• The Dark Side 💕 Welcome Guest 💕
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Notable Threads Urgent Hotlines
    Bereavement Mindfulness
    Suicide Support Anger Management
  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | Eligiu | deficiT | paranoid android

Been clean for months... will things ever be back to normal?

A

Available

Greenlighter
Joined
Apr 13, 2008
Messages
20
Hi,

I'm 19. A couple of years ago, i threw my life away with mephedrone, benzos, GBL, etc. had seizures various times from withdrawals.... had a lot of bad shit happen! So after 2 years of pretty much daily drug use, and ongoing battles with quitting various things... in January 2010 i stopped all of that!

One last addiction that i do have sadly seems to be alcohol. I'd drink a bottle of vodka each night... did that till July 2010, then switched over to a bottle of wine or two a night in late July.... then in August i didnt drink for a few weeks... was fine, then when i started getting stressed again.... i started again! I've stopped for weeks off every now and then, and don't see alcohol to be an addiction in the sense of my previous ones (i.e. i don't NEED it in order to hold back seizures from withdrawals, etc..... i just dont sleep well for the first couple of nights if i don't have it before i go to bed), and i see alcohol just to be a nice break now at the end of the day, I know i can control it and not let it become any more... thinking of quitting soon anyway!

BUT... to the point... I always thought when i quit, having been at rock bottom for so long... that everything would go back to how "wonderful" (from my relative perspective) it was before. Sure... family problems have gone away... i'm far more healthy... i don't look like Jack Skellington from nightmare before christmas anymore.... But still... i feel i've never been able to get my real self back.

I used to be very outgoing, very confident, and thinking of how i was then, compared to now... i wish i'd never had the drugs to initially push me further socially. Now I'm not very good with meeting new people.... I shy away from conversation, because i find it difficult to think of things to say... I also am AMAZINGLY paranoid about who i can trust, so don't really have any close friends because i find it very difficult to trust people (when coming out of my addiction, i made a lot of money *ill let you all guess how* and people i thought were my friends were just friends for the money... now thats all run out.... theyve took off, and left me feeling very alone). After every night out with friends.... i always come home thinking they hate me, and then drink to try to stop thinking about it. Obviously it transpires they dont hate me and its just my mind thinking ive always done something wrong... or not been the fun person i wish i could be and know i should be!!

I thought by now, 11 months after i've stopped, things would be back to normal... yet i still cant connect with people socially, and still get horribly depressed. I'm guessing this is the right forum to ask about recovering from an addiction, and just wanted to know if this is just the way it is when coming off a 2 year drug addiction even a year down the line... Has anyone been through similar times? Got any advice on how i can try to get things better?

thanks in advance
 
i takes a looooong time buddy. i started recovery in late april 2010 and it felt so amazing and easy in the beginning....now, after a few weeks of relapse in october, i feel like i'm starting from scratch....you really need therapy, it truly helps, or atleast go to a group or a meeting once or twice a week....think of how much time you used to devote to using and partying. We have to dedicate just as much to getting better and clean! I found that filling up your schedule, or daily routine, as much as you can makes a big difference....stay busy with different things
 
I'll try to keep this simple. Things will go back to "normal" as far as you feeling whole again, but it will take time as your brain has been altered by years of chemicals. People often make the mistake of believing that as soon as they sober up, they'll be happy again and this just isn't true. Sometimes people even need a little help via anti-depressents (I know I did, I took Lexapro for eight months after sobering up and it helped me a ton; when I felt as if I was back on my feet, I stopped taking it and I have been good ever since). It can be really hard to keep up with being sober when you hit this proverbial wall and it feels as if things will never go back to the way they were. I promise you that they will.

Technically though, things will never be the same, but that's mostly because drugs change people A LOT. Learn from what you've experienced and take it with a grain of salt. You will come out wiser, stronger, and better in the end, so in a way things will even be better if you keep on this path. I hope you feel better.

One more thing: If you do a quick search in TDS for threads similar to this you will find a lot of posts that can help you out. If you ever need anyone who knows what you're experiencing to talk to, you are more than welcome to PM me.
 
Ultimately, things will never be "back to normal", but IMO, you cannot expect them to be. The decisions we make in our lives change who we are and our futures. Regardless of what we do, we cannot expect things to stay the same under any circumstances. The important thing is not that things go back to "normal (whatever that is)," but instead, that they get better.

No, it will never be like it was, but it will get better. Each day will be slightly, or maybe even greatly, better than the previous day. This is what recovery is about and what it is by definition.

God Bless.
 
One thing to remember is that you would have changed significantly between 17 and 19 anyway. Things can't go "back to normal" for you because you can't go back to being 17.

What you can do is look at what kind of "normal" you'd like your life to be now and what steps you can take to make that happen.
 
Thanks guys, some very insightful and relevant help there!

