So I have made an appointment with this Dr. He was a pain specialist. I remembered his name from my old friend Mike. You remember Mike, he was one of my old using buddies. Mike had overdosed and died about 6 months earlier. Mike had been living alone in a little trendy ski town up in the mountains about 45 minutes outside of Denver. That weekend a bad batch of heroin had gone through the town. A couple Mexicans had died as well. I had gone to high school with Mike. we had played sports together, he was an unbelievable athlete. All star in football, basketball and baseball. He wasted a D-1 football scholarship because he couldn't stay clean. He did have a bad back, but he had been drinking and using since the 9th grade. When I think of Mike in the high school years I just laugh. He was like a cartoon character, just a big loveable guy. I really miss him. He could always make you laugh. Now he was dead. He was dead in his apt. for 4 days before they found him. His dad made his landlord go into his apt after they had not heard from him. I guess they found him with the needle still in his arm in his boxers with a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels next to the bed. He was badly decomposed, so they had a closed casket funeral. I recall calling him that day, all day and when I got no answer I had a bad feeling which was unusual because he didn't always answer his phone. Mike's whole life was about drugs. He never could hold a job. He had tried driving a taxi, roto rooter, car sales, camper sales it goes on and on. Each job would end in a hilarious way but now it was all sad. At the time of his death he was driving a taxi part time and waiting for a lawsuit to pay off from a car accident he had a year earlier. He was banking on the easy money big time. So anyway I remembered the name of his Dr. I found a clinic in the yellow pages that had his name on the add. When I called they said he had left the clinic about 6 months earlier. They gave a phone number that he had left. It was kind of wierd, it was his cell number and he just answered "hello". So we talked a while and he said to come up tomorrow and bring some $ and my MRI. His office was in the back of a Physical Therapists office in the same little city that Mike had lived. Very informal. Our first appointment went perfect, he asked me how I had heard of him, I wasn't sure if I should say Mike or not since they lived in the same town and he might have know how he died. I didn't want him to think I was friends with a heroin user and was just trying to score drugs, but I told him anyway. Good move by me, he loved Mike and was so sorry that he had died. He was aware of how Mike had died and just thought it was terrible. He didn't act like he thought that of me and I played up the nice guy role big time. I told him Mike and I were old friends from sports and high school and we played golf together but we weren't super tight. The first appt. he gave me shots in the neck, it was hard since I am scared to death of needles. But this was the only way. After a short exam and treatment we visited for a minute, mostly talking about golf. Then he said "so what pain killers and how many have you been taking", music to my ears. I told him 10 mg percocet and about 12 per day. He said no problem and wrote a prescription for 120 percs and some muscle relaxers. He asked if I wanted to try something that would last longer so I wouldn't have to take so many pills. I knew exactly what he meant, OC's. I played stupid, I was like "ooh, those scare me, isn't that the medicine that has been in the news lately?" He said ya, but taking so many percs wasn't good for my stomach. But I was determined to stick to the fast acting stuff, I was still telling myself I could quit the percs by myself. I saw that Dr. every two weeks for about 2 months, then he would write enough for a month. Finally, I was taking 24-30 percs a day. For some reason at the end of a visit I said "why don't you write me a script for those long lasting pills you told me about (acting stupid like I didn't know there name) and I'll try them out. He wrote all my usual stuff and a script for ten, 40 mg oxycontin. I couldn't get to the pharmacy across the street fast enough. I filled them, crushed two up in the parking lot and it was over. Fucking awesome. The greatest high of my life, possibly. at the next appt. I told the doc they worked great and it was on. I was back on the shit. And this time it was dangerous. I was getting them legally and the insurance was paying for most of them. I couldn't believe it. It was too good to be true. slowly I began to get more and more. Before long he was giving me ninety 80 mg OC's, ninety 40 mg OC's and forty 20 mg OC's. His handwriting was a kind of hard to read so after a while I began changing the forty to ninety on the 20 mg prescription paper. I had to I was running out of shit in 20 days. I could fill the scripts every 23 days or when 80% of your supply should be used according to insurance. So the Dr. would write 30 days worth, but I would schedule my appt. 3 weeks apart and say I was going to be traveling the next week. By this time my Dr. had moved into a clinic in Denver. I told him I had some awesome job but I had to travel a lot. At one point I had him believing that I was moving to Cali. I would talk about how hard is was going to be for my family. I told him my oldest daughter did not want to go, just all kind of bull shit. But it worked, he started post dating scripts and giving me 3 months worth at a time. It was awesome. I had it timed just perfect, fill all the scripts every 23 days and go back to the doc just in time to get hooked up. sometimes he would say you know your coming in a month early and I would say I knew but I was only in town for a couple of days. Occasionally, he would ask why I didn't find a Dr. in Cal but I came up with all kind of excuses. After about a year of this, the doc said the fed's had checked him out and he could not write more than thirty days worth of OC at a time. By that time I was getting even more OC's, 120 percs, ambien and some other stuff I can't even remember. the whole time I had been saying that my wife and girls were hating Cali, and we missed my oldest daughter who had not moved with us. So about the time the Dr. told me he couldn't write 3 months worth of scripts anymore it was no surprise that I had found a new job and was moving back to Colorado. Perfect. the Dr. and I were getting to be pretty close friends. He even brought me back a hat when he went to the Masters golf tourney.
That is all for now, but we are getting close to being caught up.
peace.
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