Heroin has anyone here actually kicked Heroin forever?

[Benway189]

Good Morning Friends:

For a detailed thread of my 3 year herion usage & suboxone usage; please refer to this thread:

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/archive/index.php/t-546356.html?


Now, I'm using that thread to document my progress, etc in all my withdrawl processes.

I have started this new thread to see if anyone here has successfully kicked Heroin for good. I was using heroin for about 3 years;
and did 3 cold turkey withdrawls from that; always relapsing after right about the time I was back to normal. Finally, i got on suboxone for the past 5 months, and am going cold turkey from that right now.

About my usage of heroin....first year; ehhhh, i could make a G last a week......naturally, it escalated from there. I had a non-shady hook up & could score at any given time......before I knew it, i was buying 500 to 1000$ at a time by year 3. for real, no fronting. I even took a crazy loan on my 401k to score an insane amount of H. (yeh, totally retarded).

My first H withdrawl only lasted like 5 days and I felt good just edgy......still was pure hell, but it didn't last long. My second withdrawl (after a 2 year stint on h) lasted well into 60+ days and I still had RLS; I relapsed at 90 days approximately.

Anyways, now I'm going cold turkey from suboxone, I jumped from 4mg.....I know, too high dose, oh well, whats done is done. I was sooooooooo sick of the bupe, the box, sick of having no sex drive; sick of being irritable all the time.....Sick of being in the fog.........at least on Heroin, I felt more normal than on suboxone.

My question is: Has anyone here actually kicked heroin for good? or have you kicked suboxone for good? How long have you been clean........There's thousands of posts here detailing withdrawl, but nobody really ever comes back and says "yo, im like x many years clean, der der der der der".

Sometimes I wonder If after 3 or so years of heavy heroin abuse; have I just totally ruined by body for ever? will I have to just stay on suboxone forever? I tell myself no; but I always keep wondering.

Can anyone more than 1 or 2 years totally clean share their experience with me?

peace and blessings;

Benway189

 

[sonofasailor]

no. doesn't happen.

 

[freddy47]

^^^^ It is possible dude just really, really hard.

Hey Ben I haven't been clean for a year yet but I am now at the 5 months mark. I decided against subs and only took xanax and vicodins. But most of the time I just toughed it out. I had been shooting heroin and fentanyl for almost 2 years before I decided to quit. Well like I said its been 5 months now and I'm still going strong. I still get cravings but when that happens I just drink some scotch or smoke some weed. It helps a lot.

Anyway I don't think 3 years of heroin abuse will damage your body permanently. There have been people doing heroin a lot longer and have had long even productive lives. William S. Burroughs comes to mind. He was a great writer of the Beat generation who spent the large majority of his life as a heroin addict and he lived till he was 83. And when I say the majority of his life I mean just that, probably around 70 to 80 percent of his life he was a heroin addict.

Not that I'm saying you shouldn't quit. I'm just saying its possible to live a normal life with a heroin addiction.

 

[D-ampDaily]

^^^ That is one thing I do like about the opiates... is that it is very possible and easy to live a normal every day life with an addiction to them... I am now in MMT and therefore I take opiates daily and live a particular normal life in that aspect. But any opiate, Heroin, hydrocodone, fentanyl, etc... anything. you can take any of those on a daily basis and live a normal life without damaging your body long term due to the chemical itself... APAP or something would but that does not count.

I am not clean parse, I have been off of heroin for two months now but take methadone daily at the clinic.

 

[Benway189]

^^^^ It is possible dude just really, really hard.

Hey Ben I haven't been clean for a year yet but I am now at the 5 months mark. I decided against subs and only took xanax and vicodins. But most of the time I just toughed it out. I had been shooting heroin and fentanyl for almost 2 years before I decided to quit. Well like I said its been 5 months now and I'm still going strong. I still get cravings but when that happens I just drink some scotch or smoke some weed. It helps a lot.

Anyway I don't think 3 years of heroin abuse will damage your body permanently. There have been people doing heroin a lot longer and have had long even productive lives. William S. Burroughs comes to mind. He was a great writer of the Beat generation who spent the large majority of his life as a heroin addict and he lived till he was 83. And when I say the majority of his life I mean just that, probably around 70 to 80 percent of his life he was a heroin addict.

Not that I'm saying you shouldn't quit. I'm just saying its possible to live a normal life with a heroin addiction.

Thanks for the advice. Oh yeh; living on H is totally do-able with a constant supply; it's the lack thereof that starts to interfere and ruin lives.
Burroughs is my hero.....Actually my screenname refers to Dr. Benway from the book/movie "Naked Lunch".

