Heroin Post-Heroin

[helpingout]

I first used heroin in summer of 2018. I made my first quit attempts towards the beginning of winter 2021. I spent the next year working a convenience store swing shift strung out on heroin and alternatively dopesick. In September of 21 I made my first real quit attempt. Looks like I made it around two or three days. It would take until about September of 22 to finally break free of the heroin itself. Another year for the suboxone taper. Then two years on kratom. Spent the last year in a really weird place. Overdosed on loperamide on one occasion in August and straight up overdosed on 7oh just after new year. Had spent a lot of time hip hopping from plain leaf to 7oh to loperamide trying to play around with which opiate would be easiest to kick off of. Eventually figured things out. It was 7oh that I jumped off of around mid September. Got together a hundred days thanks to the help of a fellow blue lighter. Lapsed on the 7 around the new year but didn’t snowball into relapse, dependency, or addiction. Have kept my shit together since then. It’s now April which means aside from two or three lapse behaviors I’ve been completely off of all opiates since August 15th
224 days.
I go to smart meetings sometimes two or three times a week. But I shoot for two in person meetings.
I call my brother if I feel like popping over to the smoke shop to buy drugs. It doesn’t make me not want to but it kind of gets me to talk to someone about the desire to pop over who doesn’t have a lifetime of drug addiction and dependency whispering in their ear how all roads lead to getting high so might as well take the first step.
I have a job that I like but I do need to strive for an even better job. Working on one hour a day for the better job search.

I write a lot of short stories, poetry, and continue to work on the second book of my novel.

I read a ton of books, not as many as I see people claiming on line, but to me it feels like I’m reading a good satisfactory amount.

I work in the smart book in my spare time.

I go to therapy with a counselor who does not know I’m a person who formerly used heroin.

And I generally am just trying to heal myself after my dependency experience, learn how to live a better life that isn’t so drug fixated, and grow into a person who doesn’t respond to life events by changing how he feels.

AMA

And also I’m going to post some of the journal entries I have saved from when I first quit heroin. I think you’ll find them interesting.

 

[helpingout]

9-8-21
I was told to journal. Here are my thoughts. I’m worried I caused myself brain damage when I overdosed. I don’t think I can work anymore because I’m too fucking stupid. I want to write my novel. Everyday I don’t write the clock loses a day. I know what I want to write, how to write it, what to say, but there’s nothing I can do to bring myself to write. I do cocaine and feel better momentarily but I don’t feel any drive to write. I have no drive because I’m dope sick. I’ve been using heroin for two years and I recently stopped using two weeks ago. The first twenty four hours were the worst. I took my last dose which I tried to make big so it would last and then I waited. I was fine and got to sleep okay. When I woke up I was in full blown withdrawals. I thought I pissed myself but it was just sweat soaking into my clothing. I wanted to get out of bed but when I did I became so cold there was nothing to do but get back in my wet bed and shudder. I kicked my legs out. I screamed. I cried to the all father. But I knew that this was only day one and I had nine more days before I would be cut down from my hanging pain in the all father tree. At hour twenty four I tried to induce Suboxone. It didn’t work. I took another. Didn’t work. Took another. Didn’t work. Took another. Finally I snorted one and that worked kind of enough for me to lay still for a moment. When it wore off the kicking and the sweating and the shivering all started again. So I snorted another. My first day I took seven suboxone just to feel normal. The second day I took three suboxone. The third day I took one morning and one evening. The fourth day I took half morning half evening. I continued this for a week. Half morning. Half evening. Then I realized if I’m going to be addicted to a chemical I’d rather be addicted to dope

Short story
Poem
Valuable
Quitting heroin

 

[helpingout]

