I would like to start by saying that a friend of mine has had a traumatic past mentally & physically & he uses opiates to escape the past & present thoughts that become reality once he starts to think of what has happened & knowing there is nothing he can do to change the past.
They say time will heal wounds but its not very comforting knowing you cant change what happened & having to live with the consequences. People will always say that using drugs will not solve the problem & we all know this to be 100% accurate but for him, its escape from reality, if not for the moment &/or the several hours he is under the influence. To him, its all he has to look forward to.
So with that said & not much of details as to what the problem he has is, opiates have helped him deal with his problems more than any doctor could with any SSRI's. Bottom line is he has had some comfort with using opiates.
Hi there. I am a lot like your friend. Opiates worked for me until they stopped, which was about two years. Quitting opiates (the first time anyway) went for me like this - I decided that I had to talk seriously about my very traumatic past with a professional (in fact I'd never talk to anyone about it in any detail) or that I would end up killing myself. I was also starting to self harm at this point. About two months after I started going to therapy my therapist found me a good inpatient place to start PTSD therapy first and foremost. I coincidentally told her I was addicted to opiates on the same day she told me about this place. They told me to detox and I could come in right after.
My problems will not be solved with pharmaceuticals, but they do help me. I have majorly bad depression and whether that was caused by the traumas or I would have had it anyway doesn't matter, medication does help somewhat. There are also lots more medications than just SSRIs that help with depression. I am on a mixture of drugs that allow me to not be suicidally depressed most of the time - I still get that way sometimes, though.
I personally think therapy is the most important thing. The first thing I realized when I started PTSD therapy is that what I was experiencing was a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Using drugs was part of that. Self harm was part of that. Dependant behavior, low self esteem, negative beliefs, flashbacks or reliving, all of those are results of severe trauma and some are ways of dealing with other symptoms - ie I feel like a piece of shit so I cut myself. Or I cut myself because I am a bad person/evil/dirty/defective/*insert whatever your abuser said or implied about your worth here*.
It's a fucked up cycle and treatment can and in my case HAS started to help me became a more stable and functional human being. I'm very far from being through with therapy, in fact I'll probably always need therapy of some sort and medication, but living with PTSD and drug addiction was probably the worst thing I lived with outside of the traumas themselves (which majorly impacted my life from birth-19, opiate addiction lasted from 21-23 roughly).
I love drugs but to be able to feel like a human being, meaning to feel feelings and live in the present or at least more in the present, is an amazing feeling. I didn't even realize I was living in the horrible nightmare I was living in, I was so dissociated and trapped in my two hells - the hells of addiction and the hell of my brain, which was programmed in such a way to annihilate me if I were to physically get away from my main abusers... I can go into this more indepth however my point is that your friend can definitely get help, but it may need to be sought aggressively and with urgency and care all at once... this can make or break your friend's life - for real - I would definitely 100% be dead if I didn't stop using drugs all the time AND start getting therapy. And if somehow I wasn't dead, or up all through the end until I was dead, I'd be living in one of the worst places I can imagine besides like I said before - the original trauma(s).
The thing is this takes a lot of courage and I had to be on my last leg to try it. And it is very painful... I blocked out all emotion, good or bad, didn't matter - I was numb, nothing felt real, I didn't feel real, and death was the only way I could imagine to escape the reality of this kind of living hell, which is surely much more painful than death...
I'm almost three years down the path of therapy and smart medication choices and I am on disability and have slowly started having less problems with self harm/suicide/flashbacks/anxiety but my depression is still about the same in other ways, but still I am not in PTSD HELL as I term it and I am generally going on an upward path.
Please PM me if I can help you and your friend in any way. I can honestly say I am close to being at peace with the past. Not that I wouldn't change it if I could have, I just don't even think in that way anymore. I have assimilated it somewhat, I suppose. As bad as those experiences are, they are great learning tools for someone who has gone through them, though of course the price is too high. I can't believe I just said that, haha, life has changed...
