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Craving thread – v. Hold On

^Yeah man I hear you... I've just been chasing this high and its getting tiring. Just the other day my friend and I were walking around fucked up on dope... and it hit me, I don't want to be a strungout junkie. I was feeling amazing, yet at the same time I knew it would be all over soon and I would be snorting more bags. Ahh... I just kept doing more because I have money, it's so available, the dealers chill with me... I don't want to get sick. Luckily today I just said no... I'm just going to go through it. I haven't been able to eat these past days... on dope and off. Literally was throwing up everything and straight liquid. I might find something to take to help this.

Getting my tax return soon too and it's big... especially since I'm getting a grand back just for my school tax return... and that's not including my job or state money. I will just try to spend it on raves and rent. Hopefully I won't spend it on heroin.

This is so hard... wish I wouldn't crave this shit.
 
Hang in there! If your town has a 12 step hall type deal you might want to go down there and hang out all day. I know it has saved countless asses.
 
I tried to get heroin, didn't work, ran through all my xanax in a 4 day binge (60mg, though gave away around 12mg), was expecting a methadone script in the mail but some how it got lost?, and I live to far away from gas station that sell alcohol. I'm craving so bad. Its driving me insane. My emotions are all over the place. I can be happy, suicidal, extremely angry, frightened, etc. all within a few hours. I wish I had had the money to go back to a neurologist, get back on methadone and xanax. I don't want to be sober, or sober in this manner. My life just went to shit again, no real fault of my own after I thought I was getting everything built back up. i have no job again, no way to pay rent, buy food, etc. I had all that for such a short time, was getting sober and was proud, but now I don't give a shit about that. fuck being sober. The only good thing about it is no spending money everyday on drugs. Oh but that is so good. Ugh I wish i had a NMDA-antagonist, so I can get high and see if it helps with the mental aspects of paws/left over WDs when I don't take loperamide.

/rant
 
^^You don't want to get sober but drugs are completely destroying your life and are about to put you out on the street. This is the insane, backwards logic of every drug addict and alcoholic. Go to a meeting man.
 
Actually drugs aren't whats going to put me out on the street. When I moved out from my parents I quit buying drugs, got off opioids, got a job, etc. I just lost my job no fault of my own, and that is about to cause me to be fucked. I'm still clean, my drug use right now isn't making me homeless. Just FYI. Of course going from being homeless, getting clean, getting a job, to losing my job is making me want to use like crazy.
 
xstayfadedx: Ya, I think putting your return toward rent is a great idea. Not only are you paying rent, but as someone flirting with heroin if shit were to hit the fan, at least you would have a place to stay for a while. I know that actually doing it is a lot harder than planing to do it, but I would just not even cash it (give your id to a friend or something to make it impossible to cash) and buy h with your regular money until a day comes when you feel strong. And then do it.

But that would really suck if you are constantly around your source, especially if not by choice. I can ramble on about being clean, but the reality is that I am clean because I am cut off from the drug. If you really want off of it, you gotta try and make it less convenient. It is nearly impossible to do it on will-power alone. Stick to the raves.

Cloudy: Those types of messes I know too well. The whole "think of all of the money you save if you quit!" line depends on you having a job and a regular income. And not random money that only comes about because you need it for drugs. How is the job market where you are? Does public transport run near your place?
 
13 months sober and I still get cravings. I moved to a different city so that helps a lot. I get cravings the worse whenever I go back to my hometown. They are tolerable but strong.

Also, I get cravings when I'm meeting a new girl for a date. Mainly to break the social anxiety, but it fades quickly.

Cravings are extremely tolerable and easy to manage now. Very easy. They are tucked to the back of my mind but they still are there.

It's kind of like quitting smoking. 10 yrs later you'll still want a cigarette.
 
13 months sober and I still get cravings. I moved to a different city so that helps a lot. I get cravings the worse whenever I go back to my hometown. They are tolerable but strong.

Also, I get cravings when I'm meeting a new girl for a date. Mainly to break the social anxiety, but it fades quickly.

Cravings are extremely tolerable and easy to manage now. Very easy. They are tucked to the back of my mind but they still are there.
It's kind of like quitting smoking. 10 yrs later you'll still want a cigarette.

This sounds like me.

How do you best deal with the cravings?
 
This sounds like me.

How do you best deal with the cravings?

That's a good question, man. I guess I just ignore them. They fade so quickly. I think about women or sex much more than drugs these days. In fact that's become kind of a problem that I'm working on.

Drug cravings are never unmanageable. I find if I'm very stressed out, or having a real shitty day, I have some cravings. Even then, I'd never go anywhere close.

I go to a bar every Tuesday night to listen to drum n bass. People are getting drunk as hell but it doesn't bother me.

I go to my friends house to listen to music, and he's always smoking weed. It doesn't bother me.

I guess you could say I've been set free. They call it in AA "an entire psyche change" ..

It's definitely true.

The steps worked for me.
 
