• H&R Moderators: VerbalTruist | cdin | Lil'LinaptkSix

lifelong battle?

i feel for you all, im facing a year in jail if i drop dirty and il be damned if i dont already know what to do with my upcoming paycheck. i dont wanna go to jail buy i dont wanna feel like i do sober. and i been goin to AA and NA too, but i guess i dont see whats worth fighting for in myself unfortunatly
 
Sure does. Get a year clean next month. Never think about using or doing any sort of drug anymore. I hate everything about drugs and alcohol. Its really how bad you want it. Im so through with that lifestyle. Doesn't amount to anything.
 
Also, personal opinions aside, have you thought about joining NA/AA or a similar group? Just so you have some likeminded individuals to talk to you who are also clean and can help you battle soem cravings.

doing a set of steps is the only way I've ever gotten rid of my mental obsession...
 
it can take years of hard work therapy/NA/AA before you don't constantly crave opiates but even then you'll have the occasional craving especially when things aren't going well
 
I'm just curious as to whether in the last year you've used at all?

I've got about a year on subs now, down to a very very small dose, and the "opiate thoughts" have gotten less and less, to the point where they are manageable. I will not sit here and say they are gone completely: that is far from the case. I have cravings, I have thoughts, i even sometimes romanticize a relapse or use. BUT! I have learned to deal with all of this. I have learned to deal with all of this in such a way that it has become near infintely easier to stay off of the stuff.

I'm not saying relapse is impossible for me, far from it, as I said sometimes I romanticize it which can end up nothing but bad. But I recognize these things, and I respond to them (along with other feelings) in different ways.

I always tell people I go to group with it gets a LOT easier, and others say the same. I'm very sorry it hasn't started getting easier for you.

I also work at this every single day: I go to group 2x a week, I take suboxone on a strict plan (same time every day, never taking more than the day before), I sometimes go for one on one counseling, and I also write here on BL in TDS in order to remind myself of where I was, what I need to keep doing, and how things can continue to improve. I also attended NA for my 90 in 90, and while I no longer go, that helped me get over those first 3 months which I feel is one of the hardest (along with the period after the "pink cloud bursts").

Furthermore, I exercise a lot. Not as much lately, but for a solid 6 months I was in there 4-6 days a week. I go to school, I don't go out to bars or to parties. I may seem a hermit but I feel a million times better and have a lot more tools at my disposal this time around.

Gotta find what works for you. In order to do that though you need to try a lot of shit (as you've seen from my past year). Once again its something you work at EVERY SINGLE DAY. Every time I get a craving , I actively recognize it, and "play out the tape" so to speak: i'll sit there and say "Wow I really want some dope, BUT..." and list the negatives, as well as the meager positive that would be achieved for a short period of time at best. I try actively address these cravings, these feelings, as they come. I think thats important, as I began to associate a different action with a craving instead of pressing my dope dealers speed dial.

Best of luck.
 
Do the cravings ever go away...Let me see, let me see, hmmmm

No.

My father stopped smoking 20 years ago. The man loved his smokes man, I mean he loved his 3 packs a day. Me and my sister were young so we nagged him for him to stop and he did. Around the time 19 years passed my father said, I haven't had a smoke in 19 years and today is the first day I actually don't feel like smoking ever again.

So, there's no escape? I am doomed to crave it forever? No dummy. I get a random hard-on every day, I don't go out raping women. You will start craving it and...it will stop. And the longer you go, the less the craving lasts. Will this go on forever? Probably, because you want it to. I mean you don't want it to, but that inner voice in your head wants you to. Your addiction is right there waiting for you right where you left it off. And man, the poor fucking thing is lonely, he really wants you, i mean he is desperate....to kill you.

Hobbies, exercise, all great advice, you need them.

