2 more years and I'm still using, scared of myself. Feel ready to cry. A followup

[JessFR]

Today I read the very first post I made to bluelight, I had just turned 24, I was scared then too.

My exact words were along the lines of "I'm stupid because for the first time in my life I have someone who loves me ..., and I love him and yet I feel like a helpless passenger as I watch the rest of me try and ruin both of our lives."

I'm 26 now and I can safely say I feel exactly the same today.

At the time I had been living with my boyfriend and his parents for nearly 2 years after he convinced his mother to let him rescue me from homelessness after a falling out with my mother over my suicide attempt and drug abuse. His mother didn't exactly 'want' me there, I recall her exact words being a dismissive 'well we can't have you living on the street can we' as she looked away from me. I said back then his parents were getting a divorce, they did, we found ourselves an apartment and moved in together and have lived here ever since. At the time I was upset about using behind his back. He knows I'm using now, but since for most of the time I've been fairly functional, he's managed to cope with it. He still hates it and wish's I didn't use at all, but he knows he can't make me stop and we both still love each other after these years and still want to be together.

A while before I made my first post I had managed to get some clean time up following my suicide attempt. But by the time I made that post, I was starting to use opiates again, I had been a heroin user which I had hidden from my mother for a long time, she knew something was wrong, she just didn't suspect it was as bad as it was. After I was put in hospital I got clean, but the temptation, thinking about drugs, every day, it just doesn't go away.

Am I an addict? I have called myself one before, and looking at it on paper, it's hard to consider for a moment that it's even a question up for debate, but still to this day I can't feel with confidence that I am.

Every time I feel sad, or scared, or think about the emotional pain I've had to suffer all my life, I want to get high, I just want to feel good.

I've smoked weed, I've used speed, I've smoked for years, I drink. Apart from smoking though, all of those I can stop, and not think about. I can use from time to time and not have a problem. Even smoking, the only other vice that's close, I managed to quit for months, and if it weren't for a huge unlucky set back I think I might have made it into the long term, I think I can quit that. I had reached the point of rarely thinking about cigarettes until someone had to go and make it her mission to hurt me. But I believe I can do it again.

But opioids... I just can't imagine never using them again. They're like a trusted friend that has always been there for you. Sure they've hurt you before, they're high maintenance, and some people in your life don't approve of the company you keep, but they just don't understand them. How how much you've been through together. How they were there to help me when noone else was.

I've made so many mistakes, I can't begin to imagine how much money I have spent on drugs over the years, it has to be a lot of digits. I asked if I was really an addict. I have thought about drugs every day for what feels like forever. Apart from a few stretches being clean, I have used virtually every day for years at a time. Thinking every day about how I'm going to pay for my next dose, racked up enormous debt that I have a lot of trouble paying off to pay for my drugs. For the first time recently I seriously contemplated cheating on the love of my life when I've been offered drugs in exchange for sex. I didn't do it, but it still seems laughable as I write it down to suggest I'm not just another junkie like so many others I know.

But still, just like I said years ago, I don't really want to quit. Even when my tolerance reaches a point where I'm more offsetting withdrawal rather than getting high, I still prefer that over true sobriety. I know what some would say, that perhaps I just haven't had enough pain resulting from my addiction to make me stop. I haven't gone to prison yet, or lost everything. I don't want that to happen, but what would I do if I were sober either? How long would I have to be clean before I wouldn't think about it all the time. And worse than that, would I ever be able to feel happy again? I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't be happy without drugs. I've had therapy before, psychiatrists, psychologists, but I don't think they can fix me. They can't undo the life I've had or make me someone else. And they can't make me forget all the pain that drugs let me forget.

There are so many competing things I want, I want my relationship to last, I don't want to quit drugs, I want to some day have a future where I don't feel the need to be high to survive. And I don't want drugs to ruin my life more so than they already have. While not wanting to live with how I feel without them. I can't have it all.

Who else here has been in a similar situation? How does it turn out in the long run?

