I’ve been following this thread long enough now that I’m starting to feel vested in jessepinkman’s recovery! There’s a lot of great advice in the recent threads here and I don’t know if I can add anything else other than some moral support and to elaborate a bit based on my shared experience.
I tried both meth and coke and initially preferred meth which felt more euphoric, but after 10 years of meth use I started to lose the magic; significantly increased tolerance, decreasing euphoria and comedowns from hell. It’s a miracle I kept using that drug it made me feel so horrible for days after.
Then I tried coke again. Although there was some stim cross tolerance, the euphoria was now way better than meth and I loved the shorter duration which actually allowed me to sleep better. I realized that sleep deprivation was the most significant component of my comedowns. That and dehydration. Ironically, the worst parts of the comedown were not due to the drug itself, but to things that I actually had some control over. I gorged on coke initially; a gram a day for a while, but then moderated back to periodic use, like I did with meth. How did I do this?
There’s several things that have so far kept stims from ruining my life and they are all equally important. First, I always acknowledge to myself that stims will take my life one day if they control my use and not the other way around. I really don’t want to die! Second, and this may seem counterintuitive, but I don’t try to convince myself I need to quit and never use coke again. I love coke so much that the thought of quitting forever is a hard pill to swallow and can have the reverse effect of making me think “fuck it”. It’s a bit like trying to convince yourself you’re never going to have sex again - good luck with that. Instead, I use it more as a reward system. If I take a day off, I call that a small victory and reward myself with some coke the next day. If I fuck up and break my pattern (which is inevitable), I feel bad but I don’t beat myself up. I’m just human. I focus on the overall small, repeated victories. By giving your body breaks, you are also reducing the stress on your body and the likelihood of drug induced illness down the road. A big win. More on this later. Also keep in mind that if you manage to go from daily use to every other day use, you have just reduced your habit by a whopping 50%! If you succeed with that first step, it is you who is now starting to control the drug, not the other way around. If you make it to this stage, the next step is to add an additional day off, and so forth.
There’s a catch to all this, without which your efforts will invariably fail. It’s critical how you spend your days off. You MUST reward your body with other things that give you some of those feel good chemicals, dopamine or endorphins. If there is anything you love to do, plan for it, and do it. If there isn’t, take a chance on something new. Hell, go skydiving or bungee jumping on your day off. I guarantee it will give you a rush. And more confidence in yourself. Go to your favorite restaurant, or go see an action flick. Even going for a run or a long walk will give you some endorphins. Exercise and a good diet are critical things. Maybe even try a new non-addictive drug. If you haven’t tried LSD, it can knock your socks off and allows you to look at your life from an entirely unique perspective. It sounds like you’ve got sufficient funds to try many new things and that’s a huge leg up!
Reconnect with a friend or take a risk and try to make a new one. Doing active things with a friend is a huge distraction in addition to social support. The bottom line is, if you don’t have something good to do on your day off, you are guaranteed to relapse to daily use. It’s the harsh reality of addiction.
If you manage to increase the break time between use, and to fill that time with meaningful things, something amazing happens. Feelings of depression and helplessness start to fade and you will wake up one morning realizing you feel better and more motivated than you can remember. It’s an amazing feeling that can snowball and becomes something you value and look forward to when you relapse.
I haven’t achieved the perfect balance and I’m certainly no model for drug use or drug recovery, but these things have worked for me to a large degree. I hope you find something helpful in here. I am so rooting for you.
You got this jesse
