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Needle Addiction

T

twang

Bluelighter
Joined
May 12, 2012
Messages
105
Hey guys. Long time lurker here, seldom poster. Like many, I started out my addiction with oxycontin. I used that for 3 years until they switched the formulation, I then started using roxi's for a short time but because of the increase in demand, and therefore price, I switched to heroin. I used heroin for 7 years and after 10 years of fucking up my life, I finally got on suboxone. During my time doing heroin I had been caught and arrested, and I started seeing a doctor who prescribed me suboxone, but I never used it. I would just sell it for dope money. I eventually got tired of going to see the doctor for something I wasn't even using and convinced my doctor I was ready to get off suboxone while still using heroin.

In March of this year, I finally just got tired of it. I turned 25 and realized I was going absolutely nowhere (yes the math is right, I started out using vicodin at 14 and became an everyday user of OC by the time I was 15) and I just got tired of being a broke piece of shit spending $1-200 a day, every single day of the year, and not even getting high from it. I haven't gotten high for the past two years, just haven't gotten sick either.
I started buying suboxone from a friend who gets it prescribed and made the switch. I love not doing heroin, I love not spending an hour or two out of every day getting ahold of dealers, waiting for them, etc. Since I got off in March there have been times when I've run out of suboxone and couldn't find any and I opted to WD until I could find more suboxone rather than relapse on dope. My point is, I'm very serious about my sobriety. My desire for females is back, my desire to improve my life is back, my desire to go to school and actually try hard is back. It's fucking awesome and I'm finally happy again. Not that I was ever depressed on dope, I was just never anything.

However, I can't drop the needle. Even though I'm using bupe, I still shoot it. Whether its subutex, suboxone strips, or generic suboxone pills. Putting the needle down has been harder than quitting the dope itself. Then again, my desire to stay off heroin is much greater than the desire to quit using needles. I do, however, WANT to stop using needles.
I'm sure some of you can relate, do you have any advice for me on how to stop using needles? I know all the risks involved with shooting bupe, obviously that's not enough for me to not do it. If anyone has a similar experience, how did you get off the needle? I used to think if I just switched over to the suboxone strips that would force me to stop using the needle, but after a day I got online and did some google searching and found that it was possible to shoot those too.

My decade on opiates taught me the only way an addict can really get sober is if they have a REAL, PERSONAL DESIRE to do so. My desire to get off dope eventually started to outweigh my desire to use it, so I got off and it's been easier than I thought it would be (so far, anyway, obviously the suboxone helps). So I'm left thinking the only way I'm getting off the needle is when my desire to do so finally outweighs the desire to poke my veins with them every day.
 
I went through the same thing and had to get off bupe to quit shooting up.

I dream of shooting up often (usually meth, which I wasn't addicted to like heroin/bupe)
 
I've done it like it's supposed to be done, sublingual. I've also snorted it but I don't enjoy snorting anything at all, ever. I'd do it sublingual any day over putting it up my nose. It's not like it doesn't work sublingually, I just feel the need to shoot it
 
