7 Years 89 days - A Horrible Night

7 Years 89 days - A Horrible Night

What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol and then get tangled up with painkillers? This short episode drops you straight into David Boyle’s first night coming off oxycodone, and it’s anything but pretty. You’ll hear him describe a “horrible” withdrawal night where his body feels overloaded with restless energy, like it’s stuck under his skin.

He can’t sit still for more than 35 seconds, his mind is bouncing around, and even simple things like reading a book become almost impossible – several days of effort only move him from page 80 to 99. Boyle talks through his attempts to cope: breathing techniques, meditation, light on, light off, showers, even thinking about going for a walk in the middle of the night. None of it works.

At 2:30am he hits the wall and faces a tough choice. He rules out smoking weed because of a lung injury, refuses to go back to oxy “110%”, and eventually compromises by taking two paracetamol, hoping to knock the pain down from a 10 to a 9 just long enough to get some rest.

He’s brutally honest about the fear of “being in the cycle again” and how close he feels to cracking with a full blister pack of oxys sitting next to him.

There’s dark humour and sharp awareness as he imagines elderly patients unknowingly going through similar withdrawals, saying, “this is dangerous shit, this is real fucking dangerous shit.” For anyone in recovery who’s ever swapped one substance for another, this episode offers a raw look at pain management, temptation, and the messy reality of staying sober while injured.

It’s short, intense, and straight from someone who’s committed to telling the daily truth, even when that truth is squirming on the bed at 2:30am, desperate for relief. If you’ve ever wondered how fragile sobriety can feel when pain and pills enter the picture, this one might hit uncomfortably close to home.