What Can I Use Instead of Shocks?

Do not flip the whole leaf pack upside down. Just remove the center leafs out of the pack and use a shorter block

Yes... Make sure you put the short overload spring back in... We mono leafed my truck this weekend and just left the one main spring to see what happened.... Horrible idea, my back still hurts from bouncing around from the axle slamming into the frame... Fixed that real quick and rides awesome now. With 3 inch blocks, mono leafed correctly, bump stops removed I've got plenty of clearance from the shock mount to the ground... But I'm also running 17s