TDS Methamphetamine : How to break the reward association?

[Rahcookiemonster]

Usual meth story, been using for 7 years. Normal amphetamines 9 years. Before that, it was watching my parents do the same thing.

I won't bore you with the details (Unless anyone wants a 5 page tweaked out pyschosis story 8)),

I have already lived my meth life. I have had the fun, the sex, the psychosis, the narcissistic delusions and the paranoid delusions (Same thing really).

7 years later and a few of the friends I started with are dead, or in jail. The ones that are still alive live in a constant state of psychosis. No one comes out of this lifestyle with a good story.

So here I am, wanting to quit and move on with my life consciously aware of how much this drug has taken from me (REALLY good jobs, nice cars, girl friends, reputation, houses, friends....et cetera) I am not enjoying this at all anymore. Yet I feel powerless to cravings and the massive association my brain has with the glass and the vapor. It comes from nowhere, and it overpowers all of my conscious thoughts.

I am so used to living in the post-apocalyptic depression from using meth that is usually my normal state. Once this clears up I have to start the grind of getting my life back in order. A slight glimpse of hope and excitement for maybe having the things that other people take for granted will appear....
And then it all goes out the window. I will have an image of smoking meth pop into my mind, and it is stronger than any fantasy or urge. Once these cravings appear, they do not stop until I have a pipe loaded and ready to go.
I don't even like the high, and I know this before using. It is literally just the first bowl and the first hit of smoke that I crave.

Why am I powerless to this craving? I have moved on from every other aspect of meth.
I can't explain how strong it is, how much it just takes over every priority instantly out of nowhere.

How can I break the association that the first hit of meth will be better than trying to get my life in order? I feel stupid, doing the same thing over and over again not even expecting different results. It is scary.

My last huge stint ended with a slight opiate and benzo addiction along with the meth use. I quit my job and moved back home,
Now I am stuck with fuck all money, huge debt and a self-defense mechanism that is stopping me from wanting employment and money again...
Because like every other cycle, I will spend it on meth.

So instead of using every day non-stop, I use every 2-3 weeks and am stuck in a repeating cycle. I feel like a computer that is glitching out. 8(

P.S.
I remember reading these exact same stories when I first started getting into heavy drugs, thinking that these people were insane and now I am one of them.

 

[Erikmen]

We all have been there and done that somehow. So don't beat yourself up. Don't feel bad.
This can all go away.
I believe you need to really want to change your life so that you can put up all due energy together to get started.

Are you ready to compromise? You have the power and you can do anything you are willing to try.
Of course getting medical guidance or support makes a lot of difference on the future sober steps.
It's not as difficult to quit as it is to keep yourself distant from whatever triggers your actual use.
Think about this when you are sober. Prepare yourself to give 110% of your efforts and the world is yours.

Keep us posted!
Best of all.
Erik

 

[Burnt Offerings]

I don't know, that sounds like a tough problem. It would make a lot of sense if you liked the high from meth (the initial high, anyway). I would totally understand that as I'm the same way. But just the first hit? And the fact that you know intellectually that you don't even like the high from meth? That seems like a strange compulsion to me. And since you already understand intellectually that you don't even like the high from meth, nothing I say that's based on reason will make you maybe do things in a different manner, right, because you've already analyzed the situation, came to an accurate conclusion, but then just decided to ignore the conclusion anyway because the compulsion was too strong.

But I guess that's addiction. The fact that you've used stimulants for almost a decade puts you in a difficult position, too, as that's a long streak and I can definitely see symptoms of depression developing because of that.

If it's any consolation, though, I've known former meth users who abused it for LONG periods of time and then quit, simply because of how sick they were of how it was making their life. Meth injects a ton of insanity into your life, more & faster than any other drug just about IME. As you get older and more experienced you get more accustomed to it, but it's still a pain in the ass. For people with serious addictions sometimes I think that their life has to go into the shitter on a truly epic scale before they can really have a good chance at kicking for good. The individual I used to live with (who I eventually became good friends with) had to literally die in a hospital emergency room & resuscitated before he quit abusing meth for good.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

I would recommend seeking treatment.


Do you have anyone who will support you and help you stay clean?

