Still feeling tweaked after 20 months sober

I am a 31 year old single mom. I have been clean for about 20 months. I have a job and live on my own with my 14 month old son. Yeah I know...if you do the math...he was exposed to meth before I knew I was pregnant. Thank God he is happy, healthy, and smart as a whip. Anyway, I digress. A couple months ago I started having "tweaker" symptoms; jaw clenching, teeth grinding, this weird "thing" with my hands, my muscles contract subconciously and then I feel tense and have to make myself relax. I also think I am having mild panic attacks. I start sweating and get really nervous over nothing at all. IT'S DRIVING ME NUTS. I never had to deal with half this crap when I WAS tweaking. I don't understand why this is happening. I probably look more like a tweaker now than when I was one. Will this ever go away? Is there anything I can do? So far this has not afected my job performance or anything else really...it just drives me nuts! Has this happened to anyone else? My couselor says it's something called "post acute withdraw" but I don't know ...Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated...thanks

Is there anything else going on in your life that may be causing the anxiety?

I've always been an anxious person, but speed multiplied it a hundred times over. The root of the anxiety is still there, so I need to find other ways to deal with it (which includes finding out what's behind it!)

Congratulations on escaping the meth prison, by the way. 20 months is superb!

You don't mention how long you used Meth. Congrats on 20 months sober, that is awesome. Your central nervous system was effected by the drug use. You also probably depleted your immune system and didn't take the best care of yourself. Make sure you are eating a really good diet. Try to include lots of fresh fruits and veggies and milk. Take a multi vitamin/mineral supplement. Fit exercise & stretching into your life, there are some good programs that include working out with your baby. Perhaps some herbal tea (Chammomile) would help calm you.

I concur with the post acute withdrawl diagnosis,we all go through it, to what degree varies widely depending upon how much, how often, and how long we used. I attend 3-4 12 step meetings a week and frquent this forum daily to help keep my balance, *and* I'm learning to accept the FACT that I fried myself. We're crawling back from a battle,we have kicked our own butts! and yes, we ARE wounded, and yes we must *accept* the fact. And yes, we do recover, slowly but surely. We get out of our recovery what we put into it. Tell us a little more about what you are/are'nt doing to stay clean.
BTW... Cogratulaions for 20 months METH FREE!!
Oh! and welcome too

You might consider seeing a doctor about this. Perhaps you would be more comfortable in your own skin on an Anti Depressant/or anti-anxiety medication such as Celexa. I know I felt great anxiety after I had been clean a while and it was greatly relieved by a daily perscription. Whatever you do dont self-medicate though.

You could be going thru withdrawls again, ive heard you can still have them 3 years after youve quit. Or maybe your stressed about something?

I used meth for about 4 and a half years, 2 of which were very heavy, daily use. I only smoked it...well not "only"...I mean I never used a needle. I don't really have anymore stress than normal. I am already on Zoloft for depression. I hate Doctors...lol...I hate having to go through all of my history etc. and then they look down their nose at you...Well anyways thank for all of your responses...this is a great forum and I am glad to have found it.

Since Teressa brought up math via her child. Let me do some math for you and show everyone something interesting. It may even answer Teressa's question.

Everything has a half life. What that means is that no matter what it is in a proscribed amount of time 1/2 of that one thing is gone.

Now meth has a 12 hour half life. So when you use you have 100% and 12 hours later 50%. If you use again at the end of that 12 hours you now have a load of 150% half again as much as when you started. This is assuming you use the exact same amount of the exact same potency.

So by this rule you add to the % in your body every time you use. The opposite is when you stop.

From 100% to 50% to 25% in 36 hours. Since rule of thumb tells us that three days it is no longer detectable in urine it is kind of obvious it doesn’t take much to find in the system. But there is still that % there. Even if testing doesn’t find it, it is there.

The laws of increasing and diminishing returns tells us that there should be either more or less of any substance depending on whether more is added or not. Meth like any drug finds places to hide. In tissues and bone. Tissues giving up what has been stored in them allows 100% once again into the system. With drugs it results in a clean high or what might be called in other circles a dry drunk.

I used percentages here because amounts vary from person to person and percentages were the easiest way for me to explain this.

I don’t know the values of 100% for anyone, each of you must do your own math.

This is why some medications are reduced two to three times before a person is taken off them by responsible medical help. Lessening the totals of the percentages for a person until the body can be without the ‘load’, avoiding problems and hopefully extra side effects.

Kind of scary when you think about it. Half of a half of a half...it never really ends. There is always another half to get through.

Yikes...was that encouraging or depressing?! Really though thaks for that... it's nice to know I'm not loosing the few marbles I have left. Do any of you just feel dumber than you were before meth? I do sometimes...

omgsh yes! Its hard to understand what people say in a simple conversation! By the way congardulations on 20 months clean! Nice Work!

There has been occasions in my recovery that I have felt the way you described.

I went out to coffee after a late meeting once. We got carried away talking, and I was driving home as the sun came up. I had been clean around two years. I got paranoid, and felt like I had been on a week spin.

Emotional stuff can cause it too. Especially if I avoid dealing with it. I can get very paranoid. I had a really bad episode at work one day. It felt exactly like meth psychosis. I thought everyone, and everything was out to get me. I had been clean three years.

I was stressed over some emotional stuff I wasnt willing to deal with, and it grew bigger and bigger until I had to deal with it.

When I take care of myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually I feel "normal".

Anyways, I guess I'm trying to say that it does happen. And it goes away.

Your body has been without the drug for awhile and it's craving it bad. The best thing to do is try not to think about it. I made the mistake of fixing my craving and now it's been harder than ever to quit. You've already done a great job of staying clean 20 months. Why go back to that. Your tweaker looks WILL get twice as worse and twice as fast. Also, I have a friend that had a son without knowing she was pregnant and she used it for the first 4 months of her pregnancy and he is three years old now and SMART as hell also. But he also stays up most the night and he needs like 3 hours of sleep a day to feel good.