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PTSD Survivors guilt.....

somnilicious

somnilicious

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 31, 2012
Messages
3,220
Does anyone else suffer from survivors guilt or PTSD from the drug addict lifestyle. Everyone of my friends are dead.At least 30 people, probably more. Its almost as if everyone that comes in contact with me dies. One of these people was my girlfriend next to me in bed.I never turn new users on but I admit that us addicts enable each other. I've been doing this for 28yrs and even though I'm now out of the lifestyle I still have a hard time re-establish ing my life because of survivors guilt and PTSD.
 
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somnilicious said:
Does anyone else suffer from survivors guilt or PTSD from the drug addict lifestyle. Everyone of my friends are dead.At least 30 people, probably more. Its almost as if everyone that comes in contact with me dies. One of these people was my girlfriend next to me in bed.I never turn knew users on but I admit that us addicts enable each other. I've been doing this for 28yrs and even though I'm now out of the lifestyle I still have a hard time re-establish ing my life because of survivors guilt and PTSD.
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Physically quitting the lifestyle is sadly the easy part. The healing afterwards is the hard part. I don't know your whole story but it seems to me you are carrying guilt around that doesn't belong to you. <3
 
I do feel a lot of guilt because if I'm honest I played a part in enough of these deaths to have a heavy heart. i always think why me. I should be the one thats dead. I was here first. I was the first opiate addict I had ever met. I was at the epicenter of the
Opiod epidemic in America. I was already physically addicted in 1998 , before Oxycontin really hit the street but here I am the survivor through 400 mg a day oxy habit to a gram of heroin a day and then the early stages of the fent problem saw me relapsing and for a year I was doing this garbage street dope. How am I not dead. I normally didn't use alone as i was instructed and when I did use alone it was in a very public place where I wouldd probably be found. By all rights I should be the one who is dead. Why not me, why them?

My best friend since kindergarten, we went to prom with our girlfriends together. After getting out of boot camp for getting caught with 14 ounces of cocaine, got in a bad accident and lost his calf muscle and he had a drop foot foot the for the rest of his life. He was on perc 10's and I told him if he told the doctors he was still in pain he could get this oxycontin that everyone is goiing crazy for. After inheriting a million dollars for his accident, he wound up dying, of an overdose, broke, in the room he grew up in.

I introduced my girlfriend to this girl at the clinic. She went behind my back and bought methadone that day. I later found out and begged her to wait till I got off work so I could properly dose her with an oral syringe because she was only addicted to vicodrn at the time. When I arrived she was trashed. She said " I only took an ency, wency, tinny sip, which means she could have consumed 40mgs or more from a 200mg bottle of methadone, with little to no tolerance at the time.

I baby sat her for hours as she stumbled around in a daze. She started to come out of it around 10pm. It came time for me to go to sleep because I had get up at 6am. told her not to take her night dose of Klonopin because she could possibly die from the combo. I awoke to a gurgling sound at 4am and immediately jumped out of bed. I shook her but she didn't respond. She was cold and even in the pitch black I could tell she was blue. I grabbed the phone and called emergency services. I was instructed to scoop the vomit out of her throat so I began doing so, then she began to make this strange noise, which i Later found out was the death rattle.

I then saw the flashing lights of emergency service as it lit up the pitch black room. I ran to open the door, as her sister was awoken by the commotion. She began screaming in anger and confusion. The paramedics got my girlfriend outside and in the ambulance, when her sister started yelling at me to " get the fuck out of here. I don't ever want to see you again" I then took the walk of shame through the rain in the dark of the pre dawn. I broke down in tears and walked with a heavy heart. I later found out she died at the hospital

This has really fucked up my sex life because I don't want to get close to people anymore. I was celebate for a while and now my sex life consists of one night stands and Colombian hookers. I have the worst sex stories. I've been vomited on during sex. A good friend invited me over for sex but she got so fucked up on methadone, alcohol and Xanax that she passed out in the middle of sex and I had to stop. All I'm trying to say is this has really fucked me up and it's selfish to even think this way because I'm still alive and not dead.

These are only a fraction of the stories. I could go on and on but the real take away from all of them is my part and the guilt I now carry.
 
