 Today's video is sponsored by Squarespace. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. I am happy and proud to announce that I have been off of opioid-based medication for over a year now, which is nuts. Time actually flies. And I wanted to tell you what that has been like and what life has looked like and what pain has looked like in different ways that I've managed. If you're totally unfamiliar with my story, what I'm talking about specifically is pain management medication. There are certain situations where opioids like oxy, Vicodin, Percocet, Morphine, you name it, are used to manage people's pain on a daily basis. I am incredibly grateful that I never had an issue with addiction. So this isn't like a year out of addiction, but this is a year out of something that my body was dependent on for almost a decade of my life. I'll link videos down below that have talked more about this process, why I was on those medications, how I came off of them. But it was mind-blowing to me. I was kind of searching through my channel and I realized that the date of the video that I posted, saying that I had been off of things for a week, was over a year ago and that was really exciting for me to see. It has definitely been a challenging journey over the past 365 plus days, but I'm excited to share the story with you because it's, I mean, it's a huge personal victory for me. But first, a word from our delightful and lovely sponsor, Squarespace. As I have mentioned before, I am in the process of redesigning my public speaking website where you can book me to speak at your school, your university, your conference, you name it. I haven't had a good platform for that in a while and that is why I decided to start using Squarespace Design Mine because I was looking for a platform that I could buy domain, have great analytics. More than anything, have a very simple, intuitive, easy to use and fast dashboard to design this because I don't have a lot of extra time on my hands to dedicate to this and Squarespace is absolutely perfect for it. Thank you again so much to Squarespace. Let's dive back in. About a year and a half ago, early 2020, I began questioning a lot of the medications that I was on every day. I was on I think about eight different drugs for migraine, for chronic pain, for PTSD, for depression, for anxiety. Medications are a great thing. They are an incredible tool. However, I really wondered how much of that was actually helping my body. I'm a big advocate for using medication when it works for you. I just didn't want to be on stuff that was no longer helping my body as there are side effects. So I began slowly coming off of things with my doctor's help and seeing how I felt. The one that I was most scared of though was coming off of narcotics because I had been on them for nine years. At 29 years old, there had been these very powerful drugs circulating in my system for a third of my life. I was terrified of the pain. I was terrified of ever being cut off of a medication because of legislation or changes in healthcare when it comes to opioids, which happen a lot. And I was really scared of the process of actually physically coming off of those medications because there are withdrawals. So I put that one off for a long time but I believe it was about April timeframe that I worked with my pain management doctor to start slowly and surely tapering off the medication that I was on and I was able to do it. And by June, I was no longer taking oxy every day in large doses, which was mind blowing to me. The process of coming off of it, I think more than anything, it wasn't so physically painful for me but it was emotionally painful because this is a tool that I had been using for a very long time for a very real purpose and I didn't know what life was gonna look like on the other side of that. I just really wanted to see how much it was helping me, like how much pain I was in every day without it, were there other ways that I could manage that because these are dangerous medications and they do have long term effects that are very important to consider. And so I came off of everything, I was thrilled, I was ecstatic, I was like, yes, I've done it, this is it. And I was shocked, like I actually shocked that I really didn't feel that different. Like I could think a little bit clearer in some situations but not even that noticeable. I was so highly functional on, let me just stress again, high doses of very powerful opioids that not a single person has mentioned noticing a difference in my personality or my communication or anything like that. But the most surprising thing is that the level of pain that I was in once my body adjusted to being off of those drugs didn't really change that much. I think I had been on them so long, my body was so used to it. The way that opioids and a lot of medication work, you have to keep taking higher and higher doses to kind of get that same relief. And I think I was at a place where even though I was on the high doses, it just wasn't doing anything for me. I was still dealing with chronic pain every day, still dealing with very bad migraines, still very uncomfortable in a body that has a lot of issues, but it was no different than when I was taking six pills throughout the day. More than that, I started noticing that there were some days that I was actually in less pain. And I wanna pause here for a second and make it really clear that in no way am I advocating for anyone to do this. If you are on pain management medication, that is absolutely 100% between you and your doctor that's your choice. There's no good or bad here, right? Like I'm not like, I did the better thing, I didn't. I did something that I thought was wise for my body and my health, but there are so many reasons to be on medication and to stay on them. So please don't think that this is me advocating for it. However, a risk that people talk to me about that I had a hard time believing was as something I believe they called rebound pain, rebound headaches, where when you're on so many doses of opioids, it actually starts making you hurt more. There are some people where that is the case. And I was like, that sounds ridiculous. I'm sure it's a thing, but like I don't know how much of a thing it is, but I realized that it was actually true because as my body stabilized, I still had the neck pain, I still had the body pain, I still got migraines, but there were some days where it honestly wasn't as bad and some of the severe headaches that I was getting started to dissipate. From an emotional perspective though, after I was off of things for maybe a month or two, I got really, really nervous not having that medication available to me because it always was there. I always knew that if it wasn't a lot of pain, I had a way to take care of it at least for a short period of time if something was going on with my body. And I didn't have that anymore after sort of the reserves that I had for very, very bad days or very bad moments had run out. And it really gave me a lot of anxiety. And I'll be honest, this actually got a lot worse over the last few months as I was in and out of the hospital, ER situation for kidney issues and other issues that I'll talk about in the future and getting access to medication was damn near impossible which honestly was so painful both physically and emotionally because I was in a lot of pain. I wanted pain relief but if I asked for it, I was treated like an addict and I kept trying to explain, you don't understand, I was on these medications in huge doses for years and I chose to come off of it, call my doctor, please confirm that what I'm saying is real with them for that to be the situation and to be denied medication when I was in pain and to be treated like an addict really freaked me out. And so I actually spoke with one of my doctors a couple of months ago about having like a backup supply of medication just like