 

[Super_Hanz]

Don't sell yourself short: I'll gladly read your 5 page tweaked-out story! 8( I bet I'd find we have a good bit in common! Actually, I am sure it wouldn't just be us... For what little it might be worth, I am compelled to share an abridged version of my predictable tweaker-biography.

I am more or less in a very same place in my life as yourself. Meth has been my drug-of-choice for about 2.5-3 years. I quit cold-turkey once, all on my own for about 9 months. But, it was only after I had lost my decent-paying job which I had spent nearly 5 years at and had just become manager, was broke, and became very distanced from most of my friends and family. Looking back, I was pretty successful at keeping my use/abuse very secretive from 95% of everyone I knew during the 9 months I was smoking it, which at my peak, was +/- $160 worth daily. Coworkers, friends, and my family; they all definitely knew something was going on, but nobody ever really said anything and I never got caught. (I hardly think this is anything to brag about, but I am curious, is that at all unusual?)

I am sure I am not the first person to say this, but I want to make it clear that getting shit-canned was not directly because I got caught with drugs or anything of that nature per se, but was unquestionably related according to the laws of karma and the universe, to my meth use.... and it is also long and boring story for another time...

So, to get back on track here: I lost my job and was able to afford getting twacked off my dingus for two more months. During this time, loss of job exponentially increased volume of meth use and depression. After finally running out of money and just being really miserable I was able to rationalize that I needed to quit, which I did. I remember being super pissed off for about a week and sleeping a lot, but I didn't quite follow the typical tweaker handbook and do any bad tweaker things to score meth again. I simply accepted the fact that I was broke and dealt with it.

So after the aforementioned week or so of basically hibernating and throwing lots of fits, I had a little bit of money trickle in from some latent final paychecks and invested in hash oil, a blow torch, and a dab rig. I proceeded to get blasted on hash dabs A LOT. I had effectively replaced my meth addiction with getting incredibly stoned pretty much constantly. I was still not anywhere close to being back to how I was before I started using meth; when people say it takes a long time to recover from that stuff, it does take a seriously loooooong time. I was still depressed, still unemployed, and basically had non-existent decision-making skills. The only good decision I was capable of making and sticking to it was miraculously not using any meth. I was basically getting stoned all the time, hanging out at my friends house every single day, playing Xbox, and being a very unproductive loser.

It didn't take very long and I started to once again run out of money. Doing basically nothing but smoking a gram of hash oil a day is almost as non-sustainable financially as my meth habit. I needed to get money, but I was still very depressed and still mentally fried from abusing meth that I had zero motivation to much else but smoke the hash. Somehow, I was able to force myself update my resume and apply for one job. It was really great no-brainer opportunity that basically fell into my lap. It was shocking how easy it was for me to get an interview and then be offered the job all within a week of applying. It was so shocking that after 5 years of having the same job, I went to day one of orientation, went to my friend's house afterwards and continued to marathon toke hash oil. Something in my head could not process this whole amazingly effortless and awesome opportunity and I convinced myself that I was not ready to go back to work, and that my brain had a lot of healing to do. I simply did not go to day 2 of orientation. Almost 2 years later I still regret that decision daily.

I'm not really sure what the overall point of this story is, but if there is one, after blowing off this awesome job opportunity for no rational reason and STILL being clean off meth (at this point it had been about a month off meth), I did some of the worst things I never could have imagined had I been back on planet earth. Basically, I had convinced myself that I was not ready to go back to work, and it was ok to sit around and smoke hash at my friends house all day while my parents thought I had still been going to that job I blew off. I pretended to go to that job for at least a month, all the while I began stealing from my friends and family to be able to get money for hash, gas, cigarettes, and probably a bunch of other non-useful stuff, but never meth. I pawned thousands of dollars of my parents things with the intention of getting all of their stuff back somehow before they would notice. Then I became brazen, and just started stealing things like DVD's and video games here and there from people without even thinking for half a second that there would be any consequences, I didn't even feel guilty. I felt nothing. It must have been my brain still being the equivalent of moosh after abusing meth that entire time: I had no rational decision making skills whatsoever.