Yeah, I can definitely imagine a life without them. I want nothing more than to put every aspect of my opiate life behind me and move on. I never mentioned that back in 2012 I ended up breaking up with this really toxic girl who I started dating shortly before I started shooting H. She was such a thorn in my life she drove me to alcoholism on top of my heroin habit and after I got rid of her I ended up quitting not only booze, but I gave up the heroin too because I had a new outlook on life and was ready for a fresh start. Got on suboxone (sublingually, I guess two years into my heroin habit the needle addiction hadn't turned into the monster it is today) and was taking the lowest amount of sub I possibly could without feeling too sick, and within 3 months I went a gram/day of H to suboxone and weened my suboxone intake to .25mg/day. I was basically ready to quit completely and then an acquaintance offered me a bunch of really cheap roxis which I planned to sell, I was ignorant and thought because I was so happy being off that shit that I wouldn't have any problem having some roxis around the house, and of course having all those around eventually led to snorting one, then shooting one, and within a couple weeks of getting those I was back on dope. But during that 3 month time, giving up needles was suuuper easy, it wasn't even a challenge to give up needles 5 years ago. It also made it really easy to ween off suboxone, because I never had any compulsive behavior when it came to dissolving pills in my mouth. Since I'm shooting my bupe right now, I use it compulsively and end up using way more bupe than I really need, which in turn means even though I'm off dope now, im regressing in my sobriety from opiates. Anyways, I look back at those 3 months as the best time of my life in the past decade. I felt the same way then as I do now, really determined to get clean, maintaining a healthy lifestyle by working out regularly and eating better, and just trying to make overall improvements to my life every single day. Opiates (besides bupe for some reason) always made me crave sugar and I ate candy all fuckin day. I love to be in the kitchen and now I can afford healthy food so I've been cooking again which is really therapeutic for me. I'm back in school and loving every minute of it, showed up to my summer class an hour early every day, got a new girl who's an absolute 10 which I've never managed before, I'm not a shell of myself anymore so I've been reconnecting with old friends I haven't talked since I started doing H. I can see all the benefits of being clean which makes it so much easier to realize I want nothing more in life to put my old lifestyle behind me and start again. The needle thing is just the last thing I have to let go of, but that stopping that ritual is the hardest part yet. I know once I can let go of the needle I can really start to ween down on the bupe and put that part of my life behind me once and for all.
 
Best of luck in your desire to quit. It's quite hard. I didn't think I could do it.
 
Could you try, as an experiment, injecting less often for a little while? Maybe you could try to do, say, 1/2 of your bupe doses sublingually for a week or something similar? If not 1/2 of the doses, even 1/3 or 1/4 would be a start.

Walking away from drug-related rituals is brutally hard. But for some people, it's easier if they don't have to "say goodbye" to something that dear to them in one giant decision...instead, some people have better luck saying I'm going to do this less often for a little while. Then later, they might try to do it even less often, and so on. In this way, they don't set themselves up for an enormous undertaking all at once.

Now, this is just an idea...other people don't have success with this approach. For instance, I simply had to quit completely over and over until I eventually started getting traction on the problem.

In any case, I hope you know that a lot of us here have had similar struggles, and we know how hard this shit is. You're doing awesome...don't lose sight of that. Just keep trying.
 
simco said:
Could you try, as an experiment, injecting less often for a little while? Maybe you could try to do, say, 1/2 of your bupe doses sublingually for a week or something similar? If not 1/2 of the doses, even 1/3 or 1/4 would be a start.
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That's a good idea, part of the problem is I don't have a set schedule and don't take a certain amount each day. Some days when I'm off work and have nothing to do I'll just sit down and do 3 shots in an hour. Plus when I wake up and before bed. Other days when I'm busy and my mind is occupied I'll do 2-3 shots all day. I generally always do 2mg per shot. I guess my first step needs to be alotting myself a certain amount per day, at certain times a day, and no more.

I'd also like to add: I know full well that shooting more sub isn't going to increase its effects or anything like that. That's not the point of using more sub on days that I'm bored than days when I'm busy. I do it for no other reason except that it's a compulsive behavior and when I'm bored it's hard not to poke myself with needles
 
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I know someone who started injecting water because they couldn't stop the needle after they quit getting high. It worked for them, didn't take long to put the rig up when there wasn't any feeling at all when using it.
 
I know someone who had the same experience. I feel like that isn't necessarily uncommon.
 
I've done the same thing before , just to clarify though, I get absolutely no effect from injecting Bupe. I might as well be injecting water and eating my bupe, but for whatever reason it's just not the same.
 
I mean I understand, but I doubt its going to be that hard to quit shooting up on the scale of things. Its purely a mental fixation like bringing the smoke hand to the mouth kind of thing. Im and IV user so I know how crazy the fixation is and how hard wired the sense of reward becomes. I remember back in my earlier years when I would get sick I would start frantically shooting water. I think u can quit it tho. After a week of feeling good from taking it under the tongue you should start to corelate the good feelings with taking it orally. Try to focus on that nice chemically taste of the suboxone!
 
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