Wow what an incredible line up of speakers last weekend. I’d forgotten how powerful a huge group of drunks can be while listening to incredible stories of recovery. As Charlie Y. said to me outside “These things are a real shot in the arm to your recovery, but sometimes by Tuesday its right back to the same ole meetings, haha.” He had a great story, and funny as hell. All the speakers I thought were strong and funny. And the leaves up here in the mountains have just been magnificent this year.
I even experience less headaches up here by the water. Someone said to me “It’s less negative ions” and I don’t know if that’s true or not, but damn if it doesn’t seem to be true at least. Which takes me back to my last posting about Post Interferon Syndrome. I certainly don’t mean to be throwing a pity party. I’m very grateful to be Hep C free and I recommend everyone getting tested and getting treated as soon as humanely possible. I only stress that the value of clear thinking, and positive thinking as well, is now so acutely meaningful to me, that “Brain Fog” is a real unwelcome permanent side effect some days. I only want their to be studies to test whether there are ways of improving the side effects and bringing normalcy to people’s lives who are suffering from such things. It took me 20 years of drinking to figure out how valuable my state of mind is one Earth, and right when I did I polluted it with some of the harshest poisons on Earth, Interferon, and I just wish somebody, somewhere was studying the long term side effects, and potential fixes.
I’m not advocating permanent pity party, or a wallowing in whining, but I think it is important to state the issue clearly, consolidate folks who are feeling this way, and petition the scientific community, especially the billionaire profit makers of Merck and Roche who have gained so much, to at least study some of us, if not all.
Still it felt like I’d complained a considerable amount and then that very weekend I ran into quite a few people who’d done a year of Interferon and had not got rid of the virus. Please understand, I am grateful I cleared it, and I do recommend everyone get tested early and treat early as they say it’s more effective the younger you do it, which was the sole reason I went ahead and jumped on the grenade… well that and my liver enzymes were through the roof and liver failure was a possibility, so it’s not like I had too much choice, but still. Get it done, but also, be aware it’s no small thing. It’s more than flu like symptoms. It hurts, and it changes the way you think, feel, and even bleed.
So what do you do afterwards, double down on recovery, call your sponsor more, go to more meetings, and try not to fall into the Pity Party trap chronic pain sufferers. I’m looking into finding a support group, and it’s probably something I should have done a long time ago. People close to me have said I’m always angry, and it’s not true, I’m not angry, but there are days when I am having intense headaches and I don’t know how to fix them. When they come on, and admittedly at 3.5 years post TX they come fewer and fewer, but in year one post TX, they were several times a week, so that too gives me hope. Allen, the guy who was originally talking about Hippopotamus Sea in my meetings, (which I’d later come to find out was Hepatitis C) said it was about 5 years before he was totally better, so there is hope as well. Hope that the post TX side effects while continue to slowly get better. And of course for people just finding out they have Hep C, they don’t even have to go the full year, Telaprevir now reduces it to six months, so surely those side effects will be better as well.
The Prepaid Convention in Georgia was amazing this year, and I think I’ll be incorporating that into my sobriety moving forward. No matter what I am saved from the obsession to drink and drug and that was killing me much more fast than any other thing on Earth, and I no longer have to suffer from that. Hep C, headaches, fatigue, I will manage, and I am grateful to God, and to AA for holding my hand as I walked this journey, and with patience, and faith, I pray every year post TX will get a little better than the last. Exercise, diet, prayer and above all else perseverance will pull me through.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address the issues, and ask big pharma what they’ve found, and if they know of any potential fixes, and if not, which I doubt, then to get fucking on it. They aren’t fictional side effects, and we’d appreciate the help or at the very least some studies be done.
Thanks for reading and if you haven’t read my story of sobriety, Hepatitis C and the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, its all available for free in my book Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety by Jared Bryan Smith on http://www.books4free.com or in hard back on Amazon at the link below! Thanks so much for all your support!
– Jared Bryan Smith
JB Smiths Blog - Author @ books4free.com 