As I said 2 years and 4 months ago, I don't even know why I wrote all this, guess it just feels good to write it down. As totally self-pitying as it probably sounds.

 

[cj]

I read what you wrote and your not alone.

 

[herbavore]

I don't think it is self-pity. I think a lot of people write things down here for a very healthy reason: they want to get it out where they can look at it themselves and also to risk seeing how others see their situation. When you wrote towards the end of your post about what you want you say that you want to keep using drugs and you don't want to keep using drugs. This may seem confused but I don't think it really is. You want something for your emotional pain and drugs do work to numb or mask that pain. But as your experience is showing you as days turn into years, they also create much more pain in your day to day life as well as allowing that original pain to fester and grow unchecked. Get to the root of what makes you unhappy and find real tools that you can use to strengthen yourself rather than holding your self in a weakened position and adding shame and guilt on top of it all.

 

[WantToBeReborn]

Wanting to use drugs to numb feelings and avoid dealing with life is addiction in a nutshell. I too used to romanticise my opiate use and think of it as a friend that kept me company through hard times in life, but it is no friend, it is a demon that sucks you in deeper and deeper until you're on your knees. Drugs cannot replace people and can't block out the realities of life forever. I know, as I tried.

Everyone has to come to the point of desperation in their own way and that desperation is the gift that makes us finally stop using. Some people have to lose everything, some people are on the verge of losing things. It sounds like you are not at that place yet.

 

[cj]

Everyone has to come to the point of desperation in their own way and that desperation is the gift that makes us finally stop using. Some people have to lose everything, some people are on the verge of losing things. It sounds like you are not at that place yet.

I just don't agree with this line of thinking. I hear that all the time from people and I just think its dangerous. I know for me the only thing I have to lose is my life. That's it. I think people start agreeing with your line of thinking out of the pure frustration of trying to treat a brain disease as a moral problem. People who have been addicted as long as OP don't use opiates because they romanticize them. We fully realize its fucking us up. We use because it relieves the pain. That's why I am such a big advocate for maintenance in these situations. The probability of OP waking up tommorow and never using opiates again is near zero. While the probability that methadone or suboxone combined with counseling can at least slow the progression of the disease is much higher.

 

[herbavore]

And yet, you hear over and over of people that do receive that final push for survival from the most intense desperation. I don't think WantToBeReborn is necessarily referring to the debatable "hitting bottom" concept--rather, he seems to be saying something that I really believe (having lived it) and that is that the hardest times in your life present the most profound opportunities for change. Maintenance for some people is a life-saving positive thing and for others it is a trap that ends up feeling just as desperate and life-defeating as their original opiate habit. I think everyone needs to decide that for themselves. Seeing what people go through here on BL when they want to get off subs or methadone would make me think long and hard about getting on either one. Still, I want to emphasize that I do agree with your last prescription (maintenance and counseling) for people who know that is the best and most sure way to go.

I did just read a good blog about the ambivalence of addiction here.

 

[nygiants1313]

I read what you wrote and your not alone.

This. Many of us battle this shit every goddaymm day. All day every day. Its like my second job is either trying to get drugs, which is exhausting or fighting cravings which is exhausting on too of a normal job blahhh, and unless you lived it you'll never understand it. Such is life

 

[WantToBeReborn]

I just don't agree with this line of thinking. I hear that all the time from people and I just think its dangerous. I know for me the only thing I have to lose is my life. That's it. I think people start agreeing with your line of thinking out of the pure frustration of trying to treat a brain disease as a moral problem. People who have been addicted as long as OP don't use opiates because they romanticize them. We fully realize its fucking us up. We use because it relieves the pain. That's why I am such a big advocate for maintenance in these situations. The probability of OP waking up tommorow and never using opiates again is near zero. While the probability that methadone or suboxone combined with counseling can at least slow the progression of the disease is much higher.

