Emotionally stunted from drugs. Anyone else?

[nygiants1313]

Im make this quick and to the point.

Im 25 and been using drugs since 15. Today i still feel like and act like im 17 years old or when i was 18 or so. I still blast my music bands like bullet for my valentine or all that remains. I have not grown emotionally. I get mad and overeact like i would as a teenager. I just do not feel 25 years old. I was a heroin addict for many years and abused other hard drugs. I still am on suboxone but only when i run out of money spent on other drugs. In my mind im stuck here. In a weird wH i enjoy it because i never wanna feel old. But idk how to explain it hopefully someone can relate.
I guess I'll be the 40yr old still blasting all that remains songs! Ehh weird idk how the duck i feel bout it all. I just do not act or feel my age. I still feel like im 18 even though i work everyday. The fact i look like im 21 might not help.
Who knows. Appreciate responses.

 

[PotatoMan]

yeah it's common for this to happen to those abusing drugs when their brains are developing. I have a mid 20s yr old friend who is still a child in my eyes. I been smoking pot since I was 15 and abused drugs and now I'm 18 and I still feel young but I have gained a lot of knowledge and can still act mature when needed and most people think I'm in my 20s because of the way I speak even though I have a baby-face. I've been mistaken for 26.

I also still listen to the same music I used to when I started doing drugs. It's just good music man! I just have no motivation to look for new music even though I enjoy hearing new good songs. My playlist remains the same

 

[JustADudeYep]

First off, 25 isn't old or 'mature' really. I probably acted a lot like the 17 year old me when I was 25. Pretty normal.

OR there is actually a scientific explanation for people who truly cannot develop past a certain mental age state of mind. Some people who go through very traumatic experiences at a certain age may not emotionally develop past the age of which it happened. There is a name for it but I am blanking. We learned about tnis in a psych class I took.

 

[Dresden]

I was in a therapeutic community (a type of in your face old school rehab program) where they insisted that your emotional development stops at the age you turned to drugs as a coping mechanism. I can kind of see some truth to that, and I've talked to other addicts who believe it as well, but I would like to think I am more mature than a 16 year old, which is how old I was when I first got drunk.

 

[nygiants1313]

Appreciate the responses everybody. Im finding it hard to explain and am not doing a good enough job. Its not that i havent gained knowledge or im not nature when needed. I work and pay my bills otherwise im screwed like most people, but there's just something off. Still drive like an asshole as i would at a young age, still am only attracted to 18-20 yr old girls, still need to have a nice beach body for summer when having a nice body is not important at all in life. I could go on, and im sorry if im not explaining it well enough, but even though i can hold a job and pay a phone bill and be mature if needed, i feeel my thought patterns or views and many other actions have remained earily similar to those teenage days. Im not saying i should be asleep at 6pm everynight and driving like an 80 year old,

after reading everytjing i just wrote im realizing i do a lot of immature things and almost cant control it. Maybe thats the main point. Is sometimes i really cant control it as a teenager would.

Idk thanks for all yalls opinions.

 

[herbavore]

Age and maturity are such weird things, really. Maturity is defined as the "wisdom of age". Some people die at 100 without ever squeezing a drop of wisdom from their years and other people at 10 seem to be wise beyond what should be possible from their short experience with living. I am 61 and I have all sorts of immature thoughts and at the same time I have an acceptance and ease with life that can only come with time and experience I think--in other words it's a mess in there!

Some of us have impulsive brains (I've been diagnosed with ADD but prefer to just call it my brain--the label does no good to anyone but the pharmaceutical companies). I think I will be impulsive til the day I die. The trick is to recognize that impulsiveness, like everything else, has a beneficial application as well as the downsides. Find a creative outlet--some kind of artistic endeavor-- and your impulsiveness becomes a gift that works wonders on your imagination.

I think the true stunting of emotions that comes from going through adolescence over-using drugs is that people fail to learn how to navigate difficulties without numbing or suppressing. Learning how to recover from the inevitable pain of life, how to alleviate boredom, and ultimately how to be at ease inside oneself is what the teenage years are meant to be about. You live large and take risks and find out what makes you feel alive at that age. If you only find this out from a substance you are robbing yourself of the self-knowledge that you will build on for the next phases of your life. The good news is that it doesn't matter what age you are--you can start from square one at any age. (I think I was such a 'late bloomer', that I really didn't complete adolescence until my late twenties.)

 

[Ninae]

I think this is very common. I tend to work more as someone in their late teens/early 20s and still get carded for alcohol, etc. Though I think it has just as much to do with traumatic events.

Anyway, I've seen a lot of this. My cousin quit school when he was 18 and started taking drugs and partying. He never really socially matured past then until he died of an overdose lase year. My uncle was invalidised at 29 and is still pretty much at that age. His girlfriend got pregnant when she was 15 and was too young to really grow up when she became a mother so she still acts like an adolescent even though she's middle-aged now.