hope this gets better
Seconded, that sounds awful.
65: I'll get on that. my brother got my younger a NASA flight suit for xmas one year.