Nothing dangerous about it - it is simply a cold, hard reality that we don't want to confront while in active addiction. I hated it when people said it to me and often wondered how much more desperate did I have to get. The reality is you're not desperate enough yet if you don't want to quit and are not willing to do anything to quit and when I got to that point, I got radical about it when I decided to quit for once and for all. Using opiates to relieve emotional pain IS romanticising them. It is believing that the solution to life problems is in a drug, a drug that is slowly killing us, spiritually, mentally, physically and emotionally. Opiates for pain is a short term fix to a long term problem. Emotional pain is a long term problem and opiates make it worse.

I don't buy into your comments on the probability of the OP's chances of quitting and not using opiates again being zero. No one can make that determination over another. It's not our place to write off others. Even the most hopeless addict can find recovery if they want it badly enough. I also said the only thing I had to lose was my life, until I actually nearly lost it then I woke right up. Something must come from within. Maintenance is a means to an end, it is not THE end. No one can write off anyone else. I even had doctors write me off and say I'd be on opiates forever and I still quit and don't take any opiates at all now and I've never been happier or more free and I was suffering from the worst emotional pain a human being can ever experience. Never say never - it CAN be done.

 

[cj]

I came on a little strong there. Real life arguments and situations spilling into my online life. Projection at its finest. So my apologies. The last thing i want to do is write someone off so if it came off like that then thats my fuck up and i apoligize. People can sometimes do amazing things under extremely adverse situations. I would guess its a survival mechanism. We have a 6th sense to jump out of the pot before it boils us to death. I have no idea what Jess is going to do. I just recognize the desperation in those words all too well. Seeing people suffer sucks. And I often think its the struggle between our selves over our decision to use or not that wrecks our psyche.

 

[myloveishim]

I don't buy into your comments on the probability of the OP's chances of quitting and not using opiates again being zero. No one can make that determination over another. It's not our place to write off others. Even the most hopeless addict can find recovery if they want it badly enough. I also said the only thing I had to lose was my life, until I actually nearly lost it then I woke right up. Something must come from within. Maintenance is a means to an end, it is not THE end. No one can write off anyone else. I even had doctors write me off and say I'd be on opiates forever and I still quit and don't take any opiates at all now and I've never been happier or more free and I was suffering from the worst emotional pain a human being can ever experience. Never say never - it CAN be done.

I completely agree!!! And as far as maintenance goes, if you can successfully use them as a means of tapering to quit then I'm all for it. But more often than not, people (like me) use it as a crutch. Oh as long as I take my suboxone, I'll never want to get high again. That lasted for a few years, then my perc habit I had when starting the sub, ended with me banging h because the sub took my tolerance well beyond the perc days. Today I type this 102 days clean and sober from everything! I went cold turkey (no clonadine or Imodium either) from 70mg of methadone and .5H. I also agree that you have to hit a bottom persay. And everyone's bottom is different. Some have to lose everything and almost their life and others just need that desperation bottom.

Good luck to everyone battling this disease. It's a nasty one. But just for today I will go to bed completing another 24hrs clean

 

[Erikmen]

Today I read the very first post I made to bluelight, I had just turned 24, I was scared then too.

My exact words were along the lines of "I'm stupid because for the first time in my life I have someone who loves me ..., and I love him and yet I feel like a helpless passenger as I watch the rest of me try and ruin both of our lives."

I'm 26 now and I can safely say I feel exactly the same today.

At the time I had been living with my boyfriend and his parents for nearly 2 years after he convinced his mother to let him rescue me from homelessness after a falling out with my mother over my suicide attempt and drug abuse. His mother didn't exactly 'want' me there, I recall her exact words being a dismissive 'well we can't have you living on the street can we' as she looked away from me. I said back then his parents were getting a divorce, they did, we found ourselves an apartment and moved in together and have lived here ever since. At the time I was upset about using behind his back. He knows I'm using now, but since for most of the time I've been fairly functional, he's managed to cope with it. He still hates it and wish's I didn't use at all, but he knows he can't make me stop and we both still love each other after these years and still want to be together.