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somnilicious said:
I do feel a lot of guilt because if I'm honest I played a part in enough of these deaths to have a heavy heart. i always think why me. I should be the one thats dead. I was here first I was the first opiate addict I had ever met. I was at the epicenter of the
Opioid epidemic in America. I was already physically addicted in 1998 , before Oxycontin really hit the street but here I am the survivor.

My best friend since kindergarten, we went to prom with our girlfriends together. After getting out of boot camp for getting caught with 14 ounces of cocaine, got in a bad accident and lost his calf muscle and he had a drop foot foot the for the rest of his life. He was on perc 10's and I told him if he told the doctors he was still in pain he could get this oxycontin that everyone is goiing crazy for. After inheriting a million dollars for his accident, he wound up dying, of an overdose, broke, in the room he grew up in.

I introduced my girlfriend to this girl at the clinic. She went behind my back and bought methadone that day. I later found out and begged her to wait till I got off work so I could properly dose her with an oral syringe because she was only addicted to vicodrn at the time. When I arrived she was trashed. She said " I only took an ency, wency, tinny sip, which means she could have consumed 40mgs or more from a 200mg bottle of methadone, with little to no tolerance at the time.

I baby sat her for hours as she stumbled around in a daze. She started to come out of it around 10pm. It came time for me to go to sleep because I had get up at 6am. told her not to take her night dose of Klonopin because she could possibly die from the combo. I awoke to a gurgling sound at 4am and immediately jumped out of bed. I shook her but she didn't respond. She was cold and even in the pitch black I could tell she was blue. I grabbed the phone and called emergency services. I was instructed to scoop the vomit out of her throat so I began doing so, then she began to make this strange noise, which i Later found out was the death rattle.

I then saw the flashing lights of emergency service as it lit up the pitch black room. I ran to open the door, as her sister was awoken by the commotion. She began screaming in anger and confusion. The paramedics got my girlfriend outside and in the ambulance, when her sister started yelling at me to " get the fuck out of here. I don't ever want to see you again" I then took the walk of shame through the rain in the dark of the pre dawn. I broke down in tears and walked with a heavy heart. I later found out she died at the hospital

This has really fucked up my sex life because I don't want to get close to people anymore. I was celebrate for a while and now my sex life consists of one night stands and Colombian hookers. I have the worst sex stories. I've been vomited on during sex. A good friend invited me over for sex but she got so fucked up on methadone, alcohol and Xanax that she passed out in the middle of sex and I had to stop. All I'm trying to say is this has really fucked me up and it's selfish to even think this way because I'm still alive and not dead.

These are only a fraction of the stories. I could go on and on but the real take away from all of them is my part and the guilt I now carry.
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You can't control what other people do. They make their own decisions and take their own actions.
 
I just need to lay off the drugs. I'm in Medellin, Colombia right now and I'm still snorting cocaine, popping Lyrica, smoking pot and drinking 8 beers a day. I'm a drug garbage can and it's all good or not because I'm not doing heroin. Right?
 
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I got something to hold forth on this subject matter but it will be a while before I have time to contribute possible true and healthy content on this.

Using this as a placeholder.
All my love,
J
 
Better to have survivors than killers guilt.

In think that in some parts of the world majority of people experience survivors guilt to some extent.
 
AlphaMethylPhenyl said:
I got some of this from being in the psych ward for six months. Lots of people way way more sick then me
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There's always a crazier druggy bastard, I've met lots of lunatics still getting high heavily into their 50s-60s. Guys with 20+ rehab/psych ward stints, their bodies ravaged by far too many years of smoking crack, doing blow, opiates, pills etc.
 
Definitely. A fair few people i met when I did NA as a teenager are now dead. And because I spent a year and a bit very irresponsibily mixing drugs I do feel survivors guilt about wondering why I survived and people who didn't act as irresponsible as I did, did not. At the end of the day all I can do is try and help people and try to stop as many other people from dying too.
 
How many did you save from how many potentially fatal ODs? How many years extra did you give people? Would those people blame you for their deaths or want you to suffer?
 
AlsoTapered said:
How many did you save from how many potentially fatal ODs? How many years extra did you give people? Would those people blame you for their deaths or want you to suffer?
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True.... I was always the first to take action and call paramedics.

Saved my girlfriend by scooping and vacuuming all the vomit from her throat passage so she could see her mom one last time before she did die.