^* Good for you, that's amazing :) I'm going to look into the steps, I'm not too familiar with them at all as I quit CT, but I think it's something worth trying because of all the success stories I hear.
 
Cloudy- sober people don't binge on xanax or withdraw when they don't have their drugs. Go to a meeting, work the steps. It has worked for millions
 
^* Good for you, that's amazing :) I'm going to look into the steps, I'm not too familiar with them at all as I quit CT, but I think it's something worth trying because of all the success stories I hear.

Thanks.

Just go to some meetings and talk to people after. A sponsor will find you, and show you the way. I recommend to go through the steps as quick as possible. Don't half ass them, work them thoroughly but quickly.
 
^^ I second this. 15 months clean but life is still life. The steps are awesome I love em. I am in the same boat SS with the sex and women. One addiction to another lol.
 
It's been a long time since I've been on this website. I'm almost a year clean. It has been really easy for a while, but I feel my demons trying to creep back up on me. I got on here tonight, because I don't really have anyone to talk to about it right now. My family and girlfriend will worry more than they should. It's just super hard sometimes. I lived in a half-way house for six months, and I went to NA for a little while. It was almost impossible to stay clean, but it has gotten a lot easier. Usually I can keep my old thought patterns in check, but tonight is really really really freakin hard. I have so much going for me right now it makes me want to cry to even entertain these thoughts. I've thought about going back to NA, because it is really good for support. I used to hate it and I still don't like some of the stuff emphasized there, but it seems like the only option.
My life was so easy for six months. I barely had thoughts of using, and when I did, I could brush them away. It's just a constant struggle now, it is slowly wearing on me. I'll get a stray thought here and there and I can toss them away, but they are just gaining energy in my mind. It is horrible. It feels like a negative energy chained up in the recesses of my mind. It has been building its energy and I don't know how to stop it. I have everything so great, it just blows my mind that I could even think like this. My whole mind is kicking and screaming NOOOO!, but I don't know what to do...
 
My life was so easy for six months. I barely had thoughts of using, and when I did, I could brush them away. It's just a constant struggle now, it is slowly wearing on me. I'll get a stray thought here and there and I can toss them away, but they are just gaining energy in my mind. It is horrible. It feels like a negative energy chained up in the recesses of my mind. It has been building its energy and I don't know how to stop it. I have everything so great, it just blows my mind that I could even think like this. My whole mind is kicking and screaming NOOOO!, but I don't know what to do...

Have you tried the distraction technique? For me, distracting myself with school work helps. If I get a craving i find putting my heart, soul, and energy elsewhere will help me. Also...RUNNING. This is something I find very useful. It helps burn up the norepinephrine and I can put all my energy elsewhere rather than thinking of my DOC.

We'll always have thoughts of using, we just need to find creative ways to deal with them- as hard ad it is.

You've got this <3
 
I had some weed and kratom, but that's all. The weed keeps me too paranoid/anxious to go score hard drugs, so in a way I am choosing my battles. I do still consider myself "clean" if I smoke, but I don't like when I end up doing it as a means to an end. It quickly becomes compulsive this way.

I gotta cut the weekly kratom out, though. I wish I could red-flag myself at the headshop.

Now I guess I gotta face the real world, since the reason for caving was so that I could face the real world.
 
This is a good idea for a thread, it should stay on the front page ;)

What works for me:
- Exercising
- Eating some sort of comfort food, or chocolate
- Finding something to do to distract myself, such as playing video games, going on forums, watching TV/a movie, socializing, etc.
- This one is for those cravings you get only in the midst of withdrawal (opiates). You know, the ones that bring on a new, special kind of horror, the really intense kind that can send you into a panic attack and turn you into a desperate fiend? It's kind of hard to explain, but sort of "detaching" myself from the physical withdrawal pain. I think many of us have learned by now that more often than not, focusing on how much pain we're in only serves to exacerbate cravings tenfold. So when that sort of craving hits, for no other reason than that the withdrawals have decided to make themselves known by getting all up in my face more so than usual, I've found that simply detaching myself makes it easier to view the cravings more subjectively. It helps stop them in their tracks BEFORE go into that stage where they turn into a primal urge to find more heroin, out of what feels like an urgent need to make the pain go away. Doing this requires a good amount of focus and the ability to relax yourself completely, which is hard to do during withdrawal, so unfortunately it's not possible to simply "detach" your way through an entire detox... but it can help tremendously for the 20 minutes or so a craving last (at least that's how long mine are).
- Along the same vein as the one above, meditating can really help.
- Credit for this one goes to Captain.Heroin, since I got the idea from a post he made in another thread - to view the craving as an unfulfilled want and accept it for what it is. On top of doing that, I like to also make myself realize that cravings don't last forever... a few minutes at best, up to 40 minutes or so at worst... and know that all I have to do is white knuckle it through that small time period and at the end of it, I'll have at the very least a couple hours of peace afterward.

And, most importantly, avoid as many further triggers as possible.
 
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