A while before I made my first post I had managed to get some clean time up following my suicide attempt. But by the time I made that post, I was starting to use opiates again, I had been a heroin user which I had hidden from my mother for a long time, she knew something was wrong, she just didn't suspect it was as bad as it was. After I was put in hospital I got clean, but the temptation, thinking about drugs, every day, it just doesn't go away.

Am I an addict? I have called myself one before, and looking at it on paper, it's hard to consider for a moment that it's even a question up for debate, but still to this day I can't feel with confidence that I am.

Every time I feel sad, or scared, or think about the emotional pain I've had to suffer all my life, I want to get high, I just want to feel good.

I've smoked weed, I've used speed, I've smoked for years, I drink. Apart from smoking though, all of those I can stop, and not think about. I can use from time to time and not have a problem. Even smoking, the only other vice that's close, I managed to quit for months, and if it weren't for a huge unlucky set back I think I might have made it into the long term, I think I can quit that. I had reached the point of rarely thinking about cigarettes until someone had to go and make it her mission to hurt me. But I believe I can do it again.

But opioids... I just can't imagine never using them again. They're like a trusted friend that has always been there for you. Sure they've hurt you before, they're high maintenance, and some people in your life don't approve of the company you keep, but they just don't understand them. How how much you've been through together. How they were there to help me when noone else was.

I've made so many mistakes, I can't begin to imagine how much money I have spent on drugs over the years, it has to be a lot of digits. I asked if I was really an addict. I have thought about drugs every day for what feels like forever. Apart from a few stretches being clean, I have used virtually every day for years at a time. Thinking every day about how I'm going to pay for my next dose, racked up enormous debt that I have a lot of trouble paying off to pay for my drugs. For the first time recently I seriously contemplated cheating on the love of my life when I've been offered drugs in exchange for sex. I didn't do it, but it still seems laughable as I write it down to suggest I'm not just another junkie like so many others I know.

But still, just like I said years ago, I don't really want to quit. Even when my tolerance reaches a point where I'm more offsetting withdrawal rather than getting high, I still prefer that over true sobriety. I know what some would say, that perhaps I just haven't had enough pain resulting from my addiction to make me stop. I haven't gone to prison yet, or lost everything. I don't want that to happen, but what would I do if I were sober either? How long would I have to be clean before I wouldn't think about it all the time. And worse than that, would I ever be able to feel happy again? I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't be happy without drugs. I've had therapy before, psychiatrists, psychologists, but I don't think they can fix me. They can't undo the life I've had or make me someone else. And they can't make me forget all the pain that drugs let me forget.

There are so many competing things I want, I want my relationship to last, I don't want to quit drugs, I want to some day have a future where I don't feel the need to be high to survive. And I don't want drugs to ruin my life more so than they already have. While not wanting to live with how I feel without them. I can't have it all.

Who else here has been in a similar situation? How does it turn out in the long run?

As I said 2 years and 4 months ago, I don't even know why I wrote all this, guess it just feels good to write it down. As totally self-pitying as it probably sounds.

Don´t focus on what you haven´t achieved yet. That´s just punishing yourself. What can you do to solve this from now on?
Try to make a plan, something easy to cope. Something that you know you can accomplish.
We all have been there, and you will find lots of help here.

 

[JessFR]

Thanks to everyone who replied.

I don't know what I'm going to do, I do know right now I'm starting to feel the early signs of withdrawal, and I hate it. I was just reading up on PAWS, nothing I didn't already know about it, but it was still enough to make me feel like I want to throw up. Does it ever end? Does anyone ever reach a point of forgetting about using? Let alone what lead me to use. Ugh, it's so confusing, and like I'm being pulled in different directions. When I feel like this, it reminds me how much of a slave I am. But I know as soon as I use, I'll feel so much better.

While maintenance therapy could probably help a lot, there's so much going on in my head. Even if I really did want to quit and was committed to it, which I'm not, what does the future hold for me then either? There's all the psychological problems that lead me to heroin, to trying it, to needing it. Then there's the damage to my life the drugs have been apart of. There's also the fact that nearly all of my oldest friends are drug users and several of them use the same drugs as me. I'm sure I don't have to say how impossible it all feels.