Five months is great!. do you still have any RLS? or trouble sleeping?

Peace man.
Benway189

 

[Benway189]

^^^ That is one thing I do like about the opiates... is that it is very possible and easy to live a normal every day life with an addiction to them... I am now in MMT and therefore I take opiates daily and live a particular normal life in that aspect. But any opiate, Heroin, hydrocodone, fentanyl, etc... anything. you can take any of those on a daily basis and live a normal life without damaging your body long term due to the chemical itself... APAP or something would but that does not count.

I am not clean parse, I have been off of heroin for two months now but take methadone daily at the clinic.

It's possible to be a functioning addict, especially on opiates......But I've heard that heroin does cause long term damage due to the fact it zaps your potassium levels? I'm not sure.

peace man!.
Benway189

 

[Pegasus]

Forever? Wouldn't that mean that they are now dead?

You can certainly quit opiates for long-term. If you're the kind of person who can't chip, you have to understand that and not try even once after breaking the physical addiction.

 

[freddy47]

Thanks for the advice. Oh yeh; living on H is totally do-able with a constant supply; it's the lack thereof that starts to interfere and ruin lives.
Burroughs is my hero.....Actually my screenname refers to Dr. Benway from the book/movie "Naked Lunch".

Five months is great!. do you still have any RLS? or trouble sleeping?

Yeah I agree. It was always the constant need for more heroin that was the killer and the reason I quit. I just got so sick of dealing with asshole dealers. Listening to their problems and waiting hours for them to show up while I was withdrawing just got to much for me. Bloodsucking parasites the lot of them. When one of them decided to jack me for 400 dollars is when I finally said fuck it I'm quitting for good.

I've always wondered though that if heroin were legal and affordable that addicts like us would be able to maintain an addiction and have normal happy lives. You know in Switzerland they have a heroin treatment program that gives out practically free doses of heroin daily to addicts who just can't seem to quit. I think they like cost a dollar a day for 2 pure heroin shots. You have to go into the clinic and inject under supervision but still its free smack! Ever since they instigated that program crime in Switzerland has dropped 90% because they don't have to deal with junkies stealing shit for their next hit anymore. That and the quality of life for addicts is 100% improved. Most of the people on the program are actually living normal lives and have normal jobs and don't have to worry about how they are going to get their next fix. Sounds great to me!

Anyway yeah five months is great. I no longer have trouble sleeping for me that was just the first month or so. And the Restless legs are gone as well. I've regained all the weight that I lost and than some and I feel great.

Good luck to ya.

Peace

 

[ingannilo]

It's been a handful of years since I last used dope. There were relapses, and I still have heroin-fantasies. It's been about 20 months since I got off the buprenorphine-- still clean. Forever is a long time, and it's silly to say "I'll never use heroin again!"-- but I won't today.

It's possible to quit. Hang in there.

 

[Benway189]

It's been a handful of years since I last used dope. There were relapses, and I still have heroin-fantasies. It's been about 20 months since I got off the buprenorphine-- still clean. Forever is a long time, and it's silly to say "I'll never use heroin again!"-- but I won't today.

It's possible to quit. Hang in there.

Thanks for the encouragement man!!! I have heard of applying that thinking to it. Like Not telling ourselves never. Day by day! Peace man. Keep going

 

[adder]

I quit heroin and went back on morphine a month later or so. The reason I quit heroin was the fact I hated that feeling after shooting up like a hammer hit you in your head... I did dozens of opioids after I quit heroin and I started doing heroin only because there was a shortage of morphine ampules so I couldn't get it from my source. About 2.5 years ago I stopped shooting up. Since then I was on buprenorphine and then on 18,19-didehydrobuprenorphine (it's basically the same as bupe, just twice as strong when it comes to dosing) but neither worked good enough so I switched to good old methadone. And since then I shot up a couple of times, 3-methylfentanyl 2 times to get through buprenorphine and a few times one of these: dihydroheterocodeine, pentamorphone, levorphanol, and dextromoramide.

 

[verso]

I'm not sure that I ever planned on kicking heroin forever; this might sound incredibly naive, maybe disturbing, to some people here, but uh... I've just always imagined that I would do dope forever, sometimes heavily, other times not so much, with the occasional bout of "sobriety" sprinkled in there every now and again.

It's like anything else. I didn't take my first drink and think, "oh man, that was great, but I'd better never do that again." If that's how I felt about alcohol, oh man, I would feel so anxious and uptight all the time about it. It's cool, though, because sometimes I drink and other times I don't; sometimes I drink heavily, and sometimes I don't drink at all...

