Ive tapered myself off of opiates before. I diddnt have a long term addiction, though before I stopped my tolerance was high enough that my normal dosage would probably be 3x higher than what would be needed to kill someone with zero tolerance.
I diddnt have a dramatic battle with it and it diddnt impose much on my life. There was certainly many negative aspects physically and socially speaking, but that isnt the point right now, Im merely expressing that my experience wasnt all that difficult in the long run. Perhaps I may not be aware of what a multi year addiction is like.
I tapered myself of willingly, though this was strongly encouraged by the fact that my source went to jail, and there was no other source, and I had a massive stockpile of fentanyl, oxycontin, morphene, and a bit of dope around. A nearby college campus made accessing shit like hydrocodone somewhat trivial. I brought myself down to a reasonable dosage level within a week or two, and then was doing normal low-to-no tolerance dosages for another two weeks. Anything my body went through wasnt so bad, as I was starting to get into weightlifting a lot at this time in my life. The less I did drugs, the more I worked out. I also drank a lot of booze, which I do not suggest you do (it really, really fucked me up internally). I most certainly got very agressive for a while, was an explosive personality, and found my mind in very judgemental, critical, and aggressive head-spaces for many weeks to follow. Cannabis took the edge off. Honestly, it was very difficult resisting the temptation to find more, not because I had some sort of uncontrollable craving, but being without it felt so fucking boring. I was just bored, jaded, and fed up with sobriety. People made me angry, I couldnt handle interacting with "normal jerkoffs" and was an all around nasty person. I knew the whole time, Id go back to feeling great about everything if I just bothered looking for some shit.
But thats the point, I beat it with willpower. Nothing will reward you more. Tapering off is possible and many people do it. Its all about willpower, and being your own prophet. Know you can do it. Thats all you need. The minute you believe that you have no willpower, its over. Just wake up each day and meditate on the thought that your will is indomitable and you will overcome these childish urges and become a whole and complete person.
I became a much different person when I stopped doing hard drugs (I still do psychedelics but its a spiritual, not recreational, thing for me). I really got into athletics big time. I was on this message board all the while going through this, spewing out most of my crazy antics into these little text boxes. I used to look like a starving albino Somalian, mainly because my diet was rice crispies, ramen noodles, beer, dope, ketamine, any other hard drugs I could find. When I was tapering off dope I ended up hanging out with a bunch of jarhead marines who taught me how to power lift. I gained like 20lbs in a year and looked very different, and found myself loving the new power I felt inside of me. Now all I care about is physical form and the power it produces. I def loved being naked a lot and admiring everyone else naked too, becoming a very sexually active person was new and different for me. Seriously I was like one of the few teenage males that could give a shit about women and just wanted drugs drugs drugs (my drugs of choice diddnt leave much room for sex heh). Eventually I got into bodybuilding and my whole mentality change. It activated drives that I diddnt know I had. Friends of mine think im vein because of how much I love exercise science and working out now. People in my life now have no idea what I looked like 10-11 years ago. I willed myself from a pretty shitty street rat into a pretty powerful tiger.
This analogy came back to me when I began studying martial arts many years later. The initial phases of my training were the most mind breaking experiences Ive gone through, and Ive experienced psychedelic states probably over 1000 times (hundreds of hundreds of shroomings, had lifelong stockpiles of lucy, ran into DivineMomentsofTruth, feel at home in a k hole). Nothing broke into my mind and tripped me out like learning martial arts. I even gave up my bodybuilder frame entirely for it - when I stepped into a martial arts fighting floor for the first time, I could bench press 330lbs smoothly, shoulder shrug over 550 but my hands cant even grip it lol, I had some crazy beast strength. 6 months later I weighed 138lbs, and probably couldnt bench 135, thought I def diddnt look like I did when I was on drugs a lot, pretty ripped from doing hundreds of reps of kicks and punches. I was at the peak of health and felt higher than ever. But the real killer is learning stances. Holding something like a fighting stance for tens of minutes at a time is a fucking trip.
Its a trip not unlike tapering off dope. You can stop your pain any minute. Suffering is in the mind. You choose to suffer. Suffering is 100% choice, pain is the reality, and it can be managed with a lucid mind. If you choose to suffer, you will let yourself out of the stance, and you will have wasted your exercise in order to go back to your comfort zone. You must understand that there is no comfort zone, your willpower will allow you to exist anywhere and everywhere, in any state. Just like tapering off dope, every single moment your mind will try and be occupied with the thought of the comfort zone dope provides. It will make life easy again, it will end this difficult situation in a mere instant. Your will must understand that life begins at the edge of the comfort zone, and choosing to control your mind's choice to not suffer, to endure, is to choose life. To choose the comfort zone is to choose death. Its hard, yes. No one will use the word easy. No one in their right man can use the word impossible.
Good luck. Start working out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcW61Bb8uOo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYfNA_lmkHM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJjA9zdzgZ0