Regarding the antidepressants post.... i do actually have a couple weeks worth of citalopam (or whatever its called) that i remember getting from a doctor half way through my addiction when i was trying to stop, thinking that taking SSRI's would force me not to take my serotogenic drugs... can't really remember a year of the addiction though because i was popping so many benzos... so not too sure how that plan actually worked out for me! Guessing badly...

But i was considering trying out the antidepressants, and seeing whether they helped. HOWEVER, i remember i tried it once in March or so of this year.... my pupils got large.... i was sweating and it felt like taking a nasty pill really! Didnt want to take any on the following days, especially because if my family saw me wide-eyed they'd think i'd turned back to drugs! Is it normal for you to get big pupils the first few times from anti depressants, and does it subside after a few days? I REALLY think that antidepressants could help me a lot, yet do worry that everyone will think i'm just on stuff again!

Also, something that has been bugging me recently is that i CAN NOT cry about my situation.... I used to cry ALL the time when i was fucked up on chemicals about how bad my addictions were.... yet i find now no matter how down i feel about the mess i've made, and all the people and things i threw away when i was a wreck... i just can't cry about that! Always try to because i think it will help... yet I feel very detached from my feelings and emotions now, i don't really feel much at all like i used to in that department. Have any of you had similar experiences in recovery?

Thanks again for all of your help, really is nice to know there are people that can help me out there. Good luck to all of you in recovery, my thoughts are with you all.
 
^^^

One thing I've often found when I can't cry about my own situation is that the tears will often come in relation to something else - a movie, a post I read online, something on the news, but always something from which I can distance myself.

It's not unusual to feel detached from your emotions and some of that can be self-protective - feeling as though you'll be overwhelmed and consumed by them. It can often be helpful to explore those feelings in a structured, controlled setting like therapy when you're ready to start dealing with them, but there's no set time-frame in which you "should" do that just like there's no particular way you "should" feel about the past.

Antidepressants should not have any effects which are noticeable to others unless you have an adverse reaction to them - in which case the change will be a behavioural one (either mania or a worsening of depression) and you need to be aware of it as soon as possible.
 
showup at a N/A meeting.. and take home the first hottie you see and bang her. But don't get high together! ahhhh
 
Things should get back to normal for you. 4-methylmethcathinone (mephedrone) has a tendency to cause people to not feel right, and I can't tell you that this isn't going to be long lasting because it's a relatively new research chemical, and we don't know a lot about it.

If things don't get better, I would consider going to a psychiatrist, or a neurologist possibly.

Consider yourself lucky to have been able to quit, and stay clean for months now. It took me at least a year after having quit using to feel back to normal. The only drug I was addicted to was heroin, and I wasn't using massive quantities of it.

I hope that things are looking up for you in the near future.
 
It's definitely a struggle and there is no set time that you can mark on a calendar, you'll heal in your own way and in your own time.

I know how it feels when you come out of a couple year period of intense drug abuse, it really throws you for a loop, but it can make you a much stronger and wiser person. Everyone goes through hard times, try not to get too down about it or at least don't be hard on yourself. All that confidence that you had while you were high you can find again sober, you just need to tap into that feeling of confidence and you can bring it back to use again now that you are sober.

Try and forget about feeling normal and just allow yourself to feel how you feel, there is no normal, I think normal or at least the general consensus of what normal is, is one of the greatest threats to our mental health.

The best is yet to come. Try and think like that, you're thoughts more than anything determine how you feel, so don't despair, you haven't lost anything you can't get back. Just try and stay positive. I know it's a struggle but I also know you can get through this.
 
starting to wonder the same thing. Sometimes I feel great and other times I feel unfullfilled......all in the same day. Guess PAW's have started to kick in, because at least twice a day for the last 3 days i try to convince myself it's ok to take opiates. Gonn try to refocus those thoughts to somthing more positve when they seep into my head today. I have been able to not let the craving get to me yet. 32 days at 4pm..........so I gotta keep it up! One day at a time.......

It was weird as soon as the opiates left my system for good was the best I felt. I was in a great mood, had energy........the last week Ive been dragging ass.
 
well i didnt read all the posts but can say that when i was 21 i decided to quit everything and i meen everything ,,i got sent to detox and even refused help with meds for my WDs and after detox i went into the smith clinic in t bay to go threw the program..and i must say that it was hard but it worked i got back everything aaa,,got healthy again started eating 3 squares a day worked out and followed the program..and once out of the 8 weeks in the program i went into a halfway house for awhile ,,i didnt stay clean and sober for long but those 4 or 5 months i felt better than i ever did ,,i just happend to relaps and never turned back to being clean and sober again,,and now after 22 more years of abuse i finaly went in yesterday to get on methadone for my pain and WDs ,,all i can say is if you realy want to get back to normal and thinking straight again with a clear head and shit try it out go threw a program and go to NA and AA meetings ,find a good sponcer and go from there,,,I never thought in a million years i could get back to normal,,but i did ,,i just happend to fuck it all up...and am gonna start all over again all these years later once again...
best of luck..OP.
One thing i didnt think i would ever get back was a normal way of thinking and didnt expect to get my memory back but i did..its was great while it lasted,wish i never fd up then im sure my life would have turned out far better than it has......
 
