+2
However at least I’m becoming a more attractive proposition now, much better than being a hopeless junkie.
Regarding OP….absolutely I feel you. There was a six month period towards the end of my using where I didn’t speak to another human being other than occasionally arguing with a psychiatrist or buying something in a shop. I got clean and that changed pretty quickly though, my suggestion is go to places where there are other people that are/were in the same position as you and are clean or trying to get clean.
Absolutely - looking healthier is something I'm really looking forward to.
As regards socially withdrawing during use, that wasn't so much the case with me during this (or my last, I should say) relapse due to working, however during my presently ongoing detox I haven't been able to interact with people on any kind of social level at all (which is to be expected). Indeed, this does change
dramatically around the 10-12 day mark when I get the 'pink-cloud' effect which in comparison to how I am during the misery and stress of active-addiction feels like a manic episode but without any delusions or difficulty sleeping. My brain had been starved of natural-sleep and endorphins for so long that I was just so happy at the sudden return of each along with not waking up in withdrawals.
I recall telling a former psychiatrist this before and they wanted to put me on something to "level out my mood", a suggestion I quickly shut down as I then didn't and still don't want to be depending on anything at all. Besides, the very reason I dared try smoking heroin that first time was because none of the anti-depressant nor anti-anxiety medications she had prescribed had ever worked for me - apart from some nasty side effects. I eventually received a diagnosis of treatment-resistant depression/anxiety and after giving Lithium treatment (their last option for me) a decent go for a while only for that not to work either (and my expectations weren't lofty by any standard - I just wanted to feel 'normal' and able to function/study/work like all (or most) of the other people around me).
After being more or less told they didn't have any new options for me (save trying even more combinations of medications I'd previously been on) I came off the Lithium and for about 6 months I was hoping I'd wake up and things would begin to get easier but of course they didn't. My best friend at the time had let it be known to me that he had been shooting heroin for the last three years and I knew I didnt want to go down that road or it could very well be the end of the road so to speak. All I was using at that time would have been a few benzos here and there (which I didnt have a solid plug for) and the 30mg codeine tablets I had been buying from his brother for my back pain. It was when he stopped taking them, thus my supply running out that said friend told me that the only other thing apart from more codeine that would help with the pain (and as he added, the incredible depression that had made me a recluse) was heroin. I thought he was suggesting I shoot up but after he said I could smoke it instead, then watching him smoke it on front of me that he let me smoke a couple of lines from his own stash that my path into it began. I'm grateful I never got into shooting up every time and stuck to smoking it though.
Definitely went off on a tangent there so apologies for that if you read the above and were looking for something else; I just let that flow out of me, typing to eyes that may read seems productive to me and seeing as though I have another 14 days before I begin my new job, there'll no doubt be much more of that (the typing/posts/threads - not the tangents) when the energy allows.
