A Year Since My First Shot... Jesus Christ man...

[snazzy_sn]

I guess this can be summarized like so... I know how to battle my drug addiction, but how the fuck can I overcome my obsession with the needle?

By some an odd mistake it was somehow brought to my mind that it's been almost a year since I coughed up my soul in the parking lot of a gas station in Roswell, NM after being given an injection containing almost half a gram of what's known throughout eastern new mexico as "alien shit". a very high quality meth, and through a bizarre series of events i wound up in the home of it's source being treated as a friend of the family.

I left Roswell the next day with three grams of alien shit and my first needles. I have been a slave to intravenous meth ever since.
I've spent four months of the last year in jail, one month on the run, two months doing well, followed by however long it's been since i relapsed.
Even in my periods of sobriety, the needle is a mental obsession way beyond anything I've ever experienced.
I've spent many restless nights visualizing a cloud of blood and a plunger and all of that good stuff.
At some point I was resigned to dying young, and began treating every shot like I was trying to die.
Half a gram, .6, .7, .8 at a time. hitting the floor. ejaculating in my pants, going blind.

I've been excercising more control lately, but my veins are getting worn out, and i'm starting to lose more and more weight, and nothing else in life seems worthwhile. the only thing keeping me from ending it is the thought of my next shot. if i'm dead i can't shoot up.

Before I began shooting, I had spent almost a year in treatment. I cannot do A.A.
I've tried almost everything in earnest, to no avail.
I'm convinced nothing short of a burning bush can save me.

I'm baffled. How can an RoA cause such a dramatic difference in the magnitude of my addiction?
I know how to treat my problem with drugs, but how do people beat the all powerful hypodermic needle?

 

[Miss Hollywood]

I can relate to this because even after two years clean I still think about the needle. I still have a few of them and every once in awhile when the cravings get really bad I'll shoot up some water just for the fuck of it. The needle is def a hard addiction to overcome. It is yet another addiction along with the drugs.

I really don't have much advice because I'm right there with ya. I still crave the needle everyday!

 

[maxalfie]

I can totally relate to the addiction to the needle itself.
My drug to inject wAs heroin and it was only once I had fucked all my veins up that I had to revert back to smoking it.
Like Miss Hollywood if I didn't have any gear then there was times that I would just inject plain water just to go through the process of injecting myself.
I have no idea why the needle itself is addictive but it certainly is.

 

[theartofwar]

I think only time can heal this. I got so hooked on the rush/pin im also in the same deal as you guys who resorted to shooting water.
My cravings now that I've been clean for a bit are always about the rush and I can't even see q tips or spoons without jonesin out. It's gotten a lot better ... When I was in rehab last I noticed it went down a lot but Soon as I was in a half way house that pin urge kept creeping up on me. I think only time will help :/ best of luck dude

 

[Missykins]

I guess the best thing to learn is that you're not in this alone. I felt the same way up to two years of getting clean, and in the beginning, I would do similar things such as shooting saline. You become addicted to the ritual just as much as you do the drug.

You say that you know how to treat your problem with drugs then why haven't you? Getting clean of both is the same thing. What are you willing to do to get clean and free of your needle fixation? It will likely include things you say that you "can't do."

 

[ProfessorBananas]

I just recently quit using opiates and pretty much everything else with the acception of alcohol and I'm finding that I spend just as much time thinking about the needle as I do the dope. I haven't done a shot of water since I've quit but I've thought about it pretty frequently. I wanna poke myself and see the blood when I register so bad that sometimes I tie off and just imagine it even though I don't have a rig to do it with. The only thing that's worked for me was relocating and just getting away from all my connections and using buddies. I can't honestly say that I wouldn't do it if I could but I'm starting to feel like more of an actual person and less of a junkie with each day I'm clean. I don't know if the desire ever goes away but I hear it gets more manageable over time. At least I hope so.

 

[Sepher]

It's simple classical conditioning IMO. You come to associate needles / injecting with the massive rush / high produced by whatever it is you're shooting, and that creates a conditioned response to the needle that IME is endorphin producing all by itself, and endorphins are addictive in their own right. You essentially have two addictions running in parallel, the addiction to the needle no longer even having all that much to do with your drug of choice. Back when I was shooting Heroin I'd often start rushing before the needle had even broken the skin. If I was rattling at the time the relief would begin before I'd even done the shot, and yes, I'd quite often shoot water when I was rattling cos it would give some momentary relief.

Only time will cure this, and you need to put the needle down and switch at least to a different ROA if you must continue to use first, though you might want to take a look at how extinction therapy is quite often used for IV users. Basically involves going through all the stages of prepping a shot right up to the point of putting the tip to the skin and going no further. The idea's that you break the association between needle and reward. Probably not very practicable outside of a clinical setting so I'm not suggesting it as an actual practice as such, but I found reading up on it helped me understand my own needle fixation and having the explanation at least for what I was experiencing made it easier to live with and let go.

 

[Mycotheologist]

I bet hypnosis will completely remove your fixation on meth. Not just that, they will be able to anchor the high in you so you won't need the drug to produce the response. I know someone who went to a hypnotherapist to help him quit cocaine and the hypnotherapist cured his addiction by anchoring the cocaine high so now he doesn't need the drug to feel like hes on cocaine. As for the compulsion to shoot up, in NLP theres this thing called the swish pattern which is geared towards precisely these kinds of things. It allows you to replace a bad habit with a good one. Its just like Pavlovs dog. You've associated banging up with the positive effects of meth.