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Treatment That magic moment

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gmlifer

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Jun 4, 2015
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When did it happen for you?

Why did it happen for you?

I've quit many addictions but it seems like it was always to move on to the next addiction. So for those of you with some serious time between now and your last dose, how? What made you go over the edge and make that drastic change?
 
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I'm not sure there is really a singular magic "moment." To me it seems like more a developing, evolving process - ebbing and flowing. There are some things that are predictable about it, thankfully, and others that are, tragically, not.

I am looking forward to reflecting a bit more on this. I dare say it is also possible to learn from our successes and accomplishments. Not for the sake of honor or as a badge of bullshit (always wanted to say that =D), but because becoming more skillful tends to make life a bit more enjoyable. It's the difference between dancing and dancing well.

Assuming it is the change you really want to be making, what do you feel has kept you from accomplishing your goals?
 
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It helped to really want to quit, to have done so for seven months before relapsing, so I knew I had it in me to try again.
 
Toothpaste I'm not sure yet. I have quit for 5 months before and I wanted then but I also still had that craving to get high.

Getting high is the very first thing I do every morning. My tolerance is starting to go up and up and up all of the sudden. It's just odd how taking large mounts suddenly becomes so normal. It just seems like it was a few weeks ago that 60mg seemed like so much to take in a day (oxycodone)

Do I want to quit? Yes. If it's super easy and I didn't have to bother with cravings anymore. On the flip side it's hard to imagine life sober.

Also I would like to add that I seem to have no self control anymore. I hear this little whisper. Take another 20mg. Take more! I have sleep apnea so I try to dose during the day but when i get home from work it's like I can't stop the urge.
 
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I heard the same whispers gmlifer then 20 years later on oxy daily i could do 150mgs oxy at once and all i felt was normal at best. I guess i had enough after all them years of dosing around the clock
and being owned by opioids and pain management docs thats what gave me the strength to quit! im almost 4 months now opioids clean.
Im not saying im going through life sober now i drink some and smoke weed etc. but no opioids!, opioids have been the only thing in my life that i have had to dose around clock just to be normal my really only drug problem as i see it. Quitting opioids is never super easy and neither is post accute wds but all so worth it in the end.
 
How is your back pain 4 months out is it still painful ? Did it start as bad pain when you quit then improve ? Or was it just not there when you were over the first part of withdrawals ?
 
gmlifer said:
When did it happen for you?

Why did it happen for you?

I've quit many addictions but it seems like it was always to move on to the next addiction. So for those of you with some serious time between now and your last dose, how? What made you go over the edge and make that drastic change?
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For me, there wasn't so much a single moment that turned things around. Rather, the liabilities of staying addicted started to get intolerable. Eventually it really was a matter of asking: do I want to throw my whole life away or am I ready to put everything I can into getting better?

But if I were going to pick a single, magic moment, this would be it...

At my urging, the doctor at my outpatient rehab prescribed oral naltrexone to me. I felt like this might really help me. BUT, before you can initiate naltrexone, you need to metabolize all the dope in your system, otherwise, starting the meds will throw you into precipitated WDs. After getting the Rx, I simply couldn't string together enough time to clean my system out. It was exactly as others have described--I felt completely unable to stop. Eventually I got so desperate that I went ahead and started the naltrexone with less than 24 hrs since my last dose. The pWDs hit me like a freight train within 20 minutes of taking the pill. I was horrifyingly sick, with a giant emphasis on the psychological angle of being dopesick--it felt like the world was ending. A grey pall came down like a curtain and the world looked bleak and flat.

The entire experience of that kick was horrible. But the first hour or so after taking that naltrexone pill--that would be my magic moment.

Who knows where things will go with my recovery? But I sure as hell hope I never have to get in that bad a way again.
 
Nomasfent said:
How is your back pain 4 months out is it still painful ? Did it start as bad pain when you quit then improve ? Or was it just not there when you were over the first part of withdrawals ?
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I have a herniated disc and sciatica so i was very worried how my pain would be off opioids. So after wds i had one bout a month after wds where my back was hurting pretty bad for a week, but since that my back hasnt hurt anymore than when i was on opioids to my amazement. Its been during winter so im not real active so i'll see how it goes when im doing more stupid things to hurt my back when the weather gets better.
 
I tend to find that, if I had to choose one moment where I became truly motivated to change my lifestyle, the magic moment comes as part of or attached to a rather jarring, otherwise traumatic experience. A life changing moment. For me I think it was getting arrested for the, I don't know, second or third time for "attempted possession."

The circumstances were pretty fucked up, because there were drugs essentially planted on me (though they weren't actually drugs, it was like tootsie rolls in balloons). But reflecting on that, how it affected me and my family, I was willing to do whatever necessary in that moment to chance. Thankfully I had a pretty good inclination as to what I should do, which entailed sucking it up and calling the methadone clinic.

