For those trying to come off heroin - here is some support from an addict.

[dognasher]

Hi everybody!

I have recently come off of a bad heroin/cocaine habit - both IV.

After trying about a hundred times to come off this shit, I realized that last time, my last relapse, was it for me. I was done. I actually welcomed the withdrawal this time, that's how bad my life had become. I had a new business that I was running into the ground by stealing cash from our change box to score, I blew a 2600 dollar tax return, my fiancee found a text from my dealer, almost left me, and my arms and feet and hands had become war zones from shooting coke fifty times a day.

I would get clean off heroin for a week or so, and then I would get a needle craving, so I would always score a g of coke to shoot (because it wasn't "physically" addictive. Oh the webs we weave!), waste my day, close my office so I could shoot up in the bathroom all afternoon, and then I would get mild psychosis from shooting coke so I would inevitably use heroin to come down, and then the cycle would begin again.

It was awful. I would shoot coke in my bathroom while my kid was playing in her room. I was covered in blood more days than not, and my fiancee was always noticing blood spatter all over the walls of our bathroom, which would prompt me to lie and say it was from shaving. Yeah right! I would either be in a panic from the coke, or nodding out from the heroin. I was NEVER normal.

My point here is, if you are struggling to come off IV drugs, and you keep relapsing, there will be a day when you will succeed. If you are lucky enough not to OD or lose it all, which I almost did, then you can do this! Don't be ashamed if you don't get in on the first try. Keep trying! You have it in you. I struggle with awful cravings everyday. Sometimes I slip. But I am aware of my addiction now, I am not in denial, I can be forward with my partner about my addiction instead of hiding it. It is SO HARD. But some days it is easier. I wrestle everyday with this demon on my back, but I am going to make it. I know I am. I have started keeping a journal to keep track of my days clean, I never think more than an hour or two in advance, and I stay clean for those few hours. Then I stay clean for a few more. And that time adds up. It's a lot easier than trying to see my whole life without heroin.

It's so easy to succumb to shame and guilt. It's such a perfect excuse to start using again. But remember, it didn't take you a day to get addicted and it's not going to take a day or week to pull yourself out. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Your addiction doesn't mean you are weak, or that you have no willpower, or that you are a loser. You are sick. You have a medical and mental disease. It's not your fault. It's important to be accountable, but shaming yourself and beating yourself up don't help you here.

I guess I started this thread to hear about other people's struggles with getting clean, dealing with cravings, etc. I know there are a million threads out there on this, but I really wanted to start a thread of hope, not horror stories. I want to offer support for anybody who is going through this battle right now. It's so very hard. My heart hurts for all of us out there who feel like we are struggling alone. I wanted to say that you are not alone. You can get better. You will find hope within. It might get really bad before it gets worse, but it can get better. It really can. I am proof, even though I am still struggling with cravings and PAWS every day. Relapse is not the be all/end all of this. It's part of the process.

Please feel free to pm me or just keep this thread alive with stories of hope and stories of relapse so we can all help each other! Sending good vibes to all out there who struggle with addiction. If we can come through this, we are stronger than most people. It will be the greatest accomplishment of your life if you can beat it. Nobody can ever take that away from you, even if they don't understand.

Hugs!

 

[hyip1]

thank you for sharing

 

[Barberella]

God dognasher I read your post and that's me bent double on the toilet trying to push a mijector into the tiniest of veins on my already bruised and swollen feet. The blood spots oh how I think that I've wiped them all away only to be screamed at by my partner after she finds them on my clothes.
I'm struggling right now after a good six months of keeping to my script and not using. But in the past couple of months I've started slipping again, the once a week to the 3 times to the every day and now twice a day and as much as my bank balance can handle.
I've been sat here tonight thinking about NA. I've been a couple of times but have found its all about the users who are doing well, I need a group to go to where help is given to those people who are really struggling to stay clean.
I'm fucking miserable in my using as well. I'm getting no joy from it. I'm gunna try real hard this week and put a stop to it. Again. 20+years I've been saying this sad story to myself, I'm sure one day it will come true.

 

[herbavore]

^Barbarella--keep trying different groups--they really vary. Also check out SMART recovery groups online for a different perspective on recovery and as added support.

OP, thanks so much for this beautiful account of your experience. It's so essential to have hope and when people are feeling the most hopeless, stories like yours can truly help. Congratulations on all your insights and for turning your life around to the direction you want it to go in.

 

[azgaza]

Thanks for your post, it was a good read for me at this exact moment, this week I've for the first time decided to properly admit to my addiction; I'm a heroin addict, I am addicted to smoking heroin, I've been doing it daily for half a year with a long, extensive, seriously fucked up history of addiction with as absolute worst ketamine addiction, seriously damaged my bladder (it healed but at its worst I couldn't hold liquid for an hour and it'd hurt so much I'd lay on bed all day snorting grams and grams of ketamine to try and numb the pain, see blood and fucking bladder lining whatnot oh and spending well over 10.000 euro's on it and all I wanted was just more ketamine and now the last half year I'm no longer addicted to it, body healed up and I use it once every 3-4 weeks for a weekend, just one gram for all weekend if I use so little my tolerance stays down and I finally don't have cravings anymore like I used to but the FIRST thing that I think of when someone asks ' what do you want ' is ' a kg of ketamine ' or ' my bodyweight in ketamine ' or generally just K. I was also for a while GHB / GBL addicted which peaked at 5 ml of gbl every hour I was a proper mess nearly died hit my head and lost 2 liters of blood transfusion took 1.5 days and I was put in detox, I had constant spasms at the worst of the GHB addiction and my nervous system just hurt it was so fucked I had severe tinnitus would get seizures while on or not on G, never slept, felt and heared my pulse in my ears and oh the hallucinations, the insomnia, the fear, the voices shit the voices well fuck I'm done with that now, got my boyfriend off it too, while back took GBL a few times to sleep through heroin withdrawal but no more because it was too tempting for my boyfriend he was a bit too nostalgic about it and not going there again no no while I still want to continue my occasional now social and recreative ketamine usage I don't want GHB pretty much ever again. Now the last years the focus has shifted to opiates and the last half year it went into full blown heroin addiction smoking atleast half a gram a day and going into withdrawal within half a day of my last dose, the last weeks I'd start getting withdrawal symptoms in mere hours after dosing and on 30 mg of methadone today I still get some withdrawal, I'm clammy, nose running a bit and my pupils are huge right now but I'm up and typing which I else would sure not be I had hoped 30 mg would be enough had 20 mg yesterday, last time I did heroin aws thus sunday evening.

