Author: TeeJay

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 8:46 am

Can a person cure their cancer with the power of positive thought? Some people have claimed it.

I think having a positive approach to any mental or physical ailment can make managing it easier to bear. ie "Fuck my knee hurts" …. *thinks to self* "shuddup TeeJay it ain’t that bad. get off your ass and do something instead of bitching and moaning."

IMO a person who approaches opioid withdrawal with a positive outlook will still be experiencing the same level of chemical imbalance in the brain as one who wallows in it, the same level of pain stimuli as the opioid receptors rapidly downregulate … and no amount of cognitive adjustment can change it.

But having a positive outlook can ease the perception of that pain, how they choose to deal with it, and whether they focus on it or try and think about other things. And perhaps if the withdrawal is mild enough, their dose of Sub low enough, adjusting one’s thinking like this might be enough to make the withdrawal symptoms virtually unnoticeable.

But for those who jump off higher doses of Sub / methadone maintenance, from experience I’ve found the symptoms are so intense that CBT can’t help much. The only way I could really deal with it was to put myself in some kinda masochistic head space and take the pain like some kinda challenge. I’d have this mantra running through my head like "feel the pain. love it, live it, breathe it." Whenever I stopped thinking it or I forgot to, I’d get this image of a circular saw slicing through my skull and I’d hear this German word like "zuttt zutttzzergitzen" in my head that was like hard nails scratching the blackboard and I’d feel the cold of my detox sweat evaporating and start shaking and kicking. My mantra was a lesser evil. That particular Sub withdrawal was when I started to embrace the pain of opioid withdrawal, which helped me survive the few after.

When withdrawal is happening, there’s some pretty fundamental imbalances being corrected at a level of our brain (consciousness?) much deeper than our cognition. So I hold grave doubts that a person with a big opioid habit to methadone or Suboxone could "think" their way outta withdrawal.