I feel like a part of me already knows in my heart where this is going to lead me eventually. I'll lose everything everything before I stop for good. Maybe not, but I don't like my chances. I'm feeling dysphoric and anxious which is no doubt increasing my natural pessimism. I appreciate everyone trying to help. I wish I could say something like "I see now, I'll stop using today, I'm done". But I'm sure everyone knew this thread wouldn't end that way. The support is appreciated nonetheless.

Maybe I'll go to an NA meeting again sometime, I haven't been to one in years, Obviously I can't share if I'm using but I could at least talk to people after the meeting. I dunno.

I don't want to be a slave to the needle, I just don't want to suffer anymore. I don't feel suicidal as I once did, I just don't know any other way to cope. I wonder to myself if anyone ever gets over the kind of things as bad or worse that I've gone through, or if all they have is a life that's 'good enough' to keep living. Why can't I just get over it? I was abused when I was little, it was ignored and dismissed, the people that hurt me got away with it, that's what happened, but that was a long time ago. When will it finally be gone from my mind once and for all.

 

[myloveishim]

You can still share at NA meetings btw. In the ones I attend there's a segment dedicated to just that. "Is there anyone who feels like using and wants to talk about it?" Also there is "anyone feel like using but don't want to talk about it?" Then at the very end should be a "burning desire" segment.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

Am I an addict?

Forget about this question, it's not important.

Ask yourself instead whether you are happy with the way your life is. If the answer is no ask yourself what would make it better (this might not be as obvious as you would think). Ask yourself how you are going to get from where you are now to where you want to be. Do it.

Changing your your relationship with substances might be part of this process (or having read your post I would posit it should certainly be in my opinion, but my opinion isn't important). I've really come to the conclusion that all the wondering about whether you need to consider yourself an addict that everyone in a similar situation must go through at some point, and all the stress of having to 'accept' that you are what ever this random sequence of sounds or shapes is (which no one can even agree on anyway) is totally counter-productive and distracts from the process of making change.


Drugs might be the primary thing destroying someone, I would venture that they are very rarely the only thing that needs to change for recovery to happen though. Obsessing over whether you are a certain word that doesn't even have an accepted definition just seems like madness, and that's come from someone that's done a lot of it. What do you want...how do you get it...do it. As far as I'm concerned any discussion that is extraneous to that structure is irrelevant and wasted time and effort.

That's just my opinion though.

 

[JessFR]

You can still share at NA meetings btw. In the ones I attend there's a segment dedicated to just that. "Is there anyone who feels like using and wants to talk about it?" Also there is "anyone feel like using but don't want to talk about it?" Then at the very end should be a "burning desire" segment.

Interesting, none of mine have done that and I've been to quite a few meeting formats. Though my home group at the time I last went regularly was a local womens group, though I always kinda felt really young, not many in their 20s. Fine for a sponsor but it made it harder to relate to people sharing who'd had such a long clean time by comparison, also not as many heroin addicts as a gender mixed group. I went to mixed group plenty of times as well, but I never felt quite as safe there. Lot of 13th stepping was going on at the time.

I actually meant more that you are meant to be sober if you share. Which would mean I would rarely be there being more than a day or so clean. Still, I might go sometime, especially now that I'm smoking again since that was the biggest thing recently making me want to going, for obvious reasons.

Another day down, hurting for a fix in my last post, now without saying anything too in depth and possibly triggering... I feel much better. It won't last, it never does. Just more money in my veins to cheat pain for just a little while longer, and just a little while after that...

 

[Erikmen]

You are the only one who can change this. If I did, I´m sure you can!
Maybe you just have to decide. Once that is taken care of, you will find your own patch..
Even if there is nothing else you can think of, you can always rely on subs or methadone.
You can do it!

 

[myloveishim]

Either way I can almost assure you they'd rather have you there just a day or days clean or even high than not have you come back at all. High or not you're always welcome at a NA meeting.