in case anything ever got bad again and it was recommended to me that maybe that's not the best idea given that my body is off of things. It's very easy to go back on a medication like this because you do feel temporary relief and it's easy to get in that habit and that pattern and they weren't unwilling but they recommended against it especially for my diagnosis of fibromyalgia that yeah, you might feel some relief but it's not actually helping. There's no scientific evidence shown that long-term opioid use actually helps things like fibromyalgia from my understanding and so I decided against that and it is something that is kind of nerve wracking every day. I think I'm still coming out of this mindset of having pills around me all the time but something that has been a huge, huge benefit and a huge one for me is not having to worry about going to the pharmacy all the time to pick those up and never knowing if I was gonna be allowed to have them still. We have a huge issue in our country with they call it the opioid epidemic, right? There is a large issue of addiction and it's something I really have a heart for. I hate how we treat addicts. I hate the way that they are looked down on and so brutally criticized in society when it's people who need help dealing with a very scary, very dangerous disease and as we as a culture have become aware of some of the things that have caused that epidemic some people who have had their fingers involved in causing people's deaths and addiction. I'll link some videos I've done about that up above. There's been a lot of law changes and new regulations and it became increasingly difficult to get access to medication that I needed. So not having the anxiety of, am I gonna get cut off tomorrow? Am I gonna have to go through withdrawals like that? Is there gonna be any help available? I'm really glad that I was able to eliminate that anxiety from my life and I realized that that is not something that everyone is gonna be able to have or be able to do. This has really just been my personal experience with that and that has been a huge benefit. And additionally, something that I was really hoping would be the case is the fact that now when I do need medication like that when I was in the hospital, when they were giving me things to manage pain, it actually works again. I wasn't sure if I had built up so much of a tolerance to opioid medication that I would need a ton to ever feel relief but apparently that's not how human bodies work at least in many situations where I've been off of it primarily for about a year and so low doses again, I get some relief. I feel the effects of it when I was dealing with my kidney infection. They give me medication in the hospital and there was actual relief. I could feel a difference because my body wasn't needing such massively high doses to feel that. Going into future surgeries, I have one coming up, I'll talk about it soon. I'm not gonna need like seven times the amount they normally prescribe patients. I'll probably just be okay with like the normal couple days after surgery. Here's like the normal prescription and that's really cool. Having the knowledge that I can exist off of pain medication every single day is amazing and here's the thing, pain isn't gone. I still have pain every day. My body hurts and some days are okay. Like today, some days are very much not okay and I can barely move but I've begun to deal with that more through consistent low impact exercise every single day. Just moving my body personally is very helpful for pain management for me. Understand that by saying that I'm not like exercise, it cures everything. Just go outside, just take a walk. But with fibromyalgia and the pain that I have, moving your body is proven to be a very preventative and a very helpful thing and I have noticed that in my own life as well. So I've been very vigilant to just stay lightly active, keep my body moving. I utilize heat and ice so often. I have a heating pad right there that's always plugged in and one upstairs as well that's always accessible to me. I have a ton of ice packs in the fridge. Hello there, it's editing Joe. I realized as I was talking about kind of what I do now to manage pain, I made it sound a little bit too easy. Like I moved some, I've got a heating pad and ice pad. It is honestly and obviously a little bit more complex than that. There are a lot of things I've done over the last year to help really prevent and manage some of the pain that I deal with, like really getting on top of my sleep schedule, paying a little bit more attention to what I eat and what triggers there are. Being very intentional about self care as in doing the things that I know I need to do that will de-stress my body so that the level of pain I am in is lower. But like I said, there's really not like a magical cure or a magical fix. This is just something that I deal with and it's something that I'm actively looking for more solutions to. I've also been using a lot of topical things which, you know, maybe decrease things by 5%, but that 5% I will absolutely take. Though I try to do it sparingly, I also use anti-inflammatory medications. I use a semenophen, I have muscle relaxants on hand which can definitely help. They don't specifically like target pain but they can help my body relax a little bit. They can help me sleep which helps pain get less over time. There are a lot of little things that I've been doing and perhaps in the future I'll do a larger video that will delve into really the depths of what that looks like a lot of my day and my life is dedicated to managing and trying to get ahead of pain before it gets too bad. It's a delicate balancing game but it is definitely a lot more complicated than just moving my body every day. Though I'm still looking for ways to better deal with it, there's also been a large portion of this that's kind of coming to terms with the fact that at least for the time being and for the foreseeable future, this is my life. This is how my body feels. I am someone who lives in pain every day and coming up with better mental ways of handling that, better ways of actually taking care of myself and not faulting myself for being in pain, not hating myself when I'm not able to accomplish what normal people can accomplish. Removing that stress has definitely helped and I've also really focused on stress management and removing as many sources of stress in my life as I can because I noticed that as a direct impact on the amount of pain I have and also how I'm able to emotionally handle the level of that pain. I wish I had something like revolutionary to share with you that like fixed everything but that's not the case. Largely, I physically feel pretty similar to when I was on medication all the time except that I can think a little bit more clearly and I don't have those really bad kind of rebound just intense headaches. This has just been my own experience with this and some of the things that I've learned along the way and I'm really, it's really cool that it's been a year. It's really cool that it's been a year off of everyday majorly huge dangerous drugs that always kind of scared me and I'm able to exist and continue to find ways to kind of cope with this and deal with this. So thank you for being along for the ride. It's been really cool to be able to share this with you guys as it's been a major milestone in my life. Thank you again so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. Remember to check out their link down below for any website domain needs. They are absolutely fantastic. To my patrons over on Patreon, thank you so much for continuing to support this channel and allowing me to do what I do here. If you're interested in our Patreon community there is a link on screen also linked down below but to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a little bit and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.