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How do you know when you are really ready to quit?

M

mirrorgirl

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Joined
Apr 26, 2010
Messages
12
I mean, really ready. In the past I've thought I was ready but I wanted to have my cake and eat it, I wanted to quit but I also wanted to use. I'm getting so sick and tired of using now, I would like nothing more than to never see a drug again - so am I really ready or am I just bullshitting myself until the next relapse?
 
A lot of times something really bad will happen, like you'll watch someone OD and die, or you'll end up in the hospital/prison, and you'll say "aw this shit sucks, nah man I'm quitting, it's serious this time". I guess it's called "hitting bottom"

Of course, the fallacy of "hitting bottom" is that sometimes you didn't REALLY hit bottom (hell, who knows if you even HAVE a bottom at this point), and a trap door will suddenly appear in your "bottom" and you'll descend even farther! :)

Regardless, I think for most users there is an event or situation that serves as a catalyst for quitting
 
Also, it doesn't need to be a negative catalyst like death or prison, it can just as easily be a positive catalyst, like starting a family for example.
 
I think it just has to be the right set of circumstamces. I haven't fully quit drugs but I have quit heroin and pot 2 drugs I never thought I would. Quitting heroin was about the high no longer being worth the bullshit it took to fund the habit. I got on methadone which is kinda cheating but who's counting. Pot was a different story I love that drug. It's never lost its allure. But if I was going to stay on methadone clinic then it had to be done. It took 6 months of saying I was quitting before I dI'd and to be perfectly honest I replaced it with worse drugs (benzos and gabapentin) but I haven't smoked in 4 months and I don't crave it.

My story probably isn't what you are looking for but realistically very few people go from strung out everyday use to sobriety. There is usually a winding down period where they use less and less until one day you say shit I havent been high in x months. That's the non forceful way of doing it anyway. From my perspective forcing yourself or someone else into sobriety rarely works and often causes phychological distress that sets up the next binge.
 
It's different things for different people, but basically the lifestyle no longer fits the mindset. This might sound super cliche, but it is a process of just getting wiser, or at least knowing how to make better choices. For instance, I would love to be able to do heroin from time to time, but I know where that road would lead and it just doesn't fit the path I'm traveling anymore. I enjoy freedom, not the ball and chain of addiction. I'm apt to agree with CJ that this usually doesn't happen overnight for most people. In fact, I spent my entire 20's trying to escape the grip of drugs by using replacements (methadone, suboxone) ..and the truth is I'd likely be dead if I hadn't. I'm now in my early 30's and while I have nothing tangible to show for it, the idea of returning to such an ugly existence just doesn't fit anymore.
 
I'm more in line with chelle:

I never had a moment of clarity like that, where I suddenly realized I was done with using. That doesn't seem to be how it works IME. Rather I slowly came to realize over time that using was, simply put, preventing me from accomplishing my goals. And not just the analytical realization or reflection of that reality, it was once began to really move from knowing that using would keep me from accomplishing my goals to actually feeling - or trusting in - how using in fact kept me from accomplishing them. Over time, using became less and less attractive because it kept me from moving on with my life.

And cj, methadone is not cheating. You have worked hard to get to a point where you are not using dope or smoking pot (even if, all things considered, you'd be better off smoking pot... but that is neither here nor there). Please don't sell yourself short.
 
Someone posted a study on this site a while back which showed that a lot of recreational drug users slow down simply as a factor of getting older.
 
Yup, there is pretty widely accepted research demonstrating that most problematic substance users (otherwise known as drug addicts) age out of drug use. Often treatment ends up exacerbating the condition when it comes to addiction. Maia does a great job explaining this phenomenon in her book, Help at Any Cost.
 
mirrorgirl said:
I mean, really ready. In the past I've thought I was ready but I wanted to have my cake and eat it, I wanted to quit but I also wanted to use. I'm getting so sick and tired of using now, I would like nothing more than to never see a drug again - so am I really ready or am I just bullshitting myself until the next relapse?
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I never wanted to really quit, I just realized I had to. I realized I wasted enough years of my life away, and I could have very well thrown away the rest of my life to shooting up drugs and being high all the time, and I decided I had to grow away from it.

I'm thankful every day that I decided to work against what "I wanted". It's incredibly hard to work against your natural instinct.

On the neurological level, wanting and enjoying things are not the same thing.
 
there is no really ready, thats rehab industry/12 step bullshit.
if youre at a stage where you want to try, then try.

you do not need to bottom out or lose everything.
 
I don't agree with a single point 'withlove' made. Rehab helped me detox off heroin and benzos and NA-12 steps is how I am now almost 7 months clean off of all substances except caffeine. And I'm happy. Are you sober withlove?

Just trying to get sober was the very very beginning of learning a completely foreign/uncomfortable way of life. While your right that not everyone needs to 'loose everything' to get and stay sober, I had to hit lower and lower bottoms for years some of which were tradgic to myself and those closest to me.

Without the 12 steps and support of NA I wouldn't stand a chance because I couldn't quit without using at least some substitute whether it was methadone, Suboxone, alcohol, weed, benzos, etc: That was never how I really wanted to live deep down. Now that I'm free I have a lot of respect and love for NA for helping me to do what I could never do alone. I was a slave for many years!
 
Get2Think said:
I don't agree with a single point 'withlove' made. Rehab helped me detox off heroin and benzos and NA-12 steps is how I am now almost 7 months clean off of all substances except caffeine. And I'm happy. Are you sober withlove?

