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Heroin Recovery: Should you cut off contact with friends that still use?

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Rhetorik3

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My friend has struggled with heroin addiction for about 15 years and I've tried to help her recover a few times. One of the things we disagree on is cutting off contact with her friends that still use or sell dope.

To me, your friends influence your life more than you realize. I always use the "crabs in a bucket" and "hangin around the barber shop" analogies. Like, if you throw one crab in a shallow bucket, it will get out. If you throw two crabs in the same bucket, they'll latch onto each other and never get out. It's kinda like getting a gym partner and relying on them to keep you motivated. When they stop going to the gym, you're more likely to stop as well. And if you're steady talking to people that have dope, it's more of a temptation. Hang out in the barber shop long enough, you're bound to get your haircut.

According to her, her friends have no influence. She says she makes the decision to start using again on her own and seeks it out on her own. None of her friends tempt her. Meanwhile, she'll use her lack of income as an excuse to talk to them and hang out. She'll sell them her scripts or get paid to drive them around. Horribly risky behavior to me, and we argue over it.

Am I way off base here, thinking she needs to just cut off contact and start over making better friends?
 
Whether or not she will be able to create a lifestyle for herself that doesn't involve using heroin depends on more - much more - than simply whether or not she has friends who use or sell drugs.

As a general rule however, you are correct. It is relatively easier to not use a drug when we don't have constant reminders of it. It only makes sense that people who use/sell heroin could easily trigger someone, particularly someone early in recovery, to use. Still, if she had enough support in her life and didn't spend an unhealthy amount of her time and energy on relationships with people who are deep in their addiction, having friends who use isn't necessarily going to cause a relapse.

Ultimately she is responsible for her own actions - and whether or not she chooses to continue to use. Most people eventually age out of harmful patterns of drug use (this applies to the vast majority of people labeled drug abusers and addicts). The fact she is ultimately response for her own choices and decisions is the most important thing to emphasize.

IME it is a little easier to stay away from use by getting away from the heroin using scene (other people who use and sell the drug) entirely (the only exception to this rule is for people who work in the harm reduction field, where heroin use is relatively not uncommon but there are also lots of checks and balances in place that help people keep boundaries in place when it comes to people who are still using that they deal with). But recovery is more than just changing one's friends.

Ultimately simply staying away from the heroin scene isn't really enough to get her to a healthier place in life. Otherwise rehabs and the abstinence only model would be a lot more successfully than it actually is. Removing one's self from the scene can be a good place to start, but there is so much more involved in recovery - so many more important things to life - than merely whether or not one engages in drug using behavior.
 
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I'm currently trying to stay sober from drink and drugs (mainly cocaine) so while I can't speak for heroin addiction I can speak from my experience of trying to stay clean. I've tried it many times and failed but this time I have cut off contact with my friends who use and it seems to be working, I won't cut off contact for good though. Only until I have sorted myself out, one of my closest friends uses heroin and almost everything else and I was living with him for a while. I began to use H with him for a short while until my parents dragged me home kicking and screaming. Ultimately I want to help him but I know I can't until I'm in a good place myself. So that's my aim, get clean and then try to help him the best I can. I hope you do it man.

Onwards and upwards.
 
At least during early recovery, hanging onto relationships that are tied up in using is playing with fire. Just how risky maintaining these old relationships is is clearly going to vary from relationship to relationship. But it's hard for me to see many reasons why a person would take that risk if he or she is eager to quit.

OP, I find it interesting that your friend insists that her old buddies have nothing to do with her using--that its her and her alone who goes back to dope. This strikes me as a twofer for her addiction. First, it keeps her in the scene. Second, it implies a very familiar kind of defeatism (it's my own fucked up agency that makes me use; changing my life won't help).

Will 86'ing your old connects and using partners get you off heroin? No. But in the majority of cases hanging onto them is going to make an already *hard* problem even harder.

