hi icantsleep
What a stressful life you have! to put it mildly.
this is kind of a choppy reply but I want to get it to you before my sleeping med kicks in
Re drug abuse, maybe it contributed to the circ. rhythm disorder in some small way, but I doubt it had a very significant effect. I know plenty of people who have taken all you did and more for far longer, and didn't end up with any sort of circadian rhythm disorder. So don't guilt yourself on that one.
Re the anxiety, god knows that's hard to deal with. Cannabis will make it worse - better momentarily but overall worse - so that's another reason to be glad you've stopped. My son has similar issues with anxiety and previous drug abuse, but not had the circadian imbalance you suffer from. (He also has mild WED/RLS; and problems with attention and focus.)
I wonder also about the THC causing worsening. There's so much we don't know about the huge variety of chemicals in the different strains. Even with so-called pure THC and THC-CBD extracts I've had mixed results, half the time or less it seems to help and the rest it makes my sleep fractured; and smoking, back when I tried it, sometimes made the WED/RLS itself unbearable. It was enough to make me give up experimenting with it for years.
If you could ditch the THC and re-introduce it later after your symptoms are under control, you could know for sure.
Meanwhile go for the kratom. I've ordered it no prob (I'm in the NWT). Look up how to consume it on this forum - I think the most effective way seems to be mixing it with an acidic juice.
I'm not sure if kratom affects the bowels like other opioids, but to prevent constipation with normal opioids, you have to eat lots of soluble fibre - that means vegetables, stems and leaves
There are about as many opioid receptors in the gut as in the brain, so we shouldn't be surprised when opioids have bizarre effects on our guts. (But numbing of the mid-section sounds kind of scary??)
When did you start poker? After mirapex? You haven't mentioned playing compulsively, so it's probably unrelated, but you should be aware that Mirapex/pramipexole and Requip/ropinirole can cause impulse control disorder, which manifests as uncontrollable behavior of some sort - gambling for some, eating for others, sex or shopping for yet others. The behavior disappears when the medication is discontinued.
Your post might have been long but it was easy to read. Paragraph breaks are good!
I didn't mean to sound like I was turning you off of getting your iron bloodwork done - do get it done if you haven't. Unless you're in danger of iron overload (your doctor should be able to confirm that you're not) then you can take oral iron supplements without endangering yourself, and it might help. Worse RLS/WED is associated with low iron; in fact, the disease can be called a deficiency of iron in the brain. Some people (those who haven't taken DAs, mostly) can relieve their symptoms entirely just by taking oral iron. It's not to be sneezed at. But take it with vitamin C and eat veggies! cuz it can bung you up too.
And as fuz_mind says, IV iron can be a better choice.
re travel to the US, you're right not to want to take the chance. If you ever traveled to the US when you had a criminal conviction, they'll still have a record of that conviction, even if you later received a pardon and had your record erased in Canada. If, on the other hand, you had never traveled to the US before getting a pardon, they would never be able to find out about the conviction.
You might have a hard time finding a doctor in Canada to prescribe IV iron unless your ferritin is below 100 and your transferrin sat below 45% - - we can give you resources that will help to convince a doctor to prescribe it if you meet those parameters. There are more progressive doctors who prescribe IV iron for WED/RLS with ferritin up to 300, but I was unable to find one in western Canada. But step 1 is to get a full iron workup including ferritin (have to ask for ferritin cuz it's not included in the normal iron workup). More about iron in the link under my signature - links to useful papers and resources.
I agree with the others - you should begin to hunt for a doctor (1) who has successfully treated many cases of augmented WED/RLS and (2) who can communicate properly with you -who hears and considers what you say. They exist! There's actually lots of good docs out there, so if you can get a good one who doesn't yet know anything about WED/RLS, go for it, and train him/her. If they're willing to learn, to spend a bit of time upgrading their knowledge,then they're worth way more than a so-called specialist who's tired of searching for more information.