I’m very pissed off this morning. I guess I should say “was” very pissed off this morning. I went to the methadone clinic to get my take-outs, and as you may or may not know, it is the week I’m supposed to go from 25mgs/day to 20mgs. As it turned out, that wasn’t to be this morning. When I stepped to the window, and said I wanted to decrease to 20mgs, the nurse informed me that it wasn’t going to be possible. Immediately, my blood began to boil as he (nurse) tried explaining that there was a new doctor, and they could no longer do anything (increase or decrease) without the doctor’s written authorization. Boy did I give that nurse an ear full.
First I told him that I thought that was a bunch of bullshit! I told him that I had been decreasing every 2 weeks for months now, and someone damn well should have called me to let me know about this new change. If they had, I’d have told them to go ahead and put the order through to have it ready when I picked up this morning. To his credit, the nurse was very apologetic, and agreed with everything I was saying. I knew it wasn’t his fault, and I did tell him that. After I left the nurse’s station, I saw the clinic director’s door was open so I used the opportunity let him know too, just how unhappy I was.
The first thing I said was that I thought it was really shitty of that clinic, that is supposedly there to help us, to “interrupt” my decreasing in that way. I explained that this was probably the most important moment in my life, and for them to have a change like that, and not inform me, really showed what they were about.
He then tried excusing the circumstances by pointing out that the clinic serves about 1600 (I thought 2000), and that it would be impossible for them to call everyone to let them know of the change. However, I blew that shit up by asking him just how many of that 1600 were decreasing. After that, he was stumped because he knew that I was correct. They absolutely should have had the decency to call me and let me know of this change, and he knew it. If I was a person teetering on the edge, this kind of thing may have been just the kind of thing to stop my decreasing; instead, it actually had the opposite effect. If anything, this experienced served more in re-galvanizing my will to get up out of there than it anything else.
There was much more that I said to the director, but know this: White hot fire was coming from my mouth, and I wasn’t on 160mgs of methadone to tie my tongue. My words came out clear, concise, and there was nothing anyone at that clinic could say that would make the situation right. It’s a good thing that the director backed down too because this comes down to me getting my life back, and nothing is getting in my way. My rig is big right now, and I’m going to run you the fuck over if you are standing in my way.
The last thing he said to me as I walked out his door was to come see him again when I was at 0mgs. I felt nothing for him as I turned around and said, “you’ll see me again”. My heart tells me this is true, but not in the way he wants to see me. The next time he sees me, I may just have his neck in a dog collar instead of the other way around. What comes around huh? Maybe not, but I do feel there is a story about these places that needs to be told; no matter how comfortable I am in accepting consequences of my own actions.
About my dose: I ended up dosing, but didn’t use water to wash the bottom of the bottle out. Hopefully that was around 5mgs, but I really can’t be sure. I also only took three take-outs so I will be going back on Tues. to get the correct dose amount. I was going to do change my pick-up day anyway because we (the family) are going to be doing some vacationing next month and pick-ups on Friday won’t be possible. What I will do until Tuesday is just use the baby syringe to withdraw 5mgs/day. Fuck ’em!
ismelltherain