I hope your friend finds her way out.
<3
Sim
 
Personally I never keep the same circle of friends for too long as my life changes dramatically periodically so I probably dont ever get the same connection to people as ones who actively work to maintain relationships. I can say that as someone who has been off all hard drugs for over two years and methadone for over a year i would not want to associate with people who use drugs. I have changed so much that I no longer look or act like the person i did when i was using dope and i would look out of place with people who do now. Not only that but drug addicts draw police attention, shit always goes missing around them, they are stagnant and not moving forward, there are a lot of reasons i would avoid them now.

I think people directly impact your life and in a sense you share characteristics with the people you hang around. Its not something you actively do or are even aware of but it still influences your thinking and experience, in my opinion. Once I reach a new point in my life I tend to get a new circle of friends. Happened after high school, college, before using dope, during, after... all had different people in my life that i no longer speak to as they are part of the past and not the present and the present wont be a part of my future. But that is just me and its not something i really mean to do but it makes moving forward super easy lol.
 
I think cutting off your friends just because you decided to get sober is bullshit. Then again I'm selective of who I label as friends. I had a 10 plus year friendship ended by someone else because they went to rehab. It was funny when they came crawlings back after they relapsed.
 
IME, even if you "cut off contact" with friends, if a relapse gets a hold of you, you WILL find a way to contact those people, regardless of deleting phone numbers, etc. Its definitely a good idea, but don't fall under the impression that not seeing those people guarantees any sort of success.
 
Misery loves company, and although I fancy myself a leader of sorts, I generally end up following. If I am convinced that I cannot use responsibly then hanging around with people who my perception tells me can will only work toward unconvincing me. Not everyone who uses suffers from addiction so the most dangerous group for me to hang around are the non-addict abusers.
 
Something I have also learned in my recovery is to surround myself with people who I genuinely wish to emulate. Finding amazing people and doing what I can to spend time with them has been infinitely more helpful than trying to avoid other people, though truth be told none of the amazing people I have found for myself IRL use heroin or any of the substances I have struggled with.
 
toothpastedog said:
Something I have also learned in my recovery is to surround myself with people who I genuinely wish to emulate. Finding amazing people and doing what I can to spend time with them has been infinitely more helpful than trying to avoid other people, though truth be told none of the amazing people I have found for myself IRL use heroin or any of the substances I have struggled with.
Click to expand...

This is my feeling on it except the only 2 people i actually care about in the world are in the same boat as myself. The three of us have all gotten over our addictions and can no longer tolerate people use hardcore drugs or expect relationships to be one sided. This means if your not one of the two people i consider true friends dont call me for a ride (not that a i have a car anymore) because that is a +1, -1 interaction that does not work in my favor so i wont even dignify it with a response.

Call it what you will but i spent years taking shit from people to score heroin and now its literally "if the interaction does not benefit me or is mutual then i wont even engage in the activity" This has lead me to weed out a lot of people i use to talk to but frankly i dont care they never actually cared about me.

I would prefer no friends then fake friends that go "oh do you want to do this with us... good your driving" or anything like that, id rather have one or two friends then people who are going no where in my mind. Yes i realize i have become overly critical of all of this but my life is so much better now that when someone contacts me it is for a real reason, none of this "come on we use to be friends you should do this!" fuck that. I have quality people that now if we do something the argument is over who pays for what because we all have enough resources to pay the way for everyone.

And you can say that might leave me stranded if i need help, that is unlikely because one of my two true friends would save me and if they couldnt i could save myself. With all the shit ive been through i am not concerned about "being left alone" i actually enjoy it.
 
I tend to agree with what you are saying szuko.

I never was a social user, and because of some negative experiences early on with people I used with (and them being highly manipulative and basically far to selfish for me to handle), so I never had a lot of relationships with people IRL who used that I would have ever really considered meaningful (outside of whatever meaningfulness I might have once found in heroin use I mean).

So discarding them in order to put my limited time and energy into cultivating relationships with healthier, more successful individuals has always been more or less of a no brainer for me.
 
I cut off all contact with friends while I was using so this actually wasn't that hard for me

Id feel weird hitting up people I used to be friends with though. Kind of just gonna move on. Idk I never had a lot of friends really. A lot of acquaintances, not so many friends
 
LOL right?

