My Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times
On Sunday, October 27, 2019, the Los Angeles Times published my opinion essay Opioids saved my life. Quitting them took five excruciating years. That was f*cking awesome.
Check your local newspaper. It was sent out on the wires. What does that mean? Going viral, the old fashioned way.
The essay was about my long-term opiate (morphine) and opioid (Vicodin) use to treat my pain from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
I have been working on this all year. It has tortured me.
Writing this drove me back into therapy, and I hate therapy.
Between drafts, I have had to crawl under my bed and lie face down alone to cry. I can live with my memories of the musculoskeletal pain that had me planning my suicide. The pain from the opioids is so dark.
I endured post withdrawal because nobody is better at enduring than someone with Ehlers-Danlos. I know what hope is, what modern medicine can offer, and that someday I would heal from the brain injury left by these drugs, even if there is no diagnostic code for it. There should be.
My first draft was 1,155 words.
It grew. It shrank. It grew. It shrank. I put it away. I took it out. I re-wrote it. I gave up. I put it away again. I struggled and churned, trying to find the most important parts to tell, of the story of coming off and make — what point, exactly?
1,426 words
1,346 words
2,102 words
3,229 words
2,529 words
The draft I submitted to the Los Angeles Times was 1,976 words.
If I divide my payment for it, I earned about $0.11 per hour.
They told me it was great but sadly could be no more than 1,000 words max. We got out our axes and chopped, chopped, chopped.
I am not precious about what I write. Writing is a process of sculpting, building up and tearing down.
It was a thrill to be edited by the LA Times staff, in case you were wondering.
I own what was cut. They own what remains. A lot of good lines were left behind. I’ll have to recycle them into something else.
I was at work when the last edit came for me to approve. I ducked into a stock room with my iPhone. My manager popped his head in right after and said, “Hey, I need you right now for a project.”
F*ck!! The one time I can’t get away with this? Did he see me go in here??
It was not until many drafts and months gone by that I could even answer, “Was taking all those painkillers worth it?”
In all these years off, I refused to ask myself this question.
Withdrawal and the years following were so discombobulating, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I couldn’t remember what it was like to feel happy, peaceful, optimistic. I was sorry I had taken them.
But I cannot be the person who never took opiates, which is what I truly wish. For that, I would have to be the person who never needed them, born without a collagen defect.
I’ll settle for being the person who recovered.
Writing this turned out to be therapeutic. It hurts a bit less to look back on it.
Now I am sure, the answer is yes.
My long-term opiate use was worth it.
The researcher mentioned at the end of my article is Dr. Brian Johnson.
His paper about using naltrexone to treat opiate damage (and also fibromyalgia and autism) is below. Warning: you will need your medical dictionary to read it.
Or just give it to your doctor, if you have any one of those problems.
Here’s a summary of his research I grabbed from his bio.
Naltrexone at low doses is a drug that heals. Learn more here:
Earlier this year as I was working on this, I wondered if Dr. Johnson knew that someone like me had stumbled on his paper and what it had done to give me quality of life.
I thought he should know.
I wrote to him.
Dear Dr. Johnson,
I just wanted to say thank you for your research.
I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes unlivable pain. I was on daily opiates for about six years. I was lucky enough to get experimental treatment that dramatically improved my condition.
When I went off the opiates I did not recover.
Years went by, and I was stuck in a very painful depression no matter what I did to get out of it. I was exercising tons. I went back to work. I traveled. I tried to have fun. Nonetheless I was so painfully miserable.
Looking back, I am not sure how I endured. I totally understand how people cannot stay off opiates. Life is too painful after long-term use.
I read your research, and what you described about life after opiate use was the first time I saw my experience explained.
My doctor prescribed me low dose naltrexone.
I had been off opiates for about four years when I started. That first night I took it, just a tiny 0.2 mg naltrexone dose, I had symptoms of opiate withdrawal. Clearly my internal opiate system had not begun to heal. Adjusting to naltrexone was very difficult, just physically overwhelming.
After I was used to low doses of naltrexone, my doctor suggested trying higher doses which I liked even better. I had unending PTSD phenomenon somehow related to the opiate use, such as endless terror nightmares and other difficulties.
My immune system is so much better now. I used to get pneumonia frequently.
Also totally improved is my mood, how my body responds to pain, and also alcohol and sugar. Alcohol and sugar were the only substances that made me feel any better after my long term opiate use.
After a year on daily naltrexone, I feel like myself again, but actually better than ever. I also took a small dose of Lexapro and the drug Campral, which I think also helped my brain heal. That was a winning combination. No longer on either of those.
I describe naltrexone as similar to doing exercise. You stimulate the brain by blocking the opiate receptors, then the body has to cope with that. It is forced to get stronger, or rather heal.
Best, Madora Pennington
www.lessflexible.com
Dr. Johnson wrote back.
It made my day. 😊
PS - Campral is another fantastic drug that no one is using, which we decided to try after finding Open-Label Trial of Acamprosate as a Treatment for Anxiety. I read the PubMed to relax.