Benzos are the only thing I've got into a habit with, without noticing. I've been on and off opiates for years, and it always starts the same way: once a week (usually Friday or Saturday night), then twice a week (Friday AND Saturday night), then three times... five times... seven times - and then twice a day (once in the morning and once in the evening) and so on. I love opiates. Too much. I don't plan to completely stop using them. I plan to work on my moderation.
The thing is, though, with opiate abuse I see it coming from a mile off and I always feel that it's my decision (pretty fucking poor decision but mine, nonetheless) to let it go so far until I reach a point where I basically have to stop (due to lack of money/supply) and suffer the fallout. When it starts to get out of hand I have mental battles with myself:
Me1: no way are you using anything today. You swore on your mother's grave that you'd get back on to the clean path from this day...
Me2: what? fuck you and your mother! Gimme gimme!
Me1: oh... whatever... I can't be bothered arguing. Just do it (TM of Nike)
Then when the cycle is over I take a nice break for a couple of months and enjoy sobriety, and then start again. It's a rough way to go, but in my own sick way I like the contrasts. I actually get a lot out of this cycle.
BUT, benzos on the other hand...8(
The first thing they do is quietly erase that part of my mind - the logic and self-preservation center - which causes the internal struggles, so there's no question about me having more or if I've had too much. The only internal comment I get when I'm on a benzo binge is "fuck it. who cares?" No insight is allowed to get through the benzo wall of mental fuzz to alert me to the fact that I'm getting into dangerous territory.
And ironically, this -
- is one of the reasons I got into a benzo habit. I DON'T find them recreational at all. I actually thought that I wouldn't have a problem with them because I don't enjoy them. I mean, why would you do something that you don't enjoy over and over? Isn't that bizarre? Isn't that benzos? Yes.
I started using them to come down from stims. Once every now and then. Then I occasionally took one when I had insomnia. Good. Functional, not fun.
Somehow, it went from the above, to daily use of etizolam, diazepam and/or clonazepam (which was my favourite). And somehow it went from a week of daily use ("ah fuck it, one week's no big deal"), to a month, to three months - and then a month later a catalyst occured which caused me to awaken my senses just enough to start a taper and get off.
I'm not in the clear yet but I haven't taken any benzos for a week and I don't plan to any time soon. The clarity which has come back to me in this last week scares me silly. I lost so much time (memories gone), money, and substances in those months, and it's just a big blur of nothing.
So....
You certainly are not the only one. I'm not proud of it either. Good luck with getting free of benzos. Nothing I've used has taken so much and given so little.