excercise, strong b vitamin complex, eat lots of good food, fish/ cheese/ nuts and complex carbohydrates and cut out any sugary drinks or sugary food (by that i mean literally anything with sugar in it) and cut out caffeine in time if you drink it.

seriously mood disorders are very strongly influenced by little thing's we put in our body

for the record i am diagnosed bipolar and haven't had an episode in any direction for over a year now. i do drink more alcohol than i should but who is perfect. more importantly i don't get paranoid the way i used to. this has to come from a change in your thinking style. and cutting all sugar and glucose out of the diet even avoiding sweet fruit as it seems to trigger rage and paranoia in me.
 
Available said:
Hi,

I'm 19. A couple of years ago, i threw my life away with mephedrone, benzos, GBL, etc. had seizures various times from withdrawals.... had a lot of bad shit happen! So after 2 years of pretty much daily drug use, and ongoing battles with quitting various things... in January 2010 i stopped all of that!

One last addiction that i do have sadly seems to be alcohol. I'd drink a bottle of vodka each night... did that till July 2010, then switched over to a bottle of wine or two a night in late July.... then in August i didnt drink for a few weeks... was fine, then when i started getting stressed again.... i started again! I've stopped for weeks off every now and then, and don't see alcohol to be an addiction in the sense of my previous ones (i.e. i don't NEED it in order to hold back seizures from withdrawals, etc..... i just dont sleep well for the first couple of nights if i don't have it before i go to bed), and i see alcohol just to be a nice break now at the end of the day, I know i can control it and not let it become any more... thinking of quitting soon anyway!

BUT... to the point... I always thought when i quit, having been at rock bottom for so long... that everything would go back to how "wonderful" (from my relative perspective) it was before. Sure... family problems have gone away... i'm far more healthy... i don't look like Jack Skellington from nightmare before christmas anymore.... But still... i feel i've never been able to get my real self back.

I used to be very outgoing, very confident, and thinking of how i was then, compared to now... i wish i'd never had the drugs to initially push me further socially. Now I'm not very good with meeting new people.... I shy away from conversation, because i find it difficult to think of things to say... I also am AMAZINGLY paranoid about who i can trust, so don't really have any close friends because i find it very difficult to trust people (when coming out of my addiction, i made a lot of money *ill let you all guess how* and people i thought were my friends were just friends for the money... now thats all run out.... theyve took off, and left me feeling very alone). After every night out with friends.... i always come home thinking they hate me, and then drink to try to stop thinking about it. Obviously it transpires they dont hate me and its just my mind thinking ive always done something wrong... or not been the fun person i wish i could be and know i should be!!

I thought by now, 11 months after i've stopped, things would be back to normal... yet i still cant connect with people socially, and still get horribly depressed. I'm guessing this is the right forum to ask about recovering from an addiction, and just wanted to know if this is just the way it is when coming off a 2 year drug addiction even a year down the line... Has anyone been through similar times? Got any advice on how i can try to get things better?

thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Quit drinking, wean yourself off it. Stock up on 5-htp,sounds like your brain is craving serotonin.
 
i wonder the same...the most days sober i ever got was 30 days i think. i just cant stand being sober. its almost like i NEED drugs to live, to get thru everyday. i hate being sober. but im starting to hate always being fucked up. cause after 7 years of this bs it gets old and not even enjoyable anymore:[
 
dralexpatterson said:
Quit drinking, wean yourself off it. Stock up on 5-htp,sounds like your brain is craving serotonin.
Click to expand...

Was taking 5HTP for a couple of months!

One day i took 7 x 150mg capsules, and genuinely felt like i was of mephedrone for 5minutes or so!

Aside from that, too 3 pills a day and it did help improve my mood.

Found that after a couple of months though that it stopped working and just made me feel worse later in the day, so decided to stop taking it for a while.
 
didn't read the whole thread, but i can really identify with what you're talking about.
i'm actually 16 now, and have been using drugs since i was 13 or 14, but i've only been using
heavily for the past couple of months.

stopping abruptly has actually never been an issue for me; what REALLY drives me to keep using is the uncomfortable feeling i have around people, i feel very apathetic towards them, and i feel no excitement about the things that we're doing.

but anyway, i really hope you're able to feel good again, keep us posted about how you're doing!
this post hits very close to home for me because of the substances you're using and your age, i'm pulling for ya
 
been over a month a I awake at 5am everyday. not sure why it just keeps happenin....every morning like clock work. Not a horrible deal though as I usually try to get to bed about 10pm-11pm or so and i fall asleep with ease.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top