Now, what you obviously have not been told is you are a winner. Your addiction does not define you, you beating your addiction defines you. Are you dead? NO. Are you dying? NO. So who beat the odds and won the lotto? You. Now you get a craving from time to time to go back to the old days, when you had nothing, when you were a nobody drug addict because there were fun times dying. Shit we are all dying every day yet we get to have fun times. You get sober, depression hits in for a while, you feel like a fuck up, it gets worse if you sit and do nothing, it slowly becomes better if you are doing something, because going uphill is much harder then sliding down the steep end. Along the way it gets frustrating, you get to feel real emotions again, you remember the days when you were numb to it all, superman, and you crave it. One shot. It is romantic, it is bliss. And you loose. You fought a good fight kid, but the addiction got the choke on you and you had to tap. Or, you wake up in the morning and you appreciate the fact that you beat the odds. You have gone through tougher nails then most, so that craving can go fuck it's self, as it happens every day, you tell it to get the fuck out of your way because you win and there ain't no fucking rematch. Then you set an obstacle. 200 jumping jacks. Can't do em? You went through hell to get yourself back, now you are not going to use your time to do something productive?

You already won. The bitch wants a re-match. I say fuck that, go through hell to get something else then death. Because dying will have the last laugh, the question is if you plan to pay for your own funeral, why not cut expenses and just end it now? Your times coming, but until it does I'd hold that win in its face every time it tries to get me.

And this goes to all of you craving death - I beat that fucker three times. I win. No fucking powder on this earth is making me lose. Me and old dying are going to see each other some day soon, but until that day, no low life motherfucking dealer is getting a new BMW from me.

Everyone has to find his own reason to stay sober, mine? Because I win.

Sorry for the rant, the thread got to me.
 
Do the cravings ever go away...Let me see, let me see, hmmmm

No.

My father stopped smoking 20 years ago. The man loved his smokes man, I mean he loved his 3 packs a day. Me and my sister were young so we nagged him for him to stop and he did. Around the time 19 years passed my father said, I haven't had a smoke in 19 years and today is the first day I actually don't feel like smoking ever again.

So, there's no escape? I am doomed to crave it forever? No dummy. I get a random hard-on every day, I don't go out raping women. You will start craving it and...it will stop. And the longer you go, the less the craving lasts. Will this go on forever? Probably, because you want it to. I mean you don't want it to, but that inner voice in your head wants you to. Your addiction is right there waiting for you right where you left it off. And man, the poor fucking thing is lonely, he really wants you, i mean he is desperate....to kill you.

Hobbies, exercise, all great advice, you need them.

Now, what you obviously have not been told is you are a winner. Your addiction does not define you, you beating your addiction defines you. Are you dead? NO. Are you dying? NO. So who beat the odds and won the lotto? You. Now you get a craving from time to time to go back to the old days, when you had nothing, when you were a nobody drug addict because there were fun times dying. Shit we are all dying every day yet we get to have fun times. You get sober, depression hits in for a while, you feel like a fuck up, it gets worse if you sit and do nothing, it slowly becomes better if you are doing something, because going uphill is much harder then sliding down the steep end. Along the way it gets frustrating, you get to feel real emotions again, you remember the days when you were numb to it all, superman, and you crave it. One shot. It is romantic, it is bliss. And you loose. You fought a good fight kid, but the addiction got the choke on you and you had to tap. Or, you wake up in the morning and you appreciate the fact that you beat the odds. You have gone through tougher nails then most, so that craving can go fuck it's self, as it happens every day, you tell it to get the fuck out of your way because you win and there ain't no fucking rematch. Then you set an obstacle. 200 jumping jacks. Can't do em? You went through hell to get yourself back, now you are not going to use your time to do something productive?

You already won. The bitch wants a re-match. I say fuck that, go through hell to get something else then death. Because dying will have the last laugh, the question is if you plan to pay for your own funeral, why not cut expenses and just end it now? Your times coming, but until it does I'd hold that win in its face every time it tries to get me.

And this goes to all of you craving death - I beat that fucker three times. I win. No fucking powder on this earth is making me lose. Me and old dying are going to see each other some day soon, but until that day, no low life motherfucking dealer is getting a new BMW from me.

Everyone has to find his own reason to stay sober, mine? Because I win.