12/03/2021
Another day older. I acted out in relapse the other day and I uncovered some artifacts and broke them down for their heroin content. I didn’t get high but for the first time in along time I felt at ease like a very potent CBD cigarette. The feeling wasn’t strong. It didn’t last long at all and yesterday when I had to work I felt the strong desire to take kratom. I resisted that, that was New Year’s Day but i did need to go home on my lunch and take some kratom balls just to make it through the day . After the balls I felt better but it was that next day the second where I took heroin again. I think. New Year’s Eve no heroin. New year Day heroin. Second and Third was no heroin but I bought kratom extract. I think I took one in the morning and another before work but I’m not clear on the dates at all. Either way my relapse didn’t lead to more acting out. I just reminisce about how easy life was while I was on heroin. I was free everyday to just work on my novel and I did. I finished one and a half novels. Then I wanted to visit my friends and grandmother and so I decided to kick. I had over three grand in the bank and I could have used it all on heroin but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be able to go see the people I love without bringing my monkey. I got to the point where I wasn’t using heroin but when I got to my grandmothers I had to sneak away to buy kratom. Now it feels like I’ve just got another albeit less annoying monkey,. The only thing stopping me from stopping is the discomfort I feel. The thin sweat on my back. The constant annoyance with everything. Because of this desire to go back to the easy times, when my rent was being paid, when my food was being paid, when I could afford to spend 2-800 dollars on heroin every two weeks without going homeless, and the freedom it gave me to work on my novel. When I compare those two years of bliss and motivation and achievement to my current life, minimum wage job, no benefits, coworkers whom are mean, being dope sick everyday unless I vomit in my own mouth and force itbe vomitus back down, being unable to write with focus and calm. I have been miserable since august when I quit doinng heroin. I’m much less miserable than I was on days one two three four thirty sixty ninety yesterday but I’m still just kind of miserable. I can smell things again though. I can talk to people without nodding out. I can go to work and not feel stressed that I’m going to be found out or drug tested. The biggest benefit in stopping was that I’m no longer having these dreams where I score and then get arrested. The downside is those were the only dreams where me and Easy hung out. So now I’m on probably day 100 or something. I’m still using opiates in the form of kratom. I crave opiates almost constantly. I reminisce about the good times and I try to remember the externality of my bodily functions. I try to remember that my physical well being depended on external sources beyond food water and sunlight. I needed black tar heroin to feel myself, to be able to write, to be able to do anything. Now at least in my suffering my mind is winning the battle. But the battle rages on. The body demands heroin and convinces the mind that it’s necessary. The only thing stopping me from a bag is the rememberance of the pipers price. You can feel good as long as you can hustle the money for the habit but once you run out of money, and you will run out, you will have to relive the suffering you worked so hard to put behind you.

