My name is Tobias. I have been with Workit Health for about 8 months now, and loving it loving every second of it.
What’s your origin story? How did your substance use start?
When I was 14 years old, I fell out of a swing. It was a 10- to 12-foot drop. I landed on my head and shattered four vertebrae in my neck and back.
Just imagine what would happen if you gave a 14-year-old two bottles of OxyContin a month. Before I even knew what was happening—my adolescent brain and frontal lobe were still developing—I was already addicted.
I struggled with opioid painkillers for years. I was finally able to get off the pills, but my addiction just transferred to alcohol the second I turned 21. That went on for about 10 years. It ruined multiple relationships and made my life a living hell.
And then you tried kratom?
When I finally got on antidepressants and off the alcohol, I was still dealing with constant physical pain. I started using kratom. Quite frankly, powdered kratom in and of itself worked really well for me. I suspect that if I had just stuck with the kratom, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I can’t go back to it at this point.
So kratom was helping, but I got sick of having to carry it around all the time and constantly mix it up with yogurt. Someone suggested maybe I should try 7-OH, because it’s a pill so I wouldn’t need to mix it up. I said, “Oh yeah, that’s great.” I tried 7-OH, and the rest is history.
How was 7-OH different from kratom?
The biggest issue with 7-OH is that a lot of people don’t realize that it is an opioid. It might not be made from a poppy plant, and it might not be natural. But it attaches to the same receptors in your brain as an opioid. It does the exact same thing. You get the exact same withdrawals, the exact same high from it, the exact same physiological properties with it, the exact same constipation, the exact same nausea. And you get the exact same devastating results as you do with heroin, fentanyl, and pain pills. It ruins lives in exactly the same way.
To me, it kind of feels like synthesized legal heroin. The stuff is strong.
I was taking 7-OH daily just like I had been taking the kratom. Obviously, it got rid of my pain, but I found that it went from taking it a couple of times a day to waking up in the middle of the night with my body telling me something was missing. I had to take it again to go back to sleep. That’s about the point that I realized that I was physically addicted to the stuff.
I started feeling trapped. And then I was even more scared. ‘What if they ban 7-OH and then I can’t get it anymore? I’m going to go through absolute hell for a month. I’ll probably lose my job and be hospitalized.’ That was a rough point in time.
My wife was very supportive and did her best to help, but she’s never been through something like that, thank God. I’m happy to say that she doesn’t understand.
How did you find Workit?
I realized that I needed some external help. It got really intense, really fast. I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do.
I was talking to people and asking, “How do I get off of this crap?” Even the people at the store that I was buying it from said, “Yeah, we’ve had several people going to programs for this.” Of course, they don’t tell you that when you first buy it.
I was also looking up stuff online. ‘How to get off of 7-OH.’ The Workit Health online ad campaigns obviously work, because they found me.
When I first reached out to Workit Health, I really didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never been in a recovery program of any sort. I’ve always just kind of white-knuckled through it when I struggled with different substances. But in this particular case, I knew that I needed help.
What do you like about Workit Health?
I think I had an appointment maybe the next day. I sat down with a doctor, and we went over what was happening. She asked some questions about my usage and how things were going in my life and all that. It was very care-oriented. It wasn’t clinical. There was no judgment of any sort. And you could tell that everything about it was genuine, and it was a program that was built around people like me.
They got me set up with some medication. There was a whole program to show you how to use the medication. It was really easy and straightforward. It didn’t leave anything to the imagination. All my questions were answered before I even took the first dose. The first couple days were rough on the medication, but once it leveled out, I realized that I’d made the right choice.
What I really love about the program is the fact that it’s all online. I don’t have to go anywhere and submit a drug test every month. I don’t have to go sit in the lobby and take time out of my day. It’s really easy. I can do it all on my own time. I work nights, so I can just submit a drug test at 3:00 a.m. if I want to. It’s not a big deal. There could not be an easier way to do this.
It’s just an app on my phone. And I know that there’s always help in that app if I ever need it.
They also have a community forum that is full of other people just like me. Not clinicians, not doctors, not other people who don’t know how this works or what you’re going through. There are people in that forum that you can actually talk to as equals, as peers. And that’s really nice.
Workit Health is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I love this place. I feel like my care team are not just doctors or nurses or nurse practitioners or counselors. I feel like some of these people are my friends. Like if I were to get off the Suboxone entirely tomorrow, I genuinely feel like I could reach out and become lifelong friends with some of the people involved in this program.
Tell me about your life now? How’s it going?
I just got married 2 months ago. All the people on my care team at Workit actually begged me for the link to the wedding live stream. They were all excited about that. We got married in a neo-Gothic cathedral about four blocks from here. It’s a great little place. Had a great honeymoon and all that. I’m about to change my last name. I’ve got a new family. Everything’s going great.
I’m a postal worker. I work on the machines that sort your mail. I’m just a regular, average, everyday person. I’ve got a decent career going on.
I’m working on becoming a PLC controls engineer to work on big machinery and plants. I want to work for someone like Google. You never know! I spent 15 years in IT.
What do you want to tell others?
A lot of people—when they think of the word addict—picture that guy on the street corner that’s missing half of his teeth. But that’s just one example of many. Sometimes the addict is the person who’s serving you your burger at McDonald’s that looks like your average everyday person. Addiction doesn’t have a single face. It hides insidiously around every corner and every person. Everyone has that potential.
That’s what a lot of people don’t realize: you can become an addict. Anyone can be. It’s not a disease that you can catch. It’s something that happens little by little, slip by slip. Most of the time you don’t realize that it’s happened until you’re deep in the trenches.
I’m here to tell you that there is light on the other side of it. You don’t have to stay stuck in that. I was scared and lonely and didn’t really know what to do, but I got help.
