suessmayr
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2008
- Messages
- 1,067
I'm not talking about what happens when a person is under the immediate influence of an opioid drug or in acute withdrawal. Obviously in the former case he would feel anything but weak. What I'm talking about is people who are daily users or who were daily users but got clean (I belong to the latter group).
I find, since getting clean, that I'm just generally weak, soft and pathetic. It's like my energy and willingness to engage is just gone. This manifests in obvious ways like, say, being seriously indisposed to physical exertion, or unable to handle large amounts of stress. But it affects me in virtually everything I do - I often cannot bear to wash my hands under cold water, I dislike showering because the getting in/getting out makes me really cold and uncomfortable, I'm bad at keeping my room clean and at doing things which simply must be done (like administrative shit: phone calls, university enrolments, etc.). It always just feels too hard. It's like being massively and constantly a pussy, like my ability to deal with the things that arise in ordinary life has just evaporated.
My doctor once told me about studies that had been conducted involving opiate-addicted patients. It was found, he said, that their 'pain-threshhold' was significantly lower than that of ordinary people. This seemed bizarre to me at the time but now I totally get it. I think that a person who spends a large amount of time using and thinking in terms of opiates - drugs which are really about immediate and controlled pleasure - somewhere loses his ability to deal with stress and discomfort. Not in any physiological way but more pervasively, or psychologically. I dunno. Tbh I'm a bit wasted but I hope you guys get the gist.
I find, since getting clean, that I'm just generally weak, soft and pathetic. It's like my energy and willingness to engage is just gone. This manifests in obvious ways like, say, being seriously indisposed to physical exertion, or unable to handle large amounts of stress. But it affects me in virtually everything I do - I often cannot bear to wash my hands under cold water, I dislike showering because the getting in/getting out makes me really cold and uncomfortable, I'm bad at keeping my room clean and at doing things which simply must be done (like administrative shit: phone calls, university enrolments, etc.). It always just feels too hard. It's like being massively and constantly a pussy, like my ability to deal with the things that arise in ordinary life has just evaporated.
My doctor once told me about studies that had been conducted involving opiate-addicted patients. It was found, he said, that their 'pain-threshhold' was significantly lower than that of ordinary people. This seemed bizarre to me at the time but now I totally get it. I think that a person who spends a large amount of time using and thinking in terms of opiates - drugs which are really about immediate and controlled pleasure - somewhere loses his ability to deal with stress and discomfort. Not in any physiological way but more pervasively, or psychologically. I dunno. Tbh I'm a bit wasted but I hope you guys get the gist.