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January 2017 Getting/Staying Clean/Sober Thread v. Goodbye Holidaze, Hello 2017!

Up most of the night again due to the wonderful tail end of heroin WDs.

My wife has started talking about divorce...in a weird hypothetical way. But still, it sucks. I think my addiction may finally have broken her trust for me, and I can't blame her for feeling that way. The laundry list goes on and on...put my mom on hospice over the weekend, while I was detoxing hard.

Not fishing for pity here...it's just amazing how bad lack of sleep and exhaustion can make life's normal shit seem. Trying to remember that I'm not myself right now, and that it will seem less desperate soon.
 
Trying this shit again. Man I really need to do it this time.

I'm rooting for you. By the way, I see from your profile that geographically speaking, we live right near each other. Balmy weather recently, no, at least for January?
 
I'm rooting for you. By the way, I see from your profile that geographically speaking, we live right near each other. Balmy weather recently, no, at least for January?

Thank you! Yeah, it's supposed to get real cold again soon though. Up and down weather is so fucked up...I wish it'd stay somewhat consistent.
 
Thanks CH! I'm a quitter :).
I'm having second New Years Eve!
(This year has 3!)
 
Up most of the night again due to the wonderful tail end of heroin WDs.

My wife has started talking about divorce...in a weird hypothetical way. But still, it sucks. I think my addiction may finally have broken her trust for me, and I can't blame her for feeling that way. The laundry list goes on and on...put my mom on hospice over the weekend, while I was detoxing hard.

Not fishing for pity here...it's just amazing how bad lack of sleep and exhaustion can make life's normal shit seem. Trying to remember that I'm not myself right now, and that it will seem less desperate soon.

Are you guys in couple's counseling?

How long does your mom have?
 
Hey everyone, this is my first post. I've been reading threads on this site for years and I've been amazed with the support by members and success stories posted.

I'm 24 hours into detox and am prepping for the worst.

I've been using opiates for about 8 years now. Like most people, I started with oxycodone and now it's morphine(100mg daily).

I quit once 3 years ago and relapsed 4 months later, so I know what to expect. Cold turkey is my best option because IME, the harder something is to overcome, my mind becomes much stronger.

First 72 hours are the worst, so I just got 48 more to go!!

(I feel like I was rambling. Sorry!!)
 
Sorry but I'm about to turn this into a thread where I just rant about things that are bothering me in life right now

- It's taking 2 weeks for Penndot (dpt of transportation) to basically move a piece of paper with my name on it to a separate stack of papers for some reason. I don't own a car at the moment anyway, but I know people who do. I could just drive without a license but with my luck I'd get pulled over and the car (which isn't mine) towed.

- my arms still get numb if I keep them in the same position for longer than a few minutes. And I still have slightly visible track marks like fuck. I haven't shot up on a regular basis since July. The spot on the other side of my elbow I understand, I overused the fuck out of that one. But everything else is just hanging around for no reason. Come to think of it, a lot of small wounds I have had over the past 3-4 years haven't really healed well. I'm starting to think my blood circulation is fucked

- wisdom teeth should really come out. They have good days and bad days.

- I said I would go back to school to anyone who would listen because it sounded a lot better than "well I'm gonna work at this supermarket for the next 3-4 years and do nothing else". And it's not even that I don't want to take college courses, I just loathe the whole system in general. I hate having to do something that is touted as being for me when in reality it's just a way for other people to make money. Yeah, let me better myself by double spacing my way to a B- GPA.

- my own cynicism. It gets pretty out of hand sometimes. Or... does it...? I know deep down that not everything in life happens because people are looking out for themselves but at the same time, are we sure about that? I'm the guy who thinks that people
who donate to charities do it for tax breaks. I'm the guy who thinks cancer still exists because there's more money in the drugs to pretend to fight it then to just straight up cure it. I'm the guy who thinks the War on Drugs was started for political reasons and I'm not even sure if drugs fucked up my life, or if societal norms involving drugs fucked up my life. Doesn't change the situation now, and I'm obviously just trying to pass the buck here but at the same time...nah...

- I don't even enjoy meeting new people anymore. Well I never really did actually, but now I don't even know what to say without just opening a flood gate of information. Take at work for example, simple conversation has me choosing words carefully.

"So what have you been doing before you came to work here?"

you know, just varying degrees of Jails, Institutions, and Death. Yeah 2016 was a good year for me though

like I'm really not trying to be the "all about recovery!" guy because in all honesty those are usually the people who relapse hard and I'm not even really all about recovery. I still smoke weed, I don't have a sponsor, I haven't jumped into NA, I basically pondered the first three steps for a while, got to step 4, then decided I'm not an addict so Step 1 isn't applicable and therefore I don't need to do the steps. Idk, the amends part is one thing, I will do that. But as far as helping other people get clean, man I just don't know. When I was getting high you couldn't tell me nothing about anything. And how am I supposed to help people if I just kind of... stopped wanting to get high personally? I came to that decision on my own after seeing how the alternative would be played out. Idk, doesn't really seem overly complicated to me

just some random annoyances
 
Anyone have general advice on avoiding a benzo addiction? I've taken 10mg diazepam to get to sleep the last two nights. I'll try and avoid it tonight but I gotta work tomorrow, the next 5 days. Exhausted all my possible sick days getting off smack.

