7.5 and 8.5. Effects were pretty mild. I did 2 short walks though. Anxiety is bad. I’m kind of at the limit of what I can take. Side effects are bad. And there isn’t a big benefit for me. Pain is still bad and that all makes anxiety really bad. I know ketamine knocks that anxiety out. I need to figure out how I can get in a tolerance break. I really don’t think ketamine is a good idea. Maybe low dose it for a week like I did last time. Get the kratom out of me and move on from there? My first break was after like 3 months and I was on the same dose I am now. I ramped up faster maybe. I can’t remember back then. Injection is on Tuesday. That should be a ramp for me. Maybe go in sober for that morning. Suffer through and see if the injection helps. If it actually helps pain, that will be helpful for stopping the kratom. I just really don’t want to suffer, only to go right back on after 2 weeks of even more suffering. I don’t know how to stay on this stuff successfully though with higher doses than I’m on now. I’m ripping through it too. Going to cost a lot of money to keep this habit up. I think I’m going to be forced to stop very soon. I don’t think it will be pretty. Gabapentin certainly isn’t the answer. I think I remember why I never took that stuff. It fucks with me pretty bad. I guess I can take it at night to help with night withdrawals and RLS. I slept OK last night. I took ash and ag tonight. I don’t even know why. I took the ag first with the ice pack, then the pain finally felt better. I felt better. Had a church walk. When I feel good at night, it’s so fucking easy to sit here and say I’ll stop the kratom. I can push through. Tomorrow morning is always a completely different story. It’s always brutal. I can drink from 10am! Is there enough alcohol in the world to get me through? And that hangover is glorious. I have absolutely no idea how to quit. I have no idea how to help my pain. I proved alcohol is absolutely horrible a couple weeks ago. I need to take advantage of these injections Tuesday. I need to fit that into a tolerance break plan. But a tolerance break at this point is plain quitting. That’s a brutal 5-10 days that I don’t want to deal with. And I don’t want to do it only to go right back on and piss away that effort. I need to play it by ear every day. Throw something else at the pain when I can. Ice packs right at 8am. Tonight I feel like I’m on like day 2 of withdrawals. I got through with some work. Not easy, but handled. I did the walks, I felt decent a couple times today. But I’m still on drugs. No matter how good I might feel, or how good my effort is, I’m still on drugs. And I’m still working hard, suffering, barely surviving. At least if I wasn’t on drugs and doing all of this, I would be 5 steps ahead of where I am now…which is on drugs and completely worthless. Without a plan to get off the drugs, get better, get back to work, back to life. I have nothing except drugs, and now those aren’t even working. I could be sober without anything working. Oh yeah, and gabapentin and alcohol don’t mix. If I could ever commit, there is Flexiril. too. That hydroxizine might be useful, but not with Flexiril. And not with kratom. Flexiril and vistiril both use the same liver enzyme as kratom.

By Del