I do appreciate everyone's input, but it depresses me that even in an environement such as this one this total abstinance NA/AA crap prevails. If NA/AA had a 64% success rate noone would have bothered creating suboxone, and while AA/NA works for some people there are very few of them, and probably 95-96% relapse at some point. I exercise every day, and run about a mile or so although I've always been active (hopping trains and traveling is mostly waiting and walking/biking/skating) I eat a healthy diet of vegetables, greens, tofu, fruit and some meat although maybe only once or twice a week. I take multivitamins, as well as D-3 B-12 and fish oil. I try to paint or play music or do something every day other than watch TV. I've been through this before many times. I take 2mg of suboxone every other day, because it's all I can afford and for what it is supposed to do it does that for me now.
That being said a lot of people in recovery don't want to be in recovery other people want it for them. Sometimes it's parents or girlfriends, wives, brothers sisters or friends. Other times it's your P.O. . I know people who don't want to be clean and trade one addiction for another because they don't want to be sober, but can't pull off their life with heroin anymore.
I think I'm getting clean for myself, not for anyone else, even though it was a convenient time to try.
So what makes benzo's so much worse than Anti Depressants or Anti Psychotics or any of that shit. They may not have abuse potential but they are addictive, you can't take them for 6 months and just stop, they taper you off. Every NA/AA meeting I've ever been to they serve coffee and have cigarette breaks. Both caffeine and nicotine are addictive and tobacco is bad for you, I've even been to some in the south where you can smoke in the meetings. But smoking weed is bad? Having a drink isn't OK? Taking a Xanax every now and again is wrong? 12 step programs are a bunch of hypocritical garbage and don't work for a lot of people. Who decided that I can keep smoking ciggarettes and drinking coffee but every thing else is going to make me relapse? You know what the best tasting ciggarette is for most junkie? That one you smoke right after getting well. and junkies drink a lot of coffee too, and we love to drink and smoke too. But AA/NA doesn't see these things as problems that will lead to relapses. But when I say I want a couple xanax a week to deal with my anxiety and panic attacks I'm suddenly trading one addiction for another or I'm leading myself to a relapse.
And Suboxone only came out a few years ago, we've all had to try and kick without it, and a lot of us have tried methadone to kick and now that we have suboxone it makes the whole process infinatly better.
So why are coffee and ciggarettes OK?
And how many of you who think I can't handle xanax have ever been really addicted to heroin? and I mean for real? at least 10 bags a day for 3+ years start shitting and puking if you don't have another shot in under 8hours and when you do get sick before getting well, you don't even get well until you get high a second time?
How many of you actually know what heroin addiction is? Because being a pill head or doing a couple bags a day or having a problem for a couple years on and off isn't the same thing. I got to the point I wanted to quit without jail time, I didn't steal from my friends and family (with the exception of one person, and it had little to do with my heroin habit), and I never sold my ass. I did live on the streets and panhandle, I've pulled some shady shit to get what I needed, and I've had my fair share of hospitalizations and abcesses from shooting up with my urine and toilet water and gutter water. If you alway used steril water or swabbed your spoon or cooker with alcohol and cleaned your injection site, or gave a fuck about what it was you were putting in your arm other than whether or not it will get you well, then you've never been a real addict with a serious problem You may have had a problem but not a full blown heroin addiction. And I know I would go back to all of that without blinking, if I relapse because that's what being an addict is to me. And if you think you never did that because you couldn't work or go to school, I have a BA in Art and another in Pre-Law, along with a full portfolio and Worked for years running a graphic design house, all while this strung out. I only started living on the streets 4 years ago, but I spent 3 years before that just as bad except I had a job and went to school and supported myself and my addiction. The first 3 years wasn't shit and I was doing dope every day for months at a time, the whole addiction those first three years was 90% in my head.
So who really knows about being a junkie, and who's just playing at it thinking it's cool to be (or have been) a "junkie"?
