Recovery Getting Clean - Recovery

[Jabberwocky]

Some meetings can be very cliquish. If you live in a populated area and have a lot of options, check out the others. And as CJ once said, don't listen to the haters. ORT saves lives. Conventional wisdom says I shouldn't be on benzos, but if I wasn't I'd probably drink myself to death.

You can absolutely just go and listen. It is good to show up a bit early and stay a bit afterward. If you are like me it won't be comfortable being around people you don't know. Showing up early and helping to set up the room and staying after to talk to the people who are congregating after the meeting will help to let people get to know you.

Where heroin never judges, people will. You don't need to let everyone know that you are on a maintenance medication. Only be an open book about that if you have a very thick skin. Addicts are notoriously thin skinned. There will be some who are definitely judgmental about that. After you have been around for a little bit of time you will be able to open up to a few people about that. And if you stick around long enough you will look back and laugh at your early recovery and the time you were on maintenance. Your brain is going to look for any reason to separate you. I sponsor a few people who were on maintenance for various lengths of time prior to becoming totally abstinent. You will find people like me who won't blast you out and make you feel bad. Maintenance or abstinent you don't have to do any of it alone.

Something I did every single meeting I went to early on was sat on one of the readings. It forced me to open my mouth and the little adrenaline rush I got was able to carry me through some of the uncomfortability that came with being new and still feeling withdrawal symptoms. Find someone you identify with that you hear share a few times and ask them to sponsor you. You can always change sponsors if you feel the relationship isn't working out. You will see the people who are capable sponsors. They will generally have many people approach them after the meeting. Even if they say "no" just move on to the next. Rejection sucks, but every interaction you have clean will be a learning experience. 8/31/2012 is my clean date. I experience something every single day that I have never experienced clean. It is an amazing life!

The advice from jd and aihfl here is really spot on.

Its 6.30am and I am just home from seeing my dealer for 2 bags of Heroin, I can't sleep because my body won't stop moving it like restless leg syndrome but its not just in my legs it is running up my back and in my arms, when I don't sleep my mental health deteriorates and my depression has been too much I just want to smoke this and get some sleep.

How much damage have I done, how far will i have set myself back?

I am not planning on doing this daily again just need some sleep but who am I kidding this is how a habit starts pretty disappointing

If you’re struggling not using heroin, as it seem you are if you ended up acting upon the cravings and still early in the process.

It really sounds like you’d benefit from buprenorphine at this point. Even if you don’t want to use it long term, using it for a week or two to get beyond the acute withdrawal from heroin is a really, really good idea.

The time you already got away from heroin doesn’t disappear just because you lapsed. Worst case scenario you’re prolonging the withdrawal process a bit, but it shouldn’t set you back very far.

It is however indicative you would benefit from buprenorphine. I hear you on your fears of using this kind of med. Would you share more about your concerns using buprenorphine to achieve abstinence from heroin?

If your concern is limited to the difficult time you had coming off buprenorphine, try not to let that hold you back. There are effective ways of coming off buprenorphine that would avoid the kind of discomfort you experienced before.

And there is literally no downside to using buprenorphine for a week or two to get over the acute withdrawal.

Buprenorphine as maintenance is a long term and significant commitment, but no matter how challenging coming off may have been the time you spend on buprenorphine provides you with major resources in terms of stabilizing post heroin and gives you more of a chance to build up your support system before you do.

Again, at the very least I highly recommending buprenorphine for the acute withdrawal. And if you absolutely don’t want to do that (which is okay, because it needs to be your call), there are other comfort meds like gabapentin and clonidine that will make coming off heroin a lot more manageable.

And about meetings, there isn’t really much downside to trying 12 step stuff if you believe it’ll be helpful. If you discover it isn’t that helpful for you, there are still lots of other options when it comes to peer support communities.

 

[freesolo123]

OK I relapsed after 6 days, the Physical withdrawal is not a problem for me its the mental side that kicks my ass, after 6 days with no good sleep and with a full depression I smoked Heroin and slept for 20 hours. I am lucky that I only smoke and don't inject because I OD'd as close as you can when smoking I was puking up nothing and sweating like crazy, i didn't think my tolerance would have dropped so much but it had.

I spoke to my drug worker and he is going to get me back in with the doctor asap and I will take the Suboxone this time and get myself into a better place mentally by going to groups and filling my day with things that will be there when I come off suboxone.

 

[aihfl]

Smoking heroin is dangerous in other ways compared to injecting it. You're also inhaling the chemicals off whatever surface you're smoking it off of. There's an increased risk of respiratory disorders like pneumonia, fluid buildup in the lungs, lung collapse etc. I would consider the insomnia a physical symptom, but you've got to see a doc and get some comfort meds so you can power through the WD.

 

[freesolo123]

Smoking heroin is dangerous in other ways compared to injecting it. You're also inhaling the chemicals off whatever surface you're smoking it off of. There's an increased risk of respiratory disorders like pneumonia, fluid buildup in the lungs, lung collapse etc. I would consider the insomnia a physical symptom, but you've got to see a doc and get some comfort meds so you can power through the WD.

Thanks for the concern I use a special foil for smoking it which is thicker and built for the sole purpose of smoking drugs not sure where it comes from but the drug clinic give it out. Comfort meds are great but I need stop the cravings and the depression which in the past Buprenorphine has done.

Heroin is such a weird drug you think you have it under control and it rears its head and wrecks your plans.

 

[freesolo123]

I have a Suboxone script starting on Monday that I am 100% going to use I will also update on here with my progress.

 

[freesolo123]

Started Suboxone on Tuesday at 8mg and today we pushed it to 12mg and we will hold there for a month, I got the 8mg yesterday to take home and waited 26 hours until I took it felt ok but was not quite enough I was still having hot flashes and the sweat was beading off me found it hard to sleep, took the 12mg supervised today and felt better almost immediately the doctor say we can go as high as 16mg but I think I'm going to be OK.

Will get settled on this then I am going to have to apply myself and start to go to groups like AA/NA the last time I was on Sub's all i did was stay at home and it showed when it was time to come off I had nothing in place to keep me clean and fell back to my old ways when things got tough.