Hey guys,

It’s been a while since I updated you on my favourite sport. So… I have been skating still. Not as much as I used to in the past and there have been reasons for that.

I went back into competitions last year (2023-2024) season. I did two competitions I believe before I withdrew three and four, both of the ones I got a gold medal. But being in skates really was affecting my ankle and I was getting pain. A few days before the second competition in November, I slipped on something and my ankle twisted causing it to puff up.

With some painkillers that I took I was able to get onto the ice continue practicing and I was able to continue practicing and then I competed at the competition. By the end of the week, I was popping pills every few hours and I could not focus without them.

Literally one pill turned into two, that turned into three and before I knew it I was finishing bottles of different types of painkillers. These were as low dosage as Tylenol (American pills), to naproxen, tramadol, and codeine.

And the night after I competed at the second competition I went in, did the competition, and I walked out on crutches with a gold medal. I sat in my car crying my eyes out. It was a mixture from the pain, the frustration because since Covid my injuries have never been healing properly. And then finally because all I could think about was the codeine. I honestly just wanted it but I knew I could not take anything until I got home and it was the longest drive of my life. There was a snowstorm (the first one of the season) and we were about an hour out.

When I got home I took a bunch of pills and just went to sleep and when I got up I realized that I was officially in a relapse.

So from there, I stopped skating for a bit to recover from the injuries without aggravating them and making me want more pills. At that moment I was also trying to get off the pills as well. My boyfriend who saw me collapse and knew about my addiction history was a sweetheart. Honestly, he took the pills away and monitored the pain levels. He mentioned I had a tell with my body that he knew if I needed one or not and when I did he would give me one. But the rest were hidden. We started eating better together, I was starting to work out more (different parts than what was injured). I started to journal and I did that on January 1st as my New Year’s resolution. It’s been 6 months exactly and I am over 150k words in that journal. That is how much I have needed to get off of my chest and how much this has helped me.

When needed, I logged into online meetings for Narcotics Anonymous. I would do sometimes several a day on the really bad days but in reality, I tried for three a week. I took some time off work to relax and recover.

And for Spring 2024 I started back skating again. Let me tell you it felt different. Everything was good but then this one day at work I slipped on an ice cube and I tore the ligaments in my ankle again. I don’t know yet to what extent because my MRI is still a few weeks away (July 17th) but the pill taking started again and the skating had to stop because essentially I was having a lot of trouble walking once again.

Now that I know what to look for, I have been able to stop a bit. Yesterday my pain was so bad I ended up taking one codeine pill (Advil and Tylenol did not help and that was the other accessible one I had) and it’s been 24 hours and I am still feeling drowsy from it. I haven’t really been functioning today and I feel like I am on a different planet. Maybe even high. And I know I have to get this ankle fixed so I can continue working out and getting through everything.

I don’t know where I am heading yet and which path. I want everything to work out but this process is so slow.