Introduction to Series on Recovery
Care Becoming Quiet Understanding
I am Dr. Conway, a Tennessee physician who practices private medicine in Nashville.
I will be your private doctor.
With time, stability forms. From stability, freedom follows.
My work is to help you remain with what is difficult until it becomes understandable.
It is a privilege to witness life becoming more its own.
Introduction
Recovery is a term used constantly throughout addiction medicine. Let undefined, as it usually is, recovery means whatever the patient or doctor thinks it means. This failure of communication places the patient at risk of making harmful decisions.
I hope to flesh out the real meaning of recovery to allow you to gain benefit from your treatment.
Recovery is a process, not an event
While actively using fentanyl, you cycle within 24 hours between anticipation, to active use, before the inevitable misery of withdrawal. Your life has a destructive, but predictable rhythm. Your prior identity is hidden. Your active identity is driven by your new master, fentanyl.
When you elect to free yourself from fentanyl, there are significant events. You begin suboxone. You may go to an outpatient facility such as Cumberland Heights. This is the beginning of freeing yourself of your fentanyl identity
This beginning consists of all consuming events. However memorable, these are simply events which begin you on the road to recovery, Recovery is not a sprint. Recovery is a marathon.
The marathon that is recovery involves change on all levels. Time matters more than intensity.
Recovery is a reorganization of Your Life
Stopping fentanyl was the easy decision.
It is the daily habits you must acquire that are the hard decisions.
- When do you wake?
- When do you go to sleep.
- What to eat and when.
- How do you take your suboxone?
- How do you adapt to the requirements of the suboxone clinic?
These are seemingly simple, but each is a personal choice.
Your mood may change. Your life is so different without fentanyl. Your life becomes more organized. Your life becomes quieter. Your life has more structure. Your day becomes more consistent. You begin to inhabit a new you,
You are fragile. Your fentanyl identity remains very close. Your new identity is beginning. You live under the stress of two existing identities; this is called moratorium.
Recovery Requires Support
Recovery begins with a moral choice to stop fentanyl. Recovery begins with a decision. However, your recovery requires that you have support.
The Tennessee Rules which structure Suboxone clinics provide a profound structure for your medical care. The wisdom of the Tennessee rules sustains you while you develop your own inner stability. The boundaries provided by Tennessee Rules are guardrails protecting you. This support for you is not passive. This support requires effort from your family, your physicians, your therapists, and whomever is important in your life.
Supports are required for you to develop structure.
Recovery changes Who You Are
Recovery changes who you are. Recovery is the reorganization of your identity. As your new habits become routine, as your body feels consistently better, as you succeed where previously you stumbled, your understanding of who you are changes. You begin developing a new better self, building upon your strengths. Your fentanyl identity is disappearing, existing only in your past and your unconscious.
Conclusion
My work is to walk with you through those decisions — quietly, steadily, and without judgment. I am William Conway, MD in Nashville
📞 Call 615-708-0390
or Request a Visit on Our Website
