 Hello there, my beautiful, talented, lovely, intelligent internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you for joining me here today. I get to share with you today a video that I have been dreaming about making for quite some time now, but I didn't really think it'd be necessarily possible to really get here. So this is weird for me to be talking about and weird for me to be making. It's something I'm really, really happy to be able to share with you because today is the first day in just about a decade that I have not taken any heavy painkillers and buy heavy painkillers just to clarify, because I usually say that as a blanket statement to not get into details with people. I'm talking about heavy prescription opi based painkillers. This is the first day and I feel okay. So I'd like to tell you how I got here, why I was on them in the first place, and maybe what it's going to look like moving forward. Now before we actually dive in, there are two things. One very important. I have a weird bump underneath my shirt and I am fully aware that it exists. I have a heart monitor on right now, but it looks like a car key battery, just like super glued to the side of my body. So there's just a weird, there's a weird lump underneath my shirt. I was trying to cover up with my braid, but that wasn't going to work. And secondly, a quick but important disclaimer, none of what I'm about to talk about is me being against medication or thinking they're bad or wrong or whatever, anything like that. I'm, I think medications exist for a reason and people who need them should have access to them. But this year, specifically 2020, I began to really question what of what I was putting into my body was still presently needed at this point in my life. I began to reevaluate it. I did a video a couple months ago now talking about how I'd come off of some of my medications in general, and was going to try to come off of more under medical supervision, which is a very important point. But to be honest with you, I wasn't really entirely sure how possible any of that would realistically be, but now we're in May and I've gotten to a point that I wanted to get to. So vital question to this whole story, why have I been taking pain medication for the past almost decade of my life? So as many of you know, because of the whole leg chopping ankle issue situation, I fell off a horse when I was 13. I landed on my neck, but I had a very bad break in my ankle. The ankle part led to years and years of surgery that eventually led to me choosing to have it amputated instead of go through any more surgeries that weren't going to do me any good anyways. But the neck part of it was honestly one of the more painful aspects because there was not a lot anyone could do. From age like 15 to 17, I was bounced around to a lot of different doctors trying to figure out a way to manage like the pain in my neck. And the pain in my neck would often trigger migraines or it'd be correlated with it. And by often, I mean multiple times a week, I was always in pain and people didn't have a good solution on how to fix it. Eventually I was sent to a pain medication doctor to just be medicated. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. But I didn't really want to be on medications for the rest of my life at 17. But at that point, they were pretty low dose. They weren't even like, oh, I keep saying this word wrong, opiate based until I got to about 20. Then the pain got enough that I was like, this is not working for me. And I was working with my pain medication doctor and they decided to switch me to hydrocodone, which I was on for six years, seven years. And the problem with pain medication like that is that you need higher and higher doses for it to have the same effect for it to provide effective pain relief. And I was fully aware of that being 23, 24, 25 at the time. It was really concerning to me that I was that young and was going to for the foreseeable future for the maybe rest of my life have to take higher and higher doses of it. And again, it is a great tool. But those kinds of medications are not formulated to be taken every single day in higher and higher quantities. They're supposed to be emergency pain relief. Now they are used to manage pain because they work, which is fantastic. But they're also not great for your body long term, but I didn't know any other option. So I kept trying other things like going to acupuncture and chiropractor and physical therapy and fricking everything anyone could think of, but nothing really provided relief. And this is during the midst of going through many surgeries from my ankle, which obviously contributed to the pain. And I always had it in the back of my head that like, yeah, it'd be great to not have to carry pills around all the time to be taking like handfuls of medications multiple times during the day. But I didn't see another way to exist. In fact, when I came back from going to the Mayo Clinic, which I was at for about 10 days back in 2014, I think it was, I tried to come off of pain medication for a little while. Honestly, just to see if I still could, because I was like, I know I've been taking this for a long time now. And I know that these medications, they're addictive, but they also lead to dependency where your body actually needs them and you like go into withdrawals. If you don't have them, those two things are different, which is important to clarify. So frankly, I just, I wanted to see if I could still do it. So I came off of my medications pretty quickly under doctor supervision and it did not work. It, I could not exist like that. I couldn't work. I couldn't function. I couldn't get up and about and do things. It was too much pain primarily in my neck and my shoulders, just crushing tight pain that would then lead to migraines. And I couldn't, I couldn't human. I couldn't be a person. So I stayed on them and I've always been really conscious to like not ask to raise dosages unless it was absolutely needed. But again, the problem is that your body adjusts this stuff. It doesn't, you can't take 10 milligrams