The Needle and the Damage Done

Needle Fixation and Kratom for Dangerous Withdrawal

The Needle

I knew my daughter wasn’t using, but I kept finding needles.  At first I was in a panic, but this was during the time we were spending hours together in the car traveling to the methadone clinic and back, so she explained it to me.

The ritual.  The addiction to the needle.  Sometimes she was shooting up water, just to get that feeling of shooting up.  I really came to understand the ritual of using and how comforting that was to her.  It was very ritualistic: you have your kits, cotton balls, needle, water.  She was having a hard time letting go of that.  

I was learning more about harm reduction, and reading on some message boards that others experienced needle addiction too.  I think it’s something we don’t talk about enough.  Moms on boards would be freaking out because they found needles, and had a hard time believing that their child was not using.  They were simply fulfilling the need for the familiar ritual. 

My daughter was far from alone in experiencing a fixation with needles.  This article describes a man who used many drugs for over fifteen years and subsequently exhibited a fixation with the process of injecting itself.  Fixation with needles and self-injecting, in the absence of any psychoactive substance, has been documented since 1929.  Needle fixation can pose its own risks, including that of bloodborne illness if needles are shared.  Even if someone is using sterile needles, they may develop abscesses, septicemia or thrombosis.

From a harm reduction perspective, it’s important that moms and other loved ones recognize that needle addiction is real.  Finding needles does not mean that your child has returned to use.  If your child needs to use needles for now, make sure they can do so safely, have clean supplies, and are able to get medical care for any possible wounds.  

While needle fixation can be disturbing to a person who has not used IV drugs, it’s no different than the desire of someone who drank problematically to enjoy a calming, non-alcoholic beverage in the evening.  No one (short of true abstinence only idealogues) would criticize a former heavy drinker for drinking ginger ale or sparkling water at a cocktail party, or enjoying the ritual of pouring a beverage into a pretty glass.  

I want more moms to know about needle fixation, so they can understand their child and help them stay safe.  This may be a part of the journey away from chaotic drug use. 

Eventually, my daughter was able to replace this habit.  Some suggest cognitive behavioral therapy combined with cue exposure therapy, or medication.

As with everything, there is no one size fits all.  Sometimes the best we can do is stay calm and keep our child as safe as possible while they figure out what works for them.

The Damage Done: 

Abrupt Withdrawal from Methadone, Plant Medicine to the Rescue

 While my daughter was at the methadone clinic, she met a young man who became her boyfriend.  Where else was she going to meet guys?  They had a lot in common: they were both in recovery, and they stood in line together a lot.  

One day she had called me in a panic.  They had kicked her boyfriend out of the methadone clinic, without any sort of taper.  Desperate, he was about to go to the streets and buy heroin.  One contaminated batch could have killed him.

I was outraged and puzzled.  Apparently he had made a threatening remark to a security guard when he showed up just a few minutes late and they would not open the clinic door to let him get his methadone.  That was enough to get him banned from the clinic.  The clinic could have given him a taper, but they decided instead to issue what surely they knew could be a death sentence: no taper, go cold turkey off of methadone.  The pain of withdrawing from methadone abruptly is too much for almost anyone, and if street drugs are the only option, most will take it.  We were terrified that he would use street drugs and die.

I called other clinics to try to get him in somewhere else.  Every clinic I called was owned by the same for-profit company.  Every clinic said that no one would take him.  

I called the Opioid Treatment Authority.  They confirmed that any clinic could kick him out with no taper, and any clinic could refuse to treat him.  Can you imagine if a person with diabetes were to be refused their insulin under the same conditions?  

I had already become interested in plant medicine, and I decided to stock up on kratom for opioid withdrawal.  Kratom is not an opiate or a drug: it is a naturally occurring plant that functions as a mu-opioid receptor agonist.  That means that like synthetics such as methadone, it can stop the pain of withdrawal and craving.  Coffee, exercise, and chocolate all do the same thing to some extent.  This article gives more background on kratom, its origin and its uses.

I brought my daughter’s boyfriend to my house and detoxed him on kratom.  He got through it, did not buy street drugs, and eventually went on to buprenorphine. 

Kratom likely saved his life.  If he had bought drugs on the streets, who knows if he would have survived? I think Kratom is a misunderstood substance much like Ibogaine that needs to be explored as a tool in our toolbox. Or something like that.

This experience underlined for me the punitive nature of the methadone clinic system. The clinic leadership did not care if this young man lived or died.  

But we did.  As Neil Young sings in “The Needle and the Damage Done”: 

I sing the song because I love the man

I know that some of you don’t understand.

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