Relieving the suffering of heroin doesn’t make my life better. Getting off heroin made my life worse . But ultimately I’m suffering now for my own choices. If I were to act out and use again I’d be suffering for my own stupidity. As if I’m admitting that I’m not JLM the novelist, that I’m JLM the heroin addict who can write when high. I want to write the rest of my novel the way I started my novel. Clean and sober. I don’t want to go to rehab. I don’t want to check into a hospital. I don’t want to be on buprenorphine. I don’t want to be on kratom. I want to be myself. But given that I get physically I’ll when I don’t take either heroin, buprenorphine, or kratom, Im just stuck in this terrible limbo where I’m not doing what I want to do with my life. I’m working at a seven eleven with a bachelors degree. I’m stuck around people who are just deplorable to be around. Out of the whole seven eleven experience my friend Dan is what makes it worth it. But I can’t be honest with anyone but Pen. I can’t validate my suffering because I’m not a heroin addict. I’m JLM and I chose to stop using heroin and this shit that I’m mucking through is the path out. The only way out is through. And the way through is long, arduous, and fraught with peril. And not only that but you have to go through the tunnel with your whole body and soul telling you that the way back to where you came from, where it was easier, is just behind where you are now. No matter how far into the tunnel you go pursuing a better life for yourself. No matter how many years you spend walking that dank and decrepit tunnel, all
You have to do is take two steps backwards and the tunnel is transformed into a beautiful garden where all of your needs are met except for heroin. Your body and soul are in charge of acquiring more heroin to maintain the garden. And eventually the beautiful garden becomes just a garden and you the observer become the groundskeeper and the beauty of the garden becomes your charge until you no longer enjoy even the beauty of the garden but for the split second when you maintain it and provide body and soul with heroin. The tunnel goes on forever. The garden is only two steps away. The tunnel is inescapable. Though as your eyes become
Adjusted to the darkness. You can see two steps behind. And what you were convinced was a a garden is a cemetery and a cesspool. The further you go down the tunnel without the heroin blinding you the more decrepit the smell of heroins victims becomes. The more you begin to realize that this garden never existed and that this tunnel is your tomb. Unless you stay the path. If you stay the path and keep plodding and trudging through the darkness of the tunnel there is always the possibility that maybe one day you will take a step forward
Into sunlight and you will find yourself in the open air and you will breathe and you will not think of heroin. You will eat and you will not
Think of heroin. You will be out in the open air and sunshine but if you forget that the only way out is through. You may find yourself taking those two steps back into the tunnel. And
No
Matter how far you journeyed to escape it.
You will find
Yourself at that dark dank beginning. And your soul
Will
Mourn your brains
Stupidity.
As the tunnel tests your will, your conviction, and it questions
Your self
Worth
Do
I deserve more than this secret
Garden
Of
Mine
Or am
I happy to die alongside the countless others who perished
Before
Me

Perhaps their dead
Bodies will make a good
Pillow. Perhaps I could find peace there

But I do not find the thought peaceful. The heroin bewitched you and convinces you that you are comfortable sleeping among the dead and dying.

I would rather traverse the depths of this tunnel and find myself breathing free air once more, as I did when I was born and the air shocked my lungs. Our first experience on this earth is cold and pain. Why then do I complain of my suffering as if I could escape it. Having done heroin for two years, my suffering has infinite patience and when I shed the protective shroud of heroin haze I find myself suffering like a newborn. And I must birth myself.
I have to recreate me.

I have to redefine who I am.

I have to become my best self.

Or I could just do heroin and accept that I do not value myself.

Short story
Poem
Valuable
Quitting heroin

 

[helpingout]

And the often not talked about impacts of heroin on a persons sex life reflected in this third quit attempt almost a year after the first two.

Day 1
I entered a period of complete abstinence roughly a week ago having scaled down from junk to kratom to supplements to good health. Fortunately when I was cleaning my room I found some junk and decided to dose it. I dosed it and it didn’t make my problems better. I was slightly sick for a day or two. It didn’t help anything and I could see the tape playing out before me. But this time I didn’t see Pen there with me. That got me thinking. Pen had been through so much suffering because of me. Sexually we were having sex only once every two months. I didn’t wake up with an erection. There just wasn’t much going on down there and that was a bummer. I’m glad I got clean because my dick works again and me and my girlfriend can fuck now. The dynamic is off though. I’m less of an animal now. I’m more restrained. I want to be animalistic again but perhaps I have passed that point of my sexuality. Perhaps I wasted myself on hero in. I just hope everything starts up normal again. My relapse sucked but just reminded me that my recovery is delicate. I’m not picking up. I’m not getting high and I stopped searching the floor for artifacts. I’m doing better but I recognize that I’m on a precipice of sorts.

Some things from my recovery that I’d like to maintain cold shower start. Hot shampoo hot face wash hot body wash cold condition cold rinse. I feel that the cold water has been instrumental in my finally feeling good again. I feel that cold water is very beneficial to the spirit and soul. It permits one to face one’s fears and to let those fears flow throughu the individual. It’s healthy for me to be cold at least once a day in my skin. So daily showers of the above variety.
I would also like to bring back my elevate and Duolingo practice sessions. I’ve been faultering on them because I’ve not Beene nah focused on that aspect of my recovery. But I did damage my brain while using and I need to be continue the work of repairing it, until I can maintain it, and then continue to grow nunnhjit.

