Thanks overdone and evilthree for your replies....
Just tryna remind yall--This thread aint "How do you feel about NA, bitch here", so please dont post your comments of how you feel about the program in this thread. that aint wat its for. If you wanna do that, we can have a thread about the 12 steps , thats cool, but in here , that aint the topic.
Anyways, i agree that there aint no one specific program that will work for everybody. But I think that somethin that is general enough, that offers enough room for people to kinda make it their own, could be helpful to folks. If instead of bein so cut and dry it was more like just a general set of recommendations to people, SUGGESTIONS, that might help them...that might do people some good.
For example heres some shit that Ive learned over the past year of bein clean.
(And when i say i been clean, i mean, there wasnt one time when i was addicted to dope. I used maybe 5 times total over the last year. All of them was for one day at a time, i got high that day and that was it. I didnt do nothing risky to get my dope like copping-didnt get it on the street. i didnt shoot up in bathrooms or no shit like that, i waited til i got home to do it safely. i used all clean and brand new materials, new sets, clean water, clean cottons, etc. I mighta got high, but i didnt do it in a junkie, addict way. You feel me, that is the difference. and so easch time i got high, no i didnt start counting from the beginning again. becuz i WASNT back at the beginning, i didnt lose all the progress i had made--i didnt "fall off" and make a mistake. each time i got high it was carefully planned well thought out and a conscious decision that i knew about at least a week ahead of time each time. It wasnt a slip, or a relapse, or nothing like that. So there aint no reason to go count from day 1 again, cuz i wasnt there.)
So anyways after that lil explanation....
here is my "basic ideas for not bein a drug addict, and livin a happy life-watever that means to you."
IDEA #1 -- i think that a person who is addicted to dope, or watever, aint necessisarily addicted to other shit. If you got a problem with alcohol, it dont mean that you are gonna overdo the painkillers when you get them prescribed. If you got a issue with dope, it dont mean that you will sniff up all the coke anytime you get a chance. If you are a cokehead, it dont mean you gonna be drinking like crazy as soon as you get a drop in you.
Sure people can be addicted to more than one thing. but addiction to one thing, DONT mean that you are automatically just "addictive personality" and will be addicted to eVERYTHING, like the programs these days say.
Im the same as u evilthree--I dont like drinkin. I rarely, ever, ever drink. Seriously mabye like 2 or 3 times a year at the most, and its usually one drink , at a wedding or some shit like that when they do the champagne toast or w/ever. I never , ever go out of control on alcohol. I aint got no desire to, and even once i get a buzz on (if i ever even drink enough to get that far) i am still totally under control, and dont got no desire to just keep poundin em back. I aint got NOTHING IN COMMON with a alcoholic--its 2 very different things. Sure both additions, but the lifestyle, the mentality, all that shit, is very different. And I aint got a drinking problem. I am totaly, completrely out of place in a AA meeting, and i also hate how the programs claim to be inter changeable.
IDEA # 2 -- I would tell anybody who got involved in my 'program'...hey, you want to smoke weed? smoke weed. right now, your main goal, is tryin to live a life that aint totally dominated by heroin addiction, that is your concern, so its ok if you smoke a little bud, jeez. weed aint dope. Marijuana is a medicinal plant that got soooo much potential to help you , in so many ways. It would be a important part of my program that if people got access to bud, I would actually recommend it. For me it always helped me when i was kickin dope, so much more than anything else ever did.
Especially at the beginning of the time when you first quit usin, havin a lil blunt to the head at bed time can really quiet your mind and make you be like "damn....This aint so bad....Wats a matter with me? Why was i puttin needles in my fuckin arms? damn, I could get by with just a blunt a day, I cant believe how crazy the shti i been doing is!" It always caused that reaction in me, made me like "Yo, WTF AM I DOIN WITH MYSELF? HOLY SHIT, I AM FUCKED UP!!" and made me want to cut back on my use. it was always a very positive thing and i think the way that it gets lumped in with all the other drugs is fucked up.