Sorry for the rant, the thread got to me.

Fucking awesome replay man.
cant believe i started this thread almost two years ago now
 
Wow what a terrific question. I wish I had never touched opiates, but at the same time, the honeymoon phase was amazing. I started with pills and eventually to smoking tar, and then to IV. It ruined my life a few times. I would get clean and then sacrifice everything good I had in my life just because I wasn't content and knew that opiates could make me feel content immediately. For me, opiates are my DOC. I absolutely love them. However..

I hate what comes with them. I hate the withdrawals, I hate the prices, I hate the stigma, I hate the spell opiates put over you when your using them regularly. And I hate, hate, hate, feeling like shit, trying to kill hours (sometimes entire days) until you can get that next little batch.

Opiates are bad news, they will leave you financially broke, and once you sober up reality comes and smacks you hard in the face. I wish I had never tried them. I will always have that temptation to just say "fuck it, I wanna get some dope." So what I do is make sure I have 0 hook-ups, and don't associate with people who use opiates, and just make it as hard as possible for me to get some. Also I'm on suboxone which is a huge help because I know that it would be futile going through the hassle of finding dope and then having to wait 48 hours before I can do it.

It is my opinion that the only direction heroin, oxy, morphine, and all that will take you is down. You will feel amazing and at love with the world and life itself for a while and everythings perfect. Then you start running out of money and have a tolerance so you need the shit instead of wanting it. I honestly cannot think of anything quite as agonizing as sitting around dope-sick in your car, park, whatever, just waiting...waiting...waiting... fighting the urge to text/call your dealer again even though you know they will be annoyed. Waiting on that stuff is utter hell.

So just remember all the negatives that come with opiates. they never make your life better, they jsut make you feel better temporarily. but sadly what goes up eventually comes down. And if opiates are involved, it usually comes crashing down fucking hard. And it's hard to rebuild your life after an opiate addiction. Once you cross that line, you'll never be the same, kind of like loosing your virginity. I will never forget how good IV heroin is. And sometimes I think about it, but then I let that thought go and think about school, girls, exercise, etc. Stuff that actually compliments my life and makes me a better person.

I don't have anything else to say, and I totally know how you feel, even on suboxone I get tempted sometimes. But the way I see it is I can either have opiates or my life. I can't have both because I'm an addict. So I've been choosing life lately and it's been great and honestly the lasting satisfaction of real accomplishments, sex, friendships, pets, the beach, etc. Is so much more fullfilling!

The best thing you can do is be thankful for the times you've had with opiates, and then shut the vault door and seal it tight. Leave them in the past and don't think about opiates without also thinking about what comes with them. Because anyone whose been their will tell you, those drugs will consume your life. They did mine, multiple times. And they might again. But today I'm not a slave to opiates and I feel great :)
 
I have found that if I focus on how the drug really makes me feel for the vast majority of the time the 98% of the time my addiction likes to completely forget about because it is so obsessed with that 2% then I can nip cravings before they get roaring, hit them with an undeniable fact on how they really make you feel.. I have found that they get much better over time. Learn what thought processes, usually undeniable truths about what you actually feel work well for me, catch them early and try and kill them, look at all the reasons you want to use and debunk all the lies and myths these "reasons" are based on.
Another thing you can try to do is to flip the argument around, go from constantly coming up within reasons not to get high, temporarily blocking the addiction, until it chews on why you gave it and spits it out as a justification to use, and flip the argument over and ask the addiction WHY get high, Ha in the end there is only one reason it has and that is to experience the feeling associated with using, but if your like me, that feeling it likes to dangle out there is long gone if it was ever there for more than a minute ever. Every time you crush one of its arguments, you get stronger and it gets weaker where as in the other mode of thinking it was always the one gaining strength while it wore us rite out, if it ever comes up with a reason that stumps you, then you will need to address that issue as soon as you can. I hope this helps, Best of luck, don't stay on your heals and let it beat the tar out of you, ATTACK IT, beat it like it has done to you, develop a hate for it and what it stands for, KILL IT;)<3
 
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