Basically, my parents discovered I wasn't really going to that job for that whole time and that I had taken a bunch of their stuff. Around the same time my friends had also noticed things of theirs (pretty much all little stuff like DVDs) had gradually gone missing. Even though I deserved it and probably a lot more, my friends and family never notified police or anything, but my friends basically shunned me and cut contact with me entirely. I was on what is as close to house arrest as I probably could get at age 24 without having been arrested ever in my life and this whole ordeal just emotionally destroyed my parents. It was just horrible, the gravity of what I had done finally had sunk in. This is when I had come clean about basically everything I had been up to for the prior year with meth- I somehow was able to engineer that as an excuse for my actions.

If there is anything to take away from my twacked-out, probably fragmented and unintentional thread-hijacking, is that I did a lot of really shitty things AFTER quitting meth and had to work really hard to rebuild my whole life and was pretty damn successful at it. But now, I am essentially in the EXACT SAME jacked-up situation a year and a half later at age 26. Except this time, I don't get any second chances. Anything else goes missing, any more screw ups, I get to find out what jail is like. I am unemployed (big surprise) and this time I don't have a car and I am in a few grand worth of debt to my former employer and my parents.

I am still using, although not anywhere near as much as my first go-around. I am at THE Crossroads. I have to make some changes. This time it seems like I dun' screwed myself good. I was under the care of a psychiatrist up until a couple months ago when he abruptly and without explanation was 'no longer practicing' at the clinic I went to. He had me on Adderall which actually seemed to help me keep my shit together, but after he disappeared, the psychiatrist that I was set up with as his replacement basically yanked me off my ADD meds, I lost my job, stole from people... She also told me to my face I belong in jail. I have since dismissed myself from her care.

I don't expect anyone to read that novel I just now wrote, but if you do, I'd be interested and open to any input or if you have any parallels to draw. And to OP, I'd be happy to just talk about stuff with ya in private if you want.....

 

[deadendgame]

Yeah. I feel the same way dude except I only did it twice and I still crave meth more than anything else. Meth is like our anti-cancer drug. We're addicted, we need to take this shit to survive. Yeah. Keep doing it bro. Taper yourself down slowly. At least that's what I'm gonna do cuz I ain't just gonna wait around and die.

 

[whos there]

im glad you posted that super hanz, as alot of it resonated with me and my current situation, and meth isnt even my main doc, its just one of my many guilty pleasures...but being 24 myself, and at a point where i too need to get the proverbial shit together, im glad i read your novella since it really illustrates the point that recovery isnt just getting and stayin clean, but all the other not-so-fun shit we get to deal with for the first time since becoming strung out...not looking forward to it in the least, but at the same time i can truthfully say i look forward to the next chapter about to unfold in my life. if that didnt make sense, its only cuz it doesnt.

 

[Craqueline]

I can relate ,super Hanz. I was strung out on adderall for about 6 years, then meth for 3 years. I couldn't do Anything without amphetamines / meth. I spent an entire year feeling zero motivation, extreme depression. I used crack
And alcohol to deal with that . Ugh. I know. I'm still struggling but have at least stayed clean from the amphs

 

[yacob]

I don't know, that sounds like a tough problem. It would make a lot of sense if you liked the high from meth (the initial high, anyway). I would totally understand that as I'm the same way. But just the first hit? And the fact that you know intellectually that you don't even like the high from meth? That seems like a strange compulsion to me. And since you already understand intellectually that you don't even like the high from meth, nothing I say that's based on reason will make you maybe do things in a different manner, right, because you've already analyzed the situation, came to an accurate conclusion, but then just decided to ignore the conclusion anyway because the compulsion was too strong.

But I guess that's addiction. The fact that you've used stimulants for almost a decade puts you in a difficult position, too, as that's a long streak and I can definitely see symptoms of depression developing because of that.

If it's any consolation, though, I've known former meth users who abused it for LONG periods of time and then quit, simply because of how sick they were of how it was making their life. Meth injects a ton of insanity into your life, more & faster than any other drug just about IME. As you get older and more experienced you get more accustomed to it, but it's still a pain in the ass. For people with serious addictions sometimes I think that their life has to go into the shitter on a truly epic scale before they can really have a good chance at kicking for good. The individual I used to live with (who I eventually became good friends with) had to literally die in a hospital emergency room & resuscitated before he quit abusing meth for good.

he wants to recreate the feeling, rush or whatever you want to call it. its almost as if its nothing about the drug itself