Kicked a door down to rescue a girl who had passed out on her legs and couldn't walk. Only to have her start crying in my arms about a howling cat in the alley who she thought was the baby she had just given up for adoption after carrying it for the entire 9mths in heroin and crack addiction. I just sat there rubbing her hair because I didn't know her that well but I wanted to console here.

Saved this girls life who then accused me off stealing her Suboxone because I dropped it in the corner of the closet which she couldn't find until a month later when she went to put on a shoe and found it inside.

....and many others

I guess your right. All the people that are gone would want me to live my best life also.
 
Cousin passed of an OD right in front of me. Coming up on the 2 year anniversary in 2 weeks.

It don't matter who says what, in my heart I'm always gonna feel like the wrong person died that day. There are just some feelings you can't rationalize and think your way out of no matter how hard you try.

I was already pronounced DOA. I don't even know why I'm alive. Well medically i do.. it was because the tow truck driver who found us kept working on me when the 6 doses of narcan didnt work, being a former emt himself and a rather large guy, he managed to crack my sternum and break several ribs, but the guy also managed to pump the narcan to my brain for me, so i cant complain on that front. I had a higher tolerance and my cousin had an enlarged heart because of steroid use.

Doesn't change how I feel.


None of those facts will ever change the way I feel. They help me live with it, but holy fuck dude, when I'm driving and one of our old DMB jam session songs come on, I just cry and cry. If I see a deer, they remind me of him, thata just tldr. I see lots of deer now, and despite my affinity for hunting, i refuse to bag deer..

I had been through a lot as it was, which is what led me to drugs on the first place, and I'd lost people before. But this was different. I haven't ever been the same since. I don't talk about it much outside of anonymous spaces and if I do I have to keep it extremely vague or I start having flashbacks mid sentence, even typing it out it happens from time to time.

His mama likes to come visit, and I always make a point to see her, but we still haven't been able to see each other without hugging and crying for the first hour eveey visit since it happened. I couldn't even bring myself to speak to anyone in my extended family for over a year amd even now I'm extremely selective. People already think they know what happened and why. I don't blame them for blaming me but they weren't there so that is what it is.

It feels like they dragged a dead body out of that car, and I never really got out. My body is alive, but I feel... so.. empty? I used to be angry. Like my whole life. Just angry at the world because it was easier than being sad. Now I just feel dead inside. I'm pretty much holding back tears at any given minute of every single day of my life as of right now. Gotta "be a man" or whatever right?

The thing is, I was always fucked up. I was getting abused by 3 years old.

There's a big difference between Complex PTSD and the typical PTSD commonly seen in veterans returning home but there isn't enough literature on it to distinguish it as its own mental health condition, though based on multiple clinical opinions; I 100% fit the bill for that diagnosis, specifically due to a long repetitive history of traumatic events starting in early childhood. The prevailing theory is I'd have killed myself a long time ago if I didnt turn to drugs.

But to make a long story short, yes, my life on active addiction has had a serious impact on my mental health even years after living the lifestyle of an active addict. I'm still fucked in the head, maintenance meds or not. Any happiness i feel is so fleeting because I quickly remember I'm supposed to be dead and not my cousin, and so the feeling goes on its merry way as quick as it came. The only good that came out of it is I realized getting molested by a few people when I was 3-7 really wasn't all that bad. (It changed my perspective and made me less angry at the past as a whole amd has really made me more broken by one singular event every decision I made to that point led up to. I couldn't hide from the reality that I was the monster in my own closet anymore.)
 
AlsoTapered said:
And if you couldn't have done more, why feel guilty? You live so they are remembered.
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I could have done more. I definitely influenced others to use earlier in my using career when I was young and more naive but it's in the past. I just really miss my friends.
 
somnilicious said:
I could have done more. I definitely influenced others to use earlier in my using career when I was young and more naive but it's in the past. I just really miss my friends.
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But you learned from it. You are not that person any more. How do you think I feel having been the one to re-read the Upjohn patents and realized that U-47700 could be made in 1 step from 2 completely unwatched precursors? I might not have known the victims, but I'm as guilty. So I a breakdown and quit my job. In my defence I had insisted that it was made into pellets of a known strength and was ignored... but without me, how many parents would not have suffered such grief? I callously got caught up in my own skills and didn't keep my eye on what was important - producing SAFE drugs. After pyrazolam, I was greedy for success. Not money, not fame, just to prove anything was possible.
 
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