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Discussion

Substances to avoid

God willing, any day or week now I will be granted the gift of TPAPN...I say gift because at the core of the program ( specifically: Eval, treatment, meetings, sponsor, objective and random drug testing) are supportive of a strong recovery program and after successfully completing TPAPN my license will remain intact and unblemished. If the BON chooses to show me justice and NOT mercy, I will be professionally screwed, so yes, I am actually slightly excited about TPAPN, lol

I have spent all of my life never giving any thought to cooking or eating delicious food with white wine or vanilla extract and hydrating myself with 8-10 glasses of water a day. I use hand sanitizer (almost) enough to please any infection control nurse. When I have a cold/flu from hell or allergies, I take NyQuil or Benadryl. I use the hair products that I love, including mouse and hairspray.

......you guys get the point, right?

I feel more anxious over being paranoid about secret ingredients/interactions/false positives than I do staying clean and sober. I have taken pre-employment, routine and for cause drug/etoh tests (urine and blood) and never once had a false positive. Apparently they use some ultra sensitive Ets/etg test that has been documented to be "overly sensitive and nonspecific". What the heck?? That is the science they are using?

I understand that they list these things (and many more) because they don't want someone who did indeed drink and blame it on excessive hairspray and hand sanitizer, so they make broad recommendations.

Have you guys in recovery monitoring been forced to change or second guess what was previously never given a second thought? I am anxious, frustrated and confused. Any insight would be super appreciated , thanks!!!

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I have said it before and will again the so her goes. The thing that scares me the most out of the entire monitoring program is FALSE POSITIVES! N/A or A/A meetings, IOP, aftercare, Nurse support meetings are all somewhat verifiable. The one thing that is not is that dreaded false positives. I have read too many threads on here in regards to them. Once you get that positive notification there is no way to prove its "false". You are now guilty and punishment rains down. I often wonder why they don't look into this phenomenon further. It obviously happens. Even my CM made comments directed at false positives. They even tell you what to do or not do to avoid them. They know they exist yet when they do there is no way to prove its false or not and its a battle I have never seen go the way for the nurse. Why doesn't someone develop better testing. We have essentially used the same testing for decades with limited improvement. It's sad that people lives, careers and reputation can be ruined with a simple cup of urine after using too much hand sanitizer that week.

Re: false positives .... so , your saying if someone in the program pops positive for something, and you savyouvdid not ingest it.... that they do NOT follow up with a BLOOD TEST??!!!! omg... if so , this is INSANE!! I have a friend who is a hematologist , so he knows quite a bit about this, and of course he knows quite a bit about lab testing ... and he confirmed that FFALSE POSITVES are common and happen all the time!! With something so important at stake, they don't follow up with a blood test??

How long have you been in TNPAP? I am new to it and just had my eval done and he says most likely I'll need "inpatient" which is not feesable or possible for me because I have no job and no insurance. How did you do it?

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Thank you for replying. I don't think it's a substance that will be tested for; however, I'm quite worried. I wish I could just quit it, but its been so helpful in keeping me from even letting an opiate craving thought into my mind.

You need a proper detox - trading one substance for another is not a solution You can be fully detoxed in about a week - it's miserable - but can be done. I might add this should be a medically supervised detox.

Hppy

I am having a HUGE issue with this. MY DOC was not alcohol, as I rarely drink. 1 maybe twice a year? This Christmas I would like to have 1 glass of wine. Why is that so bad. Has anyone done this...?

I am having a HUGE issue with this. MY DOC was not alcohol, as I rarely drink. 1 maybe twice a year? This Christmas I would like to have 1 glass of wine. Why is that so bad. Has anyone done this...?

Yeah I'd like to have a drink at Christmas, but not enough to get kicked out of monitoring and lose my job! I would've liked to have a glass of champagne at the wedding I attended, oh well. Egg nog is nice, but not for me, at least not this year. I can tell you that for the two years I've been in the program, I am tested frequently on the first business day or occasionally the second day after a holiday. I guess they expect people to screw up and celebrate the holiday with a glass of wine or whatever and they want to catch us at it. Usually it's the smaller holidays like Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, Fourth of July etc though. I was tested once on January 3, but for both Christmases I was not tested for like a week or two afterwards. I really think they want us to be ready to test while we are out of town but in fact it rarely happens. And they probably assume a lot of us go out of town for Christmas, so we probably won't be tested on the day or two right after, since we'd probably still be traveling. They tell us to prepare for it but in practice I don't think it happens a lot. However, it's not worth it to me to risk it just for a glass of wine! I'm not going to end up getting another year or three added to my sentence because I played the odds for a drink. I'll wait thank you. 267 more days :)

YEP!!! They have ETG and PeTh tests that can detect drinking alcohol for days to weeks. We are subject to these tests and if you fail one in my state you literally start the program all over again. Not only do you have years added to your sentence in Nazi monitoring land but you will probably not be allowed to work. I enjoy alcohol but not nearly that much. It's a no-brainer for me. I agreed to a horrible contract with the only alternative being losing my livelihood so I'm damn sure gonna live up to it. For me that's not the scary part of testing. I worry about unwittingly ingesting something that will make me test positive. Poppy Seeds, Antihistamines, Ingredients in foods that may cause a false positive.... I don't really know what the "secret ingredients" that are in McDonalds special sauce or if sugar alcohol is in that candy bar I'm eating that may cause a false positive. When you get a false positive you are presumed guilty so you may be punished when you didn't even try to get high or drunk. It's anxiety provoking and depressing and it goes on for years. This program is simply horrible and does not really reflect efforts at recovery. Its about control and punishment

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Wow. Prilosec and Ibuprofen are new ones on me. Thank you for posting. I take Naprosyn and so far haven't had any issues.

Never heard about Prilosec either. I have GERD and took it daily the whole time I was in monitoring.

Hell I take ibuprofen. Yet another innocent thing to worry about

why can't we take ibuprofen??

apparently high doses cause false positives for THC. I haven't smoked weed since bell bottoms were still in. didn't like it. it would be something to pop positive for that

In our "participant guide" we are referred to the "Talbot Recovery" whatever thing they put out as to what is/is not safe. Motrin is on there under "class C, generally safe to take." If they want a notification every time I take a couple of Motrin, they are gonna hear from me a lot. That's my go to for everything ouchy from a garden variety headache to post 6 mile hike.

Yeah. Advil, Bagels, who knows what??? I'm afraid of all this stuff. I do wonder how many "false positives" are false though. We have a new member in our group who did the whole false positive protest & then she finally fessed up. I doesn't really matter so much if its a false positive it seems like they treat it the same as if you actually used. This is a paranoid, sick existence

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