It's hard for me to explain what I mean, exactly, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've found a place in my life for dope and I'm not sure I would ever want to kick it forever.

 

[tremours]

never

 

[mrflowers00]

i new a guy who quit then died a couple years later if thats what you mean by "forever"

 

[belfort]

William Burroughs, as smart as the man was, was never able to conquer his opiate addiction..he died on methadone maintenance...using methadone = not clean imo...

i have been clean from heroin/methadone for 4-5 years now at least...so it is possible but i have to admit i dont feel right..my well-being never seemed to stablize completely after getting clean..ability to feel pleasure is lower than it was before drugs but then im older now too so hard to say..

ive always been curious about if someone was rich and had a cheap source of heroin, like $15/gram, could they live forever on it?would they ever want to quit?i have read studies where heroin tolerance doesnt increase infinity and that most people tend to top out at 2 grams...

 

[lightsabersteez]

From what I hear in the room, "you never RECOVER, always in recovery."

but im coming up on 11 months clean of all drugs and alcohol, after a ten year IV opiate habit.
shit can change, and I swear to you, it gets better.

 

[chunk911]

hang in there man dont lose sight of ur goals and dont let anyone discourage you its a real bitch but living loaded 247 is no way to live (as much as i love it) and just leaves u with way more stressers and problems a life of extreme pleasure and pain

 

[Sepher]

Benway, of course it is possible to come off and stay off. Lots of people have done it. Sometimes seems like noone makes it because the people you tend to see around you are those who haven't managed to quit yet, and you don't see those that have. They leave that circle of users and move on with their lives. I'm 10 years clean of a 7 year Heroin habit that had me IVing a gram a day every day for a long time just to stave off the withdrawal and feel normal. I'd do twice that when I could afford it, cooking up to half a gram in a single shot so as to get anything even approaching a decent nod out of it.

I tried and failed to detox many, many times. I've spent weekends in police stations where the doc came out and prescribed only for the police to 'lose' the meds they'd left for me. I've done rips in prison twice, climbing the walls in a 12x6 foot box with only a kettle and a mentally unstable fellow inmate to distract me from the withdrawals. I always failed to stay off because though I was sick of the lifestyle, and the shoplifting I had to do to feed my habit, the dope sickness when I didn't manage to steal enough, the constant fear of arrest and imprisonment, the violence dished out to me by my fellow addicts, and the theft of what little I had by them, I wasn't sick enough of the drugs. I still liked Heroin, and craved the oblivion it gave me. In the end I decided I'd had enough of oblivion, and was sick of being a slave, sick of the drug itself, and it was only when I reached that point that I was able to cut it forever.

It's hard coming off. The withdrawal is in some ways the easy bit. It has known symptoms, a known time-scale, and there are meds that alleviate the worst available. You can deal with that. What I found hardest to deal with was the guilt that came flooding back to me once my emotions kicked back in. I had to confront all the wrongs I'd done to the many people in my life I'd hurt, used, and abused. Some of them aren't around anymore and I can never make it up to them. I will carry that with me always, but I have been forgiven by those I hurt, and have something like a decent relationship with them once again. My life is immeasurably better than it was. I have a life, a job I've held down for 5 years plus, a relationship I've held down for the same length of time. I will never go back to Heroin. Ever. I would toss a bag away if I found one, and have done, with not a moment's thought or later regret. I do not crave the drug anymore, and I certainly do not crave the life I lived.

 

[TheLostBoys]

I'm not sure that I ever planned on kicking heroin forever; this might sound incredibly naive, maybe disturbing, to some people here, but uh... I've just always imagined that I would do dope forever, sometimes heavily, other times not so much, with the occasional bout of "sobriety" sprinkled in there every now and again.

It's like anything else. I didn't take my first drink and think, "oh man, that was great, but I'd better never do that again." If that's how I felt about alcohol, oh man, I would feel so anxious and uptight all the time about it. It's cool, though, because sometimes I drink and other times I don't; sometimes I drink heavily, and sometimes I don't drink at all...

It's hard for me to explain what I mean, exactly, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've found a place in my life for dope and I'm not sure I would ever want to kick it forever.

I know exactly what you mean.........ive never done heroin but do other opiates & know those are exactly my thoughts as well.

 

[Inthehospital]

I was clean for 6 years then broke my ankle and because of my history I couldn't get any pain meds. It can be done. Just take your time and be careful who you hang out. I relapsed on dilaudid, my first love. But it can be done.