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An urgent prayer request

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MariaRegina

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Dear Matrona:

Don't forget to post your prayer petition in our own prayer thread here at TAW.

I will be praying for Amy.

In the late 1980's one of our friends suddenly converted to Christianity and decided to go cold turkey. Well he quit alcohol and then tried to pull a station off the air, because he thought it was promoting satanism.

We visited him in the mental hospital and succeeded in convincing him, in cooperation with his pastor, that he needed to be committed to a 30-day drug treatment facility. It turns out that besides alcohol, he was also addicted to drugs. The drug withdrawal symptoms made him do crazy things and act paranoid.

He's okay today. Please try to get help at school. If she is a student, they do have an intervention program at most college health centers. Alcoholism is almost epidemic among college students.
 
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Matrona

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Amy is having serious problems tonight--she's taken a prescription anti-depressant drug with about 6 or 7 shots of schnapps (48 proof). I am keeping an eye on her in case I need to call for help; she is having trouble staying balanced and is feeling EXTREMELY depressed.

I have told her that she needs to talk to someone about her problems but she needs help realizing that she doesn't have to suffer like this...

Please, please say a prayer for her tonight.
 
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Photini

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sure thing.

In my late teens and early 20s, I had a bad drug problem too (mainly, cocaine, methamphetimines, LSD, and some others that I won't mention). I am by no means a good example to follow, but at least I am proof that even the weakest can quit drugs...but it is by the grace of God alone, because even now, if the right "buttons" get pushed...I feel that urge in me that wants to drive right back into it. I've been drug free for around 4 years...and smoke free for almost 2. I quit cold turkey. (By far the hardest one to quit was tobacco because withdrawal takes so much longer.)

I'm still waiting for my short-term memory to return.
 
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Matrona

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Photini said:
In my late teens and early 20s, I had a bad drug problem too. I am by no means a good example to follow, but at least I am proof that even the weakest can quit drugs...but it is by the grace of God alone, because even now, if the right "buttons" get pushed...I feel that urge in me that wants to drive right back into it. I've been drug free for around 4 years...and smoke free for almost 2. I quit cold turkey.
thank you Photini :hug:

So far she is doing allright. I have been going past her room every few minutes to make sure she's okay--that she's either talking on the phone or moving around loud enough for me to hear. Also I've managed to keep her from leaving the apartment--she was saying earlier that she was going to try to find some cocaine. Xanax and alcohol is bad enough, if she did cocaine on top of that I would have to call 911. So I have been trying to get her to eat something to offset the alcohol and hopefully get her mind away from doing the cocaine.

If anyone has any practical advice I am most open to it--I've never had to deal with anything like this before.
 
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Photini

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Oh man. Xanax? Briefly I had a bout on that. Do you know if she's been taking it often and for very long? If so, if she is addicted to it and stops suddenly, she could have a seizure. That's what happened to me. I decided to quit it, and one night I woke up shaking but frozen in place. I couldn't move, and my whole body was trembling all over and sweaty. That was very scary. I couldn't even tell you how long it lasted...I didn't have anyone there to help me. God bless you for being there to help her and not turning your back on her.
 
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Matrona

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Photini said:
I decided to quit it, and one night I woke up shaking but frozen in place. I couldn't move, and my whole body was trembling all over and sweaty. That was very scary. I couldn't even tell you how long it lasted...I didn't have anyone there to help me.
:eek: Whoa, I didn't even know about that. I already told her that Xanax is extremely dangerous to mix with alcohol and she sounded shocked but has done it anyway. I should tell her about this.

I might just be "churchgirl" to her, but I'm the only one who's willing to be woken up by her at six in the morning to make her "hangover cure". (I've ordered her not to cook when she's drunk or she's taken drugs, instead she has to wake me up and I'll do it for her. Otherwise she leaves a huge mess and leaves the oven/stove on for hours. I got a burn on my finger just touching the top of the stove--not the burners--when she had left the oven on one night.)

I think I just heard her get up, so I think she's gotten through the night okay. (Her waking up usually involves a prodigious amount of loud indie rock so I know it's her.) I was afraid to go to bed last night in case she got into trouble or decided to go find cocaine after I went to bed. But I spoke to her around 2AM and she seemed reasonably coherent--she apologized for knocking down something of mine in the bathroom four hours earlier when she had taken a shower. Right after the shower she'd been too drunk to remember she'd knocked it down about a minute after she did it, so she didn't tell me then. So it was a bit comforting to know that once reminded, she now could remember knocking it down long enough to tell me. :)

God bless you for being there to help her and not turning your back on her.
Thanks Photini. She's my friend and I feel like I have to look out for her--none of her stupid drug dealers care if she lives or dies, who else is going to do it? Her mom lives in Charlotte so she can't be much of a help. I do have her name and phone number in case we need to do something like an intervention.

Fortunately, our RLC lives right across the hall (RLC=capo de tutti capi for the residence hall). If she gets in trouble I think he's supposed to know first-aid, which is better than nothing, since sometimes, for some reason, ambulances and fire trucks take forever to get here.

(I've seen a fire truck take twenty minutes to get here when it was a real fire upstairs, which is absolutely insane. Someone trapped in the building would surely have died of smoke inhalation by then.)
 
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Suzannah

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Matrona,
You know your friend better than anyone of us...would she respond to an "intervention" by a crisis counselor? Does your school have a thing like this>? Perhaps that might help? I do know of people who have asked AA members to "show up" at their homes for a "chat" with the person in question. Do you think this might help?
 
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