November 16 2022

Sex specific version
Poem
Short story
Valuable
Quitting heroin

 

[helpingout]

I also owe a great degree of thanks to my fellow bluelighter Anthony who saved my life by making the choice to save his own. I’ll call soon. I’ve been sad.

But yeah Anthony was there for me through all the kicking and shaking of getting off the kratom. It’s a lot harder to get off of kratom when you’ve transitioned from heroin. The kick feels exactly the same when you’ve transitioned. It was so much harder than when I’ve just been using kratom and quit.

So Thank you Anthony for being there for me during that time.

Thanks to all the blue lighters who have been around helping me along the way this entire time.

Cheers to all of you good people who make this place an incredible resource to those seeking to reduce the harm of drug addiction.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

That’s great that you’re doing all that reading and creative pursuits of writing. One thing both addicts and non addicts have told me is that being creative is very important for sanity and for finding meaning in life.

Lately I’ve been staying clean but it’s just not using, not recovery or working on myself . I have given up on self improvement and meetings and am just dried out. It’s because of health issues that I just gave up on all the self improvement. There’s a feeling of giving up there. Just watch trash tv, doom scroll and post on BL all day.

The creative pursuits, that’s something I’ve never engaged in…I just can’t tell what to do or how to be creative. I don’t have any artistic talents. i don’t have a creative pursuit that I am particularly drawn to or enjoy. I don’t know how to find this for myself. How should I.

 

[helpingout]

That’s great that you’re doing all that reading and creative pursuits of writing. One thing both addicts and non addicts have told me is that being creative is very important for sanity and for finding meaning in life.

Lately I’ve been staying clean but it’s just not using, not recovery or working on myself . I have given up on self improvement and meetings and am just dried out. It’s because of health issues that I just gave up on all the self improvement. There’s a feeling of giving up there. Just watch trash tv, doom scroll and post on BL all day.

The creative pursuits, that’s something I’ve never engaged in…I just can’t tell what to do or how to be creative. I don’t have any artistic talents. i don’t have a creative pursuit that I am particularly drawn to or enjoy. I don’t know how to find this for myself. How should I.

Creativity is something that I had to cultivate.

Do you like to play music? I find it has ample room for creativity.

Making memes?

I would say the best thing to do would be just trying a bunch of stuff; a class for pottery, a long hike in the woods can lead the thoughts to wander in a manner most creative, maybe dancing is how you could be creative, essentially just grab a community services booklet and start going to local classes and trying some new stuff out.

You’ll know when you find the right fit.

Also, buy a smart recovery book, attend some online meetings. It’s so different from 12 step programs and totally refreshed
My commitment to getting clean.

NA/AA felt like a death sentence.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

Creativity is something that I had to cultivate.

Do you like to play music? I find it has ample room for creativity.

Making memes?

I would say the best thing to do would be just trying a bunch of stuff; a class for pottery, a long hike in the woods can lead the thoughts to wander in a manner most creative, maybe dancing is how you could be creative, essentially just grab a community services booklet and start going to local classes and trying some new stuff out.

You’ll know when you find the right fit.

Also, buy a smart recovery book, attend some online meetings. It’s so different from 12 step programs and totally refreshed
My commitment to getting clean.

NA/AA felt like a death sentence.

I used to be a decent drummer but I haven’t played in over 15 years. I started to get tendinitis from it and it eventually seemed stupid and was interfering with my work so I gave it up. After about 5 years I can say I didn’t miss it at all. Maybe percussion that isn’t so hard on the hands could be an option.

The only creative urges I have is to draw certain scenes involving people and that make cultural statements, I have several ideas I’ve thought of but I don’t know how to draw and have considered commissioning someone to do it, but that wouldn’t be very creative and also would get expensive

 

[helpingout]

I used to be a decent drummer but I haven’t played in over 15 years. I started to get tendinitis from it and it eventually seemed stupid and was interfering with my work so I gave it up. After about 5 years I can say I didn’t miss it at all. Maybe percussion that isn’t so hard on the hands could be an option.

