Wishful singing - a confession

Hi! I'm Johanna, and I used to be addicted to painkillers.

Yes, you've heard me right. OK, not in extremes, but I was. Although, I cannot really decide if I took painkillers for their effect only, or because of willing to be able to rehearse through 4-6 hours with a sore throat. Or was it because of me willing to get rid of the pain of solitude, the bad feeling about listening to being constantly told I'm not good enough, and the pulsing pain of earlier wounds on my heart and soul? I wouldn't be able to tell anymore. Maybe all of them at the same time. Let's say, my desperation to fulfil all expectations and criteria made me choose for painkillers, but it doesn't make it look better...

Even funnier that regardless the fact that I was a youth-helper in a drug prevention programme back in grammar school, later taking occasionally painkillers developed into a tool for being able to rehearse.

Fortunately, I realised it right on time, and that time was when about 3 or 4 years ago I bought a package of paracetamol (20 pills) on a Tuesday and by Friday the package was empty. I was shocked. I knew myself as someone who's hardly get addicted to anyone and to anything. I knew it's not OK, so instead of taking pills, I switched to natural painkillers (thinking, natural stuff wouldn't do much damage... oh, the irony...) and propolis tincture worked out the best. The only problem with both that they are not advised to use them on long term. So later I had to get rid of using propolis too, which was even worse than paracetamol, because it's not only an antiseptic, but also a natural antibiotics. Now, you have to know that if you take any kind of antibiotics, you also have to do a probiotics cure, because antibiotics doesn't really care what kind of bacteria they kill. Just so you know: you have good bacteria in your digestive system. I think you can puzzle the rest together yourself...
Since the presence of these good bacteria in your digestive system is also responsible for a good immune system and prevents allergic reactions, as a result of my too-long propolis cure, my old egg and milk intolerance came back, and I cannot keep my weight. Sounds splendid, right?

Another thing that made me seriously wonder about this happened to me last week when in the middle of our rehearsal with Scherzi Musici I felt I am getting a sore throat (and my immediate reaction was to look for painkiller - what a bad old habit). After the rehearsal I had headache and felt exhausted. I knew these are the signs of getting sick, so I excused myself from the rehearsal in the evening with my church choir, got some stuff against flu (paracetamol, Vitamine C) from the drugstore and went to bed early, and stayed there for 3 days.  Until last week I only took paracetamol or any kind of painkiller if my period got really bad (I have a special pill for that prescribed by my gynaecologist) , but for other kind of pain I decided to rather deal with it somehow without any medicine, so let's say I was clean. As I was using these medicines I felt that my senses are numb and I cannot concentrate (it was also probably because of the light flu or cold).
I couldn't help but wonder: did paracetamol had this exact same effect back then? I mean, it would make sense, because during the 6 years of conservatory, as I look back now, certain periods are rather blurred together. OK, it was also a very intense period of my life, but still.

How did I quit my (light) addiction? The slight presence of a certain person helped me realise and quit. This certain person didn't know about my addiction, neither did anything directly to help, but that slight presence was a great help to overcome, and for that I will be grateful forever. I just realized much later that this person was also just a substitute for a painkiller, so I had to recover from that addiction as well. I feel myself lucky and I am grateful for being able to do so.