Admitting one needs help can be a really tough thing, but I got lucky in that I found a really great clinic. The courage I was able to muster asking for help was rewarded with the kind of kind attention of the clinic manager that is pretty foreign to most injection drug users. None of us can do this alone. I will be forever grateful for the help that the clinic was able to provide me.
 
Thanks for the responses. I know I need to quit and I feel the end is near. The habit is costing to much money and my tolerance has reached a point that I would have thought a year ago it would kill me to take this much in a day.

Hopefully I will have my magic moment soon. I have an addictive personality so finding oxy is almost as bad as finding cigarettes for me.
 
I strongly encourage you to look into an extended detox program or some form of ORT. It can provide the kind of stability you need to sort stuff out in your life without having to worry about getting how you're gonna get high. Worth considering at least.
 
My lifestyle had been unacceptable to everyone around me for a long period of time before it became unacceptable to me. I guess that moment when it finally became unacceptable to me is the moment you are asking to hear about. I was paralyzed below the waist, impotent, my hands and feet were numb, I was out of money, and the drugs hadn't been "working" for a very long time. In other words, I could no longer F*^K you to change the way I feel, rob you to change the way I feel, gamble to change the way I feel, or use substances to change the way I feel. I didn't get clean because I hoped I would once again be able to move my legs, or get an erection, or urinate without a catheter, or not be terrified of that bupe patch my wife was wearing. I got clean because in and of myself I had run out of answers. I couldn't find hope until all false hope was exhausted and in that hopeless state I sought help from others for the first time in a very long time. That was 4 years 6 months and 23 days ago. I had no expectation. I was faced with a seemingly hopeless dilemma: keep doing what was no longer working or try living life a completely different way. Neither sounded fun, but I was pretty sure I had never tried truly living my life a different way. Miraculously all those things that I had given away slowly to a sack have come back to me today, but my attachment to those things has waned. I hope this helps...
 
I like what you said about expectations - expectation about what sobriety should be like, what I should be doing with my life, all those "shoulds" - really led to a lot of suffering in early recovery for me.
 
I can remember a very magic moment when I decided to quit being a victim, or rather, to put it more honestly, to quit being attached to being a victim. When I was very young and very lost I felt that sympathy=love. When I finally had that aha moment when I realized that I was running from nothing but my own self, life magically got a lot clearer and easier. Imagine that.:D<3
 
herbavore said:
I can remember a very magic moment when I decided to quit being a victim, or rather, to put it more honestly, to quit being attached to being a victim. When I was very young and very lost I felt that sympathy=love. When I finally had that aha moment when I realized that I was running from nothing but my own self, life magically got a lot clearer and easier. Imagine that.:D<3
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I know what you mean by that even though we me have two different meanings if ya know what I'm sayin. I prefer to keep a numb mind as mine tends to run away in thoughts that are not good.
 
Kind of funny looking back now but I remember they had a weekly NFL pool going on in jail and I wound up winning week 3. Up until that point I didn't really have any way of getting anything extra in jail because my family wasn't putting any money on my books so when I won the pool I got like 4 honey buns, 10 ramen noodle packs, and a couple squeeze cheeses (this stuff is much more valuable in jail then it sounds on its own) and I was like "aw man this is sick!". Especially since I had to give up a lunch tray just to get in the pool, since I didn't have anything to enter with in the first place

But I had found out earlier that day that I was getting out in less than 2 weeks (only was there 2 months) so I kind of felt bad for people would would be there for a while longer.

Wound up just giving most of the stuff away to people who had looked out for me previously whether it was a shot of coffee or just a friendly face or w/e

And being able to look out for people felt a lot better than any of those Honey Buns ever tasted.

I should add that I still had every intention of getting high when I was in jail, but then a combination of things from leaving until now made me decide to just stay clean

There is very rarely solitary moments that make people give up drug addictions. Just a bunch of moments along the way that collectively remind you each time you think about going back to it.

The NFL pool was just one that stood out more than others to me
 
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toothpastedog said:
I like what you said about expectations - expectation about what sobriety should be like, what I should be doing with my life, all those "shoulds" - really led to a lot of suffering in early recovery for me.
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I read 'the dude and the zen master' awhile back with Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman. And I have a screen shot of a page from that book that I just came across when I was cleaning out pics on my phone.

I don't know how to post pics on this site but I was able to find a link to the page in the book. It talks about the shoulds and expectations. A very good reminder.

https://books.google.com/books?id=y...ight now, the dude and the zen master&f=false
 
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Hearing my daughter saying "Daddy take your drugs you are not normal!".
 
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