The only creative urges I have is to draw certain scenes involving people and that make cultural statements, I have several ideas I’ve thought of but I don’t know how to draw and have considered commissioning someone to do it, but that wouldn’t be very creative and also would get expensive

You have got to take some art classes at the local community college!!

It would be so fun! I bet you’d love it!

 

[LucidSDreamr]

You have got to take some art classes at the local community college!!

It would be so fun! I bet you’d love it!

Maybe. Lately I’ve just totally given up on everything and I just spend then day dwelling on my physical pain and arguing between killing myself and not breaking my wife’s heart by doing so to hoping she finally leaves so I can do it.

Really defeated and don’t have the effort to do anything productive, self improvement based or engage in fun activities. I’ve never been this defeated despite worse trials, but they’ve added up over the decades.

 

[helpingout]

Maybe. Lately I’ve just totally given up on everything and I just spend then day dwelling on my physical pain and arguing between killing myself and not breaking my wife’s heart by doing so to hoping she finally leaves so I can do it.

Really defeated and don’t have the effort to do anything productive, self improvement based or engage in fun activities. I’ve never been this defeated despite worse trials, but they’ve added up over the decades.

Sounds like you’re struggling with some depression. I know you’re not getting the pain meds you need. I wonder if they’re connected.

Don’t kill yourself lucid dreamer. I’d be bummed. I like when we run into each other on here. Be terrible to see you in the shrine it would.

Maybe you should look into ACT and see if that would be helpful to you. It supposedly has profound effects on the way the brain perceives pain. It’s a type of therapy. Acceptance and commitment therapy I think. Throw everything at this. Don’t give up. You can do it!

 

[LucidSDreamr]

Sounds like you’re struggling with some depression. I know you’re not getting the pain meds you need. I wonder if they’re connected.

Don’t kill yourself lucid dreamer. I’d be bummed. I like when we run into each other on here. Be terrible to see you in the shrine it would.

Maybe you should look into ACT and see if that would be helpful to you. It supposedly has profound effects on the way the brain perceives pain. It’s a type of therapy. Acceptance and commitment therapy I think. Throw everything at this. Don’t give up. You can do it!

I’ve tried so much therapy and meditation and I have a library of books on pain psychology. I give up.

I wouldn’t call this depression because it immediately vanishes of my pain is gone. I think it’s the normal response most people would have to spending the better part of decades in physical pain. Of all the probably thousands of chronic pain sufferers I’ve spoken to over the year I’ve met to meet anyone accepting of it…people will lie to you and themselves and say they are content, but when you really get to know them you see they are lying to themselves.

The only hope I have is to get out of pain, not to come to peace with it, because I’ve been trying for 20 years in every way imaginable, after 20 years I do t think it will be accomplished. I’m pretty pragmatic and people tell me to hold on to hope but hope isn’t reasonable in the face of evidence and decades of history for myself and seeing what everyone else also experiences

As for the Shrine, nobody knows I post on here except my wife and she doesn’t really care about it and is very anti drug so she wouldn’t get involved here after I die. But if I ever just stop posting that means I died it so you can assume I’m dead if you see me never post again.


Sorry to make this thread about myself though since it was about your recovery

 

[helpingout]

I’ve tried so much therapy and meditation and I have a library of books on pain psychology. I give up.

I wouldn’t call this depression because it immediately vanishes of my pain is gone. I think it’s the normal response most people would have to spending the better part of decades in physical pain. Of all the probably thousands of chronic pain sufferers I’ve spoken to over the year I’ve met to meet anyone accepting of it…people will lie to you and themselves and say they are content, but when you really get to know them you see they are lying to themselves.