Last weeks were constantly inbetween bein high or sick of high or sick, rarely a good night usually just nodding off waking up smoking more nodding off waking up smoking more most nights I would 'sleep' in clothes, usually sitting instead of lying down because sleeping was essentially nodding. Last night I felt normal deep sleep for the first time in I don't know how long, really long. My history with opiates is longer then the half year of heroin I first tried oxycodone in 2011, started fentanyl december 2012/januari 2013 and had my first opiate withdrawals from fentanyl quite a few times and once nodded off smoking on my bed and it went on fire while on fentanyl and my boyfriend nearly OD'd on a combination of fentanyl and GHB early 2013 but it wasn't until the heroin I formed a longer term chronic daily habit, not with an opiate before anyway.

But why I like your thread and why I'm responding instead of opening my own topic about starting methadone maintenance therapy (I'm intending to go for this as replacement, more long term, not doing opiates is not an option I found that out by now if I try that I will convince myself I want heroin more then other things and go back to smoking it constantly, if I'm high enough I won't care I'm a junkie anyway. But yeah no I'm giving this a try I need stability I don't want to be in between high and sick I want to build up my life and function and I think methadone might be the solution, it's better then not trying at all and I am actually trying now, for the first time since I started. Just have to keep trying, I'll probably relapse, but when I do I will try again, until I come to the point where my priorities have truly shifted and I may want to not be on opioids. I have chronic sleeping issues and some chronic pain I think I fucked myself over with the K and the G a little too hard and it left some permanent stuff, and the things it left, insomnia and pain make heroin so very tempting because I will not feel tired and no pain but since starting on methadone I have felt the most normal in a long time and the longer I feel normal the more sure I am this is a good idea and I do want to try and get off heroin now. Everyone else fighting this indeed we are not alone, it is so heavily judged serious addiction to things like heroin but admitting the addiction while not admitting TO it, as in, accepting you're addicted and trying, seriously willingly trying to work on it is the best and don't believe people when they come down with judgement and stereotypes like no junkie / addict can be trusted or (I must admit, I lied A LOT, until today), or what my mum says that it is loserish; it was her additude towards it that kept me lying about it just going on in secret; I wanted to be honest, and I am now. Everyone also going through something similair in any way, stay optimistic I think there's hope in pretty much all cases a few weeks back I really didn't think I'd maybe actually want to try and get off it, but somehow I do, and its a good thing, it's too scary and unpleasant to think of a full life without heroin but I can think of a week without it, and when that ended see how long I can stretch that. Now that I'm accepting my fail and admitting it I feel more optimistic and less trapped. Yay for optimism.

 

[simco]

like others have said, OP: thanks for your story. i hope we can keep this thread alive a while longer.

i'm a semi-regular poster on the monthly getting clean thread in this forum. but the roller coaster of trying to quit has been almost as bleak as the addiction. endless relapsing, with each time making me feel like zero. i go to NA meetings daily. i throw away my dope or get my wife to hide it. i stay away from risky friends. but every. fucking. time, i find myself with a bag eventually and then it's off to the races.

one weird thing: i was just a chipper for about two years. then--of course--the addiction snuck up on me. but i managed to start the process of kicking before the addiction dragged me too far down. i was using about every other day. still small doses (one bag lasted me two blasts). baby stuff for most people. but then i did have my first physical W/D, which scared the fuck out of me, so i determined to quit.

the bummer is, i'm more obsessed with dope since quitting than i was when i was using.

the other killer about recovery: i've determined to be 100% honest with my wife and best friend about my using (besides W/D, the other thing I hated about using was the lying). they're both very understanding and don't judge. but now each time i relapse, i get to tell them about it, which makes me feel shittier than i do already.

anyhow, i'm not saying much of consequence. other than: this shit is hard!

good luck to all those trying to kick.
-Sim

 

[dognasher]

Oh man, I forgot about this thread! I'm glad to hear it helped a little. It is SO HARD. MAN! I was on Vivitrol and it made me feel like shit, but it gave me that month or two away from shit so I could remember what it was like to be sober. But every day I think about using. I put a little alarm on my iPhone to remind me not to do anything stupid at the time of day when I am most likely to relapse - early afternoon, when I am tired and irritable and bored. But everything reminds me of heroin. Every time I drive to work, I pass the old spots, so I started taking a different way to work. I got a new phone number. My SO is so wise to this now that I will never be able to get past him. Sometimes I want to kick myself in the ass for making it so hard to score! But I really do feel like if I go back to all this, I am fucking dead.

Distance is kind of a double edged sword - on one hand you have the space from your addiction to kind of ease the needle fetish, the frantic pursuit....but on the other hand you also have distance to forget the awful things that happened. It's never as good as your craving makes it out to be. I think that's the biggest lesson of all that I have learned - my cravings only remember the good. Not the bad. And 85% of it was bad.

Good luck to all of you. I know it's so fucking hard.