I know diazepam has a long half-life. I actually used it pretty sparingly in the first week of wd On day 3 I took 25mg because of naltrexone precipitated WD. I'm day 10 now today My WD symptoms have flared up again pretty strong and it's kinda shocked me. Definitely haven't used any opiates - I'm taking naltrexone daily anyway.

Could it be benzo WD or am I just paranoid? I was yawning this afternoon exactly like I do when WDs first kick in in the first day after using heroin, and the rest of the symptoms flared up from there. Sure I didn't expect to be symptom free but they've never been this strong for me at day 10. I've been feeling great the last few days. fml.
 
subotai: I liked your post. It was honest and interesting.
I hope your transportation situation resolves, that is to say I hope the piece of paper moves from pile A to pile B.
Wisdom teeth: ouch!
 
Are you guys in couple's counseling?
...

No, though we probably should be. I've brought it up before, but she's not interested. Well, it isn't that she's not interested so much as that she comes from a very straight military family and they just don't do things like counseling, so the idea is anathema to her.


How long does your mom have?

Turns out, not long. I just wrote a post in my recovery journal thread about it. She died yesterday.

Her illness was agonizingly slow. But once she turned that last corner, it all happened so fast. It was a really strong experience. The room was quiet; the lights were dim. My mom was on hourly liquid morphine and ativan, so she was finally not scared and harassed by her demons (she had both dementia and schizophrenia). I had put some of her once-favorite music on quietly. I could sense when her breathing changed, so I put my hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. She took three last breaths, and that was the end. To my thinking, that's about as good as we can hope for.

I don't have a lot of good things to say about healthcare in the US. But I do give a big shout-out to hospice. Covered by Medicare, so available to all. And they really did make the death as peaceful as it could be.

And with that, yet another relevant song about heroin addiction:
My mother died every night
It's safe to say, don't quote me on that.
I love myself better than you.
I know it's wrong, so what should I do?
--Nirvana
 
Over 2yrs and 3 months sober.
Never felt fitter and happier.

Hope everyone starts the year by staying strong and kicking any habits they choose to do so.
 
48hrs into detox... 24 to go!!
The physical stuff, like RLS and insane heat flashes, was rough last night.
 
Just got to Brussels (will be living here for the next 5 months).
My main desire was to get away from my local drug scene and already my cravings are gone. Time to go explore
 
Hello all! Still on the second to last day of the retreat I've been on since the end of 2016 and I've decided to crack open the container with some BL time.

Can't wait to get home and have some Korean cuisine :)

How has the never year been treating people?

Take care of yourself simco, it must be very hard <3 Sounds bit like how my grandmother passed away in November last year. Took me a long time begin really dealing with how I felt about watching her die. One of the saving graces of the situation is that I made sure they gave her plenty of her favorite substance (morphine and lorazepam as well).
 
subotai: I liked your post. It was honest and interesting.
I hope your transportation situation resolves, that is to say I hope the piece of paper moves from pile A to pile B.
Wisdom teeth: ouch!

Thanks, the license thing isn't even a big deal.

there really isn't a whole lot that bothers me tbh. I didn't use drugs to compensate for emotional loss or to get out of my own self, I did drugs because I wanted to get away from society and heroin is a really fucking quick shortcut to giving your brain the chemicals that normal people receive from interacting with other humans I would just inject into my arm and call it even.

At this point, I don't know if I'm staying clean because if I really want to be clean or if I just don't want to go back to the jail/rehab cycle.

I don't even know if I'm really trying to go to college. I guess that's considered Plan "A" right now. But Plan B is real close, and all it really entails is me saving up a comfortable amount of money (maybe like 10k) and just moving out to Colorado with no real plan except to get a job doing w/e

and that's the thing, I kill it at all my jobs. I've never been worried about being able to be employable. I really try to stay humble these days but fuck that im gonna go on a bit more. Im a fuckin machine at work. I'm friendly with everyone, show up on time, do anything that needs to be done, don't start any drama, like I'm fuckin good man.

And I don't even want to start a new life over in the same place I used to get high at. Seems kind of impossible to me. People who I knew before I got high know I was a junky, and people who live in the same area tend to get an idea through conversations.

if I move to somewhere else, I can just be "from Pennsylvania" and leave it at that

Idk, Colorado or Washington, still looking into cost of living and stuff

all I really want in life is to have my own grow room
 
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