of something for 10 years and get the same effect. You can take it for a short period of time and then your body's like, okay, cool, we've adjusted that. Now you're going to need more to feel less pain. So I tried and knowing this could go on for decades of my life, that was really scary to me. Like that was chillingly concerning something I tried to not think about a whole lot. Because if I was taking the amount of medication that I was taking at 25, what was that going to look like when I was 50? Like how much more would I have to take? And what was that going to do to my life and my body? But again, there wasn't really another way. If I wanted to work, if I wanted to, oh, you know, be a person, communicate with people, not being a ball, crying on the couch all day, work, be a wife. Like if I wanted to exist, I couldn't really find another way to get through it. And so I sort of just settled into this belief that this is how it is going to be. I will always keep looking for other solutions, but this is how it's going to be. But let's flash forward now to 2020, when I came off of one of my medications, kind of suddenly, my pain management doctor suggested that now that my leg was doing a little bit better, even though my leg was not my primary source of pain, maybe see what a day was like if I was off of one of them. Because at that point, I was on a long term pain medication I take once a day, opiate based. And then I was on as needed pain medication pills throughout the day. So there were like two different versions that I was taking. And this was supposed to like sustain me and keep things even. And the little pills I could take throughout the day were to supplement that depending on how bad the day was. But I got off of the long term one, the one I had to take once a day. And the plan was like to do it as slowly as I needed and so on and so forth. But I was able to do it really quickly. And it really wasn't that big of a problem. That made me get a little squinty-eyed because I was like, this constitutes like 40% of the daily pain medication I'm taking. I'm in a lot of pain. But the level of pain I'm in hasn't really changed since coming off of it. Something in that math doesn't quite add up to me. And I got it in my head that I wanted to find out how many of the medications that I was on, I really still needed to be on because I needed to be on all of them at a certain point in time. But maybe I didn't need to stay that way. And I made a video about this, I believe, in February where I came off of a medication that I needed for nightmares from PTSD. I had been on that for like five years. It was great. It worked. But maybe my brain was healed enough that I didn't need it. So I stopped taking it under medical supervision and I was all right. I could still sleep. I get nightmares sometimes, but they're manageable. And then I moved on to another one, which was to prevent migraines. I was never fully convinced how much it actually did. And so I was like, well, this is a good next one to try because I'm not even sure if it's doing anything. And I came off of it again. No problem. Which meant the remaining medications that I was on for anxiety, depression, and a lot of physical pain, those were kind of the ones I was very concerned about getting off of. But I wanted to see if I could do it, if life was okay, if that was the case. And so I expressed this to my pain medication doctor. She was very on board for it, of course. And we came up with a plan to very slowly come off of it. Because again, if you just like stop taking pain medication like that that you've been on for years, it can send your body into withdrawals, which aren't super fun. It can like jack up your pain levels. And it's hard to get them back under control. So just do it reasonably. And so I was on a program to slowly wean off of them. And a big factor for me in committing to doing that was the fact that there's really not another time I can think of that would be better for this. We are unfortunately dealing with a pandemic, which is horrible. And I am at home with my husband, which means that I have support. I have someone else here. I'm still working, but I'm not going out. My schedule is significantly lightened and lessened. And so what better time to try to come off of pain medications? Like I'm not going to have that situation hopefully again. And another important piece of the story is that the only thing I ever found that really helped with pain and pain management was exercise, like high levels of exercise. It really helped loosen up my muscles. It lessened the amount of migraines that I had. It made me feel a lot better. But in the past few years, I have not been able to really do that with the leg issues that I was having. And so now that I was able to start to move more, I figured, yeah, this is really, this is the time to do this. If I want to give this a shot, if I want to cut the cord and try to stop taking pain medications, I have all the pieces in place that now is the time that makes sense for me to do so. So about a week and a half ago, I was down to taking like two pills a day, which I can't stress this enough, was so little compared to what I used to take. But it was still like, it was still enough that I was slowly, you know, tapering off of it. And I knew that my pain medication bottle was due for a refill. I thought to myself, what if I don't have to make that call? What if I don't have to go to that appointment? What if I was just done? And honestly, it seems like a dumb reason, but I was the motivation that I needed to be like, yeah, I'm going to see if before these are gone, I can be free of them. And so that is what I did. And I started exercising a lot more, moving as much as I could, because I know that that really helps getting sleep as much as I could, keeping other things in my life stable. And then I got to today where I have not taken any pain medication today. And that's bizarre. That's really weird, because this has been a daily part of my life for my entire adult life. For most of my, you know, cognizant memory, this has