How Opioids Cured My Drinking Problem
Just have a bike accident and that’ll do the trick!
Back in the ‘80’s it was cocaine. A few years later it became crack. And in the current era? Opioids. There’s always some drug whose use becomes epidemic. People just can’t get off the shit once they’re on it.
Even I, who is not an addictive type, was on opioids. But not only did I get off them without any outside intervention, but I also lost alcohol in the process.
For decades of my life, I was a beer drinker. It started when I decided to derive my love life from bars. Liquor helped me lose my inhibitions. With a few under my belt, it just felt much easier to approach women in saloons, most of whom I figured were going to reject me. And it became an every night thing.
At its culmination, I’d work like a dog for my clients all day. And then at night, I’d drink a six-pack, eat a big meal, and then pass out. Not a healthy lifestyle. I gained 30 pounds and got high blood pressure as a result.
When the doctor became concerned, I cut out all the commercial Chinese food I’d been eating every night after I got drunk. I lost 20 pounds and the high blood pressure. But I was still drinking a six pack every night. I was just chasing it with tuna salads instead of chicken with garlic sauce.
Then one day, I had a bizarre bike accident, which really nine times out of ten wouldn’t even have caused any injury. But reaching out to a railing to brace my fall, I managed to fracture vertebrae L5. Man! Did that hurt or what!
The pain I suffered for the next year and a half was constant and unrelenting. I had branch blocks, epidurals, and an operation with a name I can’t recall. Nothing worked. And of course, the doctors put me on 30 milligrams of hydrocodone and 10 of tramadol daily.
Drinking beer and taking opioids is not a mix my body tolerated. So to drink beer (which I only did to have sex), I had to stop taking the dope. Mostly, I was on opioids and off beer for the better part of a year plus.
Eventually, I realized that the dope wasn’t really doing much for the pain. And it was making it incredibly difficult to crap. So I decided “enough with the fucking opioids. I’m getting off this junk.”
I won’t say it was all that easy. I did feel ill for two weeks. But after that period, I was fine. And then a funny thing happened. I didn’t feel the need to return to daily beer drinking. Again, I only drank in anticipation of having sex. Which was happening three times a week. So effectively, I was down to a dozen beers a week and no opioids.
Then I went to prison for a year. Yes, there was hooch available. But I never drank any of it. So one year completely alcohol-free!
It is now almost a year since I was released. The combination of covid, an idiopathic prostate problem, and 70 years under my belt has left me without a sex life. (You don’t have to cry for me. I got my share. I can live on the memories — kinda.)
Right now I have what amounts to slightly under a case of beer in my apartment. I bought it on sale figuring to drink it eventually. It’s been sitting in the kitchen for over a month now. There are still 18 beers left in it! The urge to drink a six-pack every night is gone. I don’t even think to drink beer when nightfall comes.
Every Saturday, I volunteer at a soup kitchen. And after we’re done feeding the homeless, all the volunteers sit at the tables and drink beer. It’s part of the ritual. I even stopped attending the after-parties.
My alcohol party is just about over. And it all started with an opioid addiction which began as a result of a bicycle accident. So I guess the moral of the story is if you want to kick alcohol…have an accident. go on opioids, get off opioids, and voila! You won’t want to drink anymore.
Make sense to you? It doesn’t to me, either. But that’s how it went. That’s all I’m sayin’.