prettyliljunkie
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2019
- Messages
- 8
I'm curious as what you guys think. What are the main difference between the two? IS there a difference? Just want to hear thoughts and opinions.
the problem with being a high functioning addict is that there is nothing to stop you or make you want to end your addiction because your life isn't fucked up and you have money to use a lot. So you keep using until your organs are whats fucked or you overdose and die.
the people that get arrested, lose jobs etc, they usually can use those reasons to get over their addiction rather than bodily damage that hasn't come yet for them.
I have to agree to a point here. If you are educated and hold a good paying job and are able to hold the job while using uppers/downers and still reach ends meet and still have some form of control i see you as a functional addict but believe me when i say it wont be like that forever. Eventionally your habit/addiction will take over and you will stand a chance to lose everything whether you were a highly functionally addict or not. It will catch up to you..Yes exactly. Many alcoholics are professionals at hiding the addiction until one day it explodes in their face. You do a poor job at containing the smell or just dose incorrectly because it's hard to moderate the exact use of a liquid.
If you're an addict dependent on substances for beneficial purposes and not purely recreational the amount of stress even that causes is quite unbearable. You're always on alert paranoid wondering if someone sensed something or knows you're on something and that just can't be good for your mental health long term. I suppose if you're a legal addict with prescriptions and don't have to worry about legal repercussions it mitigates the stress factor, but even then I'm sure people have been fired or just not hired in general for something their legally obligated to list/take on a regular basis. I know that suboxone requires you to list it on your job application (I think?), and that can be a red flag for corporations looking to fill positions who know what that is.
I could be wrong, but in the US I think that rehabilitation centers stay on your record? Correct me if I'm wrong. But that just seems counterproductive because then people who actually want to obtain their lives back through legitimate professional help avoid doing so to avoid judgement or make them less marketable. I really hate how my country treats/views addicts, when acknowledging that there is an opiate epedemic and only hurting the issue more and more.
I think all functional addicts have lived most of their lives drop dead sober and probably are well-educated. You have to know what a normal functional human being is before mimmicking one. Even then it seems like most functional addicts are an anomoly and lose control at one point or another, or exposed. One time I had to take a randomized blood test (wasn't even for a job) and they found something supicious in my system lol. Luckily they just let me redo it later but it scared the hell out of me. I'm lucky my doctor is an addict himself or else that could've gone very badly for me.
The substance of choice matters. There is no better liar and manipulator than a junkie. Avoiding withdrawals is literally life and death for anyone on high dose opiates, and most of them would do anything to avoid others "helping" them or promoting them to stop their habits. Even the harmless ones who do not steal from their friends and loved ones and the ones best at hiding their usage inevitably have to lie at one point or another.
Tolerance is the enemy of addiction lol.I have to agree to a point here. If you are educated and hold a good paying job and are able to hold the job while using uppers/downers and still reach ends meet and still have some form of control i see you as a functional addict but believe me when i say it wont be like that forever. Eventionally your habit/addiction will take over and you will stand a chance to lose everything whether you were a highly functionally addict or not. It will catch up to you..
Anyhow best of luck to OP
The other day I stupidly took too much of my cup of tea and was nodding out on the verge of not being able to keep my eyes open at a... funeral. Incredibly shameless lol.
Please don't be too hard on yourself. A very, very close friend - my brother of sorts as I don't have one - died very unexpectedly of a fentanyl overdose thirteen days prior to his planned wedding.
He was extremely popular, the kid who wasn't "cool" at school or college but was very down with the jam band touring crews, always had the best L. That was his crowd. Our crowd.
There must have been about 12 - 14 of us at his funeral, all from out of state and all who knew each other from touring with bands, but we were all genuine friends drugs present or not. We love each other like family. We really do (did) - it's all fallen apart since his death.
We were fucked beyond reason at his funeral, his fiancee ensured there was more than enough coke at the wake and a few friends and I polished off a handle of Jack Daniels we started early that AM in the parking lot of the viewing home (funeral home). Nobody else was much better off.
We were shitfaced and it was a disgrace, but one thing that we all felt - our buddy would have been just as fucked up if one of us had passed and we all knew if it were any of us, he'd have been there.
Don't beat yourself up over it please, many (most) people at these things are fucked up emotionally and some are on drugs - so it really doesn't matter unless it interfered with the service or obscures your memory of it. In those case, I empathise with the pain and embarrassment you feel - I do in any regards - and all we can do is hold onto the memories, photos and such and forgve ourselves for what we cannot change - the past.
Best wishes - that sentence really stood out to me. Sorry to be off topic but I felt that this poster's statement deserved a thorough response.
Isn't it the same as comparing high fuctional vs low functioning individual's. And then add in a handicap, like drug addiction. Just an observation.I'm curious as what you guys think. What are the main difference between the two? IS there a difference? Just want to hear thoughts and opinions.
Most of us dance on the line of the two pretty much permanently in my experience.
Swinging from keeping it together to losing our shit intermittently.
Of course there are those who have lost it entirely and are a slave to their drug but there’s just as many of us hanging on to ‘normalcy’ for dear life.
The biggest difference to me between the two is, do you spend MOST of your day trying to figure out where to get your next high or are you in a position that means you can still live the rest of life along with the square bears?