just been my reality. I didn't really think that I could get here. And I realized that this is just one day and I don't have a migraine today. It's not triggered by other things. I'm doing okay. And I'm not going to like hold myself to some impossible standard of having to stay this way just because I can, but I actually don't think that I need it. And at this point in the story, like me, you may be thinking to yourself, how is it possible that you needed pain medication every single day for nine years for legitimate, difficult, intense physical pain? And now you just don't? That's a question I've definitely asked myself a lot, which seems like the puzzle pieces, the math doesn't quite add up to me, but the best explanation that I can come to on my own is that I don't think my body, I think my body was so adjusted to it and so used to it that the amount of medication I was taking, even though it was a fairly high dosage, wasn't really having impact, wasn't really doing a lot. A side effect of all of this is that I have a stupid high tolerance to pain medications. This comes out and becomes an issue after surgeries because it's really hard to get my pain under control, especially like right after surgeries, right after both of my amputations. Things were really bad and I was on a lot, a lot of drugs from the hospital that didn't really do that much. Like I was still fairly conscious and cognizant and in pain, even though I was taking like everything that they could throw at me because my body was so adjusted to it and so used to it in my system that I was like, what, this isn't a big deal, this isn't going to do much. And that was really scary to me that at 28 at that point, doctors could be giving me enough that they were concerned that I was going to stop breathing because that was a real situation and I was still in a lot of pain. What was that going to mean if I was ever in like a serious accident and was in a stupid, crazy high amount of pain and there's nothing anyone could do? What was that going to mean in a few years when this was even more significant? And like I said, I always kind of accepted to some extent that I was just going to be my reality and that is a lot of people's reality and it's hard to deal with, it's hard to manage. Like there are repercussions, there are ramifications on your body and your life, but sometimes it's really necessary. But I started to question if that really was my reality and I don't want to take this too far because sometimes I feel like people are like, people take that idea and make it apply to everything. Like if you don't want that to be your life, it doesn't have to be, you can think your way out of it, which I do not agree with really at all. But I began to really question if my reality needed to be being on pain medications and increasing dosages for the rest of my life. And that question led me to a really cool place and I'm really glad that I had the support and the resources to just think about it and think about giving this a shot because I don't think at all that this would work for everyone who is on pain management medication. It sucks to hurt all the time. It's really difficult and that part isn't gone, but it's okay. It's manageable and I really hope to be able to continue to manage this with just like ibuprofen or acetaminophen as needed because those things aren't great for you every day either, which I'm fully aware of. Exercise, moving my body, stretching, like doing what I need to do to take care of myself. Maybe it can be managed that way. I've noticed a couple things coming off of all of these medications. The first is that I've had a lot more energy. I'm going to go ahead and attribute it to that because especially in the last couple weeks when I've been on really low dosages of everything, I've been able to do more. I've been more focused. I've had more like actual energy that I feel it not just like, well, I don't feel like crap. So this must be energy, but like actual energy where I'm able to do things. And that's been really cool. But on the flip side of it, I've also noticed that as I have come off of pain medication in particular, anxiety is just like real jacked up and my startle responses are very high and I'm very wired, which is also normal, which is also part of it. And that can take a little while to go away. So I expect that to perhaps stick around for a little while. I'm trying to do what I can to manage that and take care of it. But all in all, it's gone really well. And I know it isn't the end of the day yet. I won't publish this video if I don't go to the end of the day without pain medication. But this is the first time I have gone even like 18 hours without taking something. And that's really, really cool to me. It's just, it's really cool to me. It's a huge accomplishment in my life. And I'm very, very grateful. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to have done this. Just to reiterate one last time at the end of this video, because I did at the beginning as well, I have absolutely nothing at all against medications or people who take them. I have been one and am for many, many years. They're very necessary in so many situations. It's just for me. I don't want to be on them if I don't have to be, which I think is the case for most people. And yeah, I'm going to continue experimenting safely. Let's see where this goes. Thank you for watching. Thank you for being a part of my journey. I am obviously, yeah, I'm pretty psyched today. I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty grateful and humbled and just excited. So thank you for watching this video and spending a few minutes out of your day here with me. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything, except hopefully not socializing with large groups of people. And you chose to spend a few minutes with me. I'm really thankful for that. Thanks guys. A huge thank you to all of my patrons over on Patreon. I cannot tell you how much you help me, how much you do for me. Thank you. And to you watching this video. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.