The only hope I have is to get out of pain, not to come to peace with it, because I’ve been trying for 20 years in every way imaginable, after 20 years I do t think it will be accomplished. I’m pretty pragmatic and people tell me to hold on to hope but hope isn’t reasonable in the face of evidence and decades of history for myself and seeing what everyone else also experiences

As for the Shrine, nobody knows I post on here except my wife and she doesn’t really care about it and is very anti drug so she wouldn’t get involved here after I die. But if I ever just stop posting that means I died it so you can assume I’m dead if you see me never post again.


Sorry to make this thread about myself though since it was about your recovery

The thread is just to share some documentation I have about my experience trying to get clean and how long it took, on another parallel, I wanted to share that it is possible to get to a point where maintenance medication is no longer necessary.

I’m always glad to talk with you lucid. Shit. If something I could say would have some meaning to you that would make the whole thread for me.

I really hope that despite the mountains you’ve climbed getting to this point that you’ll try the ACT. Shit just read the book and you’ll probably benefit.

I hear what you’re saying about things not working but alternatively there is a vast amount of scientific evidence that ACT helps people in severe pain be able to continue having a healthy quality of life.

I know what you really want is to just get some fucking medicine, and by way of that, some help, but I’m not a doctor or I’d write you a script immediately, but please, consider that act has helped a ton of chronic pain sufferers.

The book is called “a liberated mind.” By Stephen Hayes.

I swear ACT is critical to my continued abstinence.
And in that book they discuss at length a group of people with chronic pain who employed act tools to their chronic pain and saw tremendous benefit.

I only hope that it could help you. I don’t
Mean to beat the horse back to life. Just hang in there.

Fuck, doctor shop, pay out pocket, whatever it takes , your life is worth more than the small cost of finding a doctor who will understand your situation and be able to defend their prescriptions against the dea assault on being a person in pain.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

I know what you really want is to just get some fucking medicine, and by way of that, some help, but I’m not a doctor or I’d write you a script immediately

I am have been getting prescribed opioids forever for my pain.

I stopped voluntarily with an arsenal of opioids in the safe and still coming in.

Everyone that listens to me says I just want drugs…I’m getting them. It’s not about getting drugs it’s about getting peace.

Getting medicine was never the issue. Medicine only does so much and my health is worsening as I age.

I will consider looking at ACT but I’ve recently given up and not trying to help myself anymore so I don’t know when I will try

 

[helpingout]

I am have been getting prescribed opioids forever for my pain.

I stopped voluntarily with an arsenal of opioids in the safe and still coming in.

Everyone that listens to me says I just want drugs…I’m getting them. It’s not about getting drugs it’s about getting peace.

Getting medicine was never the issue. Medicine only does so much and my health is worsening as I age.

I will consider looking at ACT but I’ve recently given up and not trying to help myself anymore so I don’t know when I will try

In my case I thought you would want drugs because you’re in pain. So I assumed that your pain was untreated which itself is based on the assumption that treatment is effective. I thought you were in pain and thus didn’t have access to drugs. I’m in too deep. I apologize.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

In my case I thought you would want drugs because you’re in pain. So I assumed that your pain was untreated which itself is based on the assumption that treatment is effective. I thought you were in pain and thus didn’t have access to drugs. I’m in too deep. I apologize.

I I’ve been forcing myself to abstain from drugs and just try to live with pain but it’s so harmful psychological to endure that for such a long time that I’ve taken steps toward suicide (advanced directives and ID necklace for do not resucistate when they find me).

So why not just choose to medicate the pain then and no suffer so much one might ask?

Because of the fear of losing the opioids. I’m extremely lucky to have a doctor that understands as most people even those dying in agony remain unmedicated now days. So there is tons of fear of being dependent on drugs. So I force myself to suffer unmedicated.

If opioids were as easy to get as advil I wouldn’t mind being on them….but the stress of being dependent on them in this police state is enough to kill you from stress. This world is designed to destroy those that take these drugs and not allow them to live their lives.