When I used heroin I engage in a totally secret lifestyle. I kept it from everyone. So that means I dealt with as few people who actually know about my heroin use as possible.

So mostly people I dealt with who knew I used were dealers. And I don't need to be friends with dealers because that would make my recovery impossible - I definitely don't have that much impulse control!
 
toothpastedog said:
LOL right?

When I used heroin I engage in a totally secret lifestyle. I kept it from everyone. So that means I dealt with as few people who actually know about my heroin use as possible.

So mostly people I dealt with who knew I used were dealers. And I don't need to be friends with dealers because that would make my recovery impossible - I definitely don't have that much impulse control!
Click to expand...

This.

When I was actively using, *everyone* who was involved with dope was kind-of-a-friend-and-kind-of-a-connect. That was one of the things I was happiest to leave behind. I got so fucking sick of everyone (including me) angling and hustling for something.
 
I honestly think that people want to retain friends due to a sense of familiar interaction. When you see the same people over and over you get use to that common ground and the idea of venturing out seems scary, especially since people value social interaction. Friends and other people to interact with are important however, holding on to past relationships shows an unwillingness to change in my mind.

People change constantly as they age and go through new struggles and experiences. I think this is why I have an easy time changing social circles, i understand that the people from my past are not who they were in high school. That is we have no common ground anymore and social media really allows me to see that to be true. My best friend in high school embraced some kind of red neck (loves hunting, fishing, camo clothing) and that is not at all who he use to be when we were 18. It would be almost odd to see him even though we were close friends from like 8-21 however, i dont dwell on those things because in my mind they are largely irrelevant.

My main question is if you are truly clean how can you feel any connection to people who use hard drugs? Its not that i cant understand them or hate them it is just like my best friend in high school... its not that we couldnt get a long but what would we talk about? How would we connect and relate to each other? Most of friendship is bound by shared and common experience if they are using hard drugs their most in depth experience is probably getting and using drugs, without being a part of those how much of a friend are you?

But I do feel like I hold relationship values differently then most. This is just how i see social interaction its relevant when it is but you must always be looking for a more relevant one if you are growing and developing yourself. Just as a new job comes with new co-workers a new course of life should come with new people as well, ones more in tune with who you are now.
 
^
That's a wise post, szuko.

Personally, I've always had two very different types of friend relationships. I have a couple of people I've known for a long time and we've grown together. We still grow together. I consider these folks almost honorary siblings (especially b/c I don't have sibs of my own). In contrast to that situation, whenever I move to a new place I inevitably make a couple of new friends (though as I get older, this is becoming harder for me). Sometimes these new friendships can actually become fairly deep. But they don't tend to last long; we just grow apart, both geographically and personally.

I'm eternally thankful that I didn't ever mix up my deepest friendships with serious drug use. It would be tough to cut those ties, in the interest of sobriety or anything else.
 
Honestly my two closest relationships are with my ex, we met clean developed heroin addiction over years and then got clean together. We were together for 6 years until after our addictions we simply werent the same people. We still cared for each other but the romance ended once the times got difficult and we became more like brother and sister through the intense struggle.

The other is my younger brother whom developed a heroin addiction on his own (never sold him drugs of any kind didnt want to do that) he went to prison and changed but would call constantly so our relationship actually grew from him going away. He gets out and the three of us are clean with new jobs etc, a new beginning for the people i actually care about. So grateful for that because i figured one of them would be a constant reminder of my past. I know what people mean by they couldnt leave some people behind i just got very lucky with the two that could have actually played with my emotions, anyone else can fuck off :) Like beyond anything in life i am happiest i didnt have to turn my back to either of them, i dont know if i could honestly.

So the only two people i consider close friends are bound by "blood." Makes trusting them super easy because one is literally my brother and the other is the only person who cares enough to truly go out of her way to help me. These are the only two relationships i can see extending into my later years and im fine with that.
 
I dont think your way off base! Its people places and things that helped me get on the path~ She can find ways to get money for her needs! Its always out there! Believe me! Please keep praying! Unfortunately its out of your hands....if she wants to get better, she will! It sucks a lot! :( Much Love!
 
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