Just trying to get sober was the very very beginning of learning a completely foreign/uncomfortable way of life. While your right that not everyone needs to 'loose everything' to get and stay sober, I had to hit lower and lower bottoms for years some of which were tradgic to myself and those closest to me.

Without the 12 steps and support of NA I wouldn't stand a chance because I couldn't quit without using at least some substitute whether it was methadone, Suboxone, alcohol, weed, benzos, etc: That was never how I really wanted to live deep down. Now that I'm free I have a lot of respect and love for NA for helping me to do what I could never do alone. I was a slave for many years!
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you dont need to agree with me for me to be right.

Am i sober, no, am i emotionally stable and healthy and living my life well, yes.
sobriety isnt the only litmus test for how well someone is doing.
harm reduction has literally saved my life.

I've been to rehab a dozen times. ive been to thousands of meetings. I have wanted and been basically dead wanting and ready to quit.
But that never made a difference in the end.
I'm glad that worked for you but not everyone has to lose everything to get better, i know in my life right now plenty of people who just had enough and stopped and moved on, obviously thats not for everyone.

You can have had good experiences in the rehab industry ( i have) and found help in a 12 step model (i know lots who have)
But i will still critique it for its faults because those faults lead to our death, you dont have to wait for anything to try and make your life better, all you need is make a step in the right direction.
 
Personally (and there is a lot of "personallys" or "IME" in this forum because everyone is different), it took a couple different things to happen for me to finally give up living as a drug addict

one of those things was my family no longer was willing to support me in any fashion, regardless of what I could do for them while I was using. Not just that, but they didnt really want anything to do with me either. There was almost like a standoff for a little bit where I really didn't communicate with anyone outside of my grandparents (who were both 80+ years old), and my aunt (who I used drugs with). And I was ok with that because I was getting high

the other thing that helped me more than rehab was going to jail. Obviously, there is no good reason to go to jail but it will definitely teach you to appreciate things you didn't really think were important before. And I wasn't even in jail for that long, only a little less than 2 months. But it was long enough for me. I didn't get any commissary in there either, because nobody was willing to put money on my books because they assumed I would just buy drugs with it off other inmates (which isnt really how you would do it regardless but w/e). And the county I was in puts you in quarantine for 15-21 days. Its a 16 person cell about the size of a public bus albeit a little wider, with 8 bunk beds. And it's always full. There's no yard, nobody had cards, this guy made a chess board out of bars of soap, one guy was detoxing off subs for a solid 4 days just throwing up in our only trash can, you get 1 hour of time to watch tv in the day room after lunch and 1 hour after dinner, there were only 4 phones between 4 huts of 16 people so 64 people trying to use 4 phones and 2 of them were broken for most of my time there (granted, I didn't have to make any calls), and there were no books to read. You literally woke up around 530 to eat breakfast, slept until lunch around 1130, tried to sleep until dinner around 6, and then got locked down after the hr day room.

Sorry I just realized I've just been rambling about jail for way too long. They always say that you need to get comfortable with yourself in order to be ready to stop using. Well the 3 weeks I spent on Q pod made me get real comfortable with myself I will tell you that.

It really comes down to what do you want to achieve with your time on earth? If I could find a way to use heroin without completely fucking my life up, I would go back to using in a minute, to be completely honest.

But it's just not possible, and I feel like life isnt as melancholy as I once thought it was when I was using.

Life didn't suck, I was the one who sucked, and I tried to drag everything down to my shitty emotional state as some way of justifying why continuing to use drugs wasn't a complete waste of time.
 
I agree when you lose something like your freedom it van put things in a different light. I got arrested fot past charges and detoxed in jail and the magistrate wouldn't let me get bond until I detoxed and just let me out after a couple weeks.

Most the time was solitary because when you first go in you are alone fot three days till they process but since I was in such bad shape and not holding food down well I was in my own cell a bit longer.

It wasn't full on solitary but processing solitary and I would have drove my cell mate insane cuz I was having nightmares and shitting all the time.

I have been legally dead a few times.

But yeah after detoxing in jail the outside never looked so beautiful. I went and sat on my porch the whole day and just was in awe of how beautiful it was.

I suppose you stop taking things for granted. Your family gets sick of it even if you are their caretaker and once they don't need you they cut you off.

So I suppose I could have committed some crimes and used as much ad I wanted or I could just move on.

I don't find drug treatment to help me but I suppose iy took frienda dying, repeated arrests and some time in jail to make me appreciate things again.

Just remember tomorrow isn't promised to as anyone so might as well stack the deck in your favor.
 
Sorry guys I tried to edit this into my post but I had to really give kudos and thanks to you guys describing your experiences in jail. Especially your last few paragraphs subotai were incredibly insightful.
 
For me it was health problems

I thought I was 100% ready to quit all drugs when my lungs got irritated from snorting ER hydromorphone and I went to the hospital. Threw out everything and swore up and down I wouldn't touch drugs again.

I still haven't snorted anything (mainly due to anxiety about what might happen to my lungs) but my usage is down a tremendous amount compared to before. Seems like a good enough compromise at this point, I just can't say no to drugs for the entirety of my life.

Also there have been some really insightful posts in this thread.
 
I'd like to know the same thing. I watched my sister OD and die. Week later I was high again, swearing I'd never do it again. Entered sober living for nine months. I got out an am back at it. I think everyone's "rock bottom" is different for everyone.
 
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