IDEA #3 -- Medical use of painkillers, benzos, etc, is allowed. If you full of shit, and you faking injuries to get scripts, then obviously you got to re consider that shit. but if you LEGTITIMATELY NEED a prescription to a "addictive substance" like benzos or opiates, and you aint abusing them, and take them as directed? Then who gives a shit? I aint no fuckin doctor, i dotn know wat the hell is wrong with you or if you deserve to have a script or not, so if your doctor thinks you need it, thats OK with me. You should not be condemned to live a life of chronic pain and suffering and misery and anxiety, just becuz you are a heroin addict. You want to stop using heroin in a way that causes problems with your life? Ok. So work on that.
Part of bein successful , is havin the other tools that you need. And for some people, who got physical conditions that cause them to be so fuckin miserable that they want to use--those tools are their medications, becuz stablizing those conditions is very important. you get the pain and anxiety out of the way so you can focus on the real problem here. otherwise you jsut gonna be distracted by all those other things and not even be abel to concentrate on your real goal.
So take the meds you need. As long as you aint abusing them, as long as you take them as prescribed and forr the purpose they prescribed for, then it aint gonna effect your recovery. We aint drug-taking machines. We aint some kind of freakish robots, that get "activated" into "take all drugs mode" when one drug goes into us. The goal here is to stop ABUSING drugs and stop being a ADDICT, not to never take another drug again entirely. which leads into the next one which is the most important one IMO.
IDEA #4 -- THE REASON AND WAY THAT YOU TAKE THE DRUGS, IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHETHER OR NOT YOU TAKE THEM. this is a big one . a person who uses responsibly, who aint feening for the drug, who lives a normal happy life that happens to involve occasional use of heroin or watever drug they were addicted to, is a lot more healthy IMO, than the person who is off all drugs but is miserable, and still thinks like an addict, whose life has to be all about not using becuz its such a big deal, etc.
All drug use , aint abuse. You mighta been a heroin addict. but it dont mean that automatically any time you use, that it is abuse. WHY and HOW you use, and the mindset that you are in, the way you approach it, the way you feel abot it, those are way more important. those tell you a whole lot more about whether or not a person is an addict than whether or not they use.
If you use dope becuz you sad, becuz you tryna run away from something, if you use it and mentally you are doin some Gollum shit like "my precioussss", then that aint exactly healthy. If when you use, you do risky shit, or you do risky shit in order to be able to use-- or if you DONT use, but you are constnatly thinkin about it, you are sad cuz you cant get high, you have to like seriously pay attention to every move you make so that you dont use, then you might not be usin, but you still a fuckin addict.
When i used any of those times during my past year of "clean time', my mind was so far from the mind i used to have as a junkie, its just unreal. If i am usin for teh right reasons, if i aint doin nothing risky to be able to use, if i aint doin nothing unhealthy when i use. If the reason i want to use dont involve a craving, a feening feeling, a NEED to use....If i am FREE FROM THE OBSESSION OF ADDICTION--Then that use, is absolutely not the drug use of an addict. It aint abuse.
look at some of these people in NA--They are OBSESSED WITH DRUGS! They may not be actively Using them, but they are fuckin OBSESSED yo! They sit around and go to a meeting every night, talking about drugs, about how not to use drugs. they re organize their ENTIRE LIVES, in order to avoid drugs. They MOVE ACROSS THE COUNTRY...they avoid people who they knew, who were good friends, becuz they happen to drink alcohol sometimes so they might cause them to "relapse". They make their whole entire life revolve around "recovery". they are still living their addiction. Their head is still the same inside--they even TELL themselvs that--that we are still addicts, we are the same person we used to be, so we need to keep that in check, etc. that shit, means you are still an addict.
a person who is usin healthily, recreationally, in moderation, occasionally, with a good mentality, who approaches a night with a few bundles and a fresh pack of sets the same way that they would approach a night goin out with their boys to the bar--as just a fun activity to do, have a good time, get wasted, and chill--that is way less of an addict than the non drug using obsesser.
How is a person who is living like that, whose every second of their waking life, involves thinking about how to not do drugs, and obsessing over it, considered to be healthier, than the person who occasionally, responsibly uses their DOC? I dont think that they are. and thats why the goal of this program, aint to get off drugs or to stay off them or to never use again. The goal is to learn a healthy mindset, to get yourself free from the obsessive ways of thinking and acting that you had when you were addicted, to get your head right so that you dont feel a desire to abuse drugs, and to be able to be normal and have a happy normal life again. Those are the main goals. So, if you achieve them, and at the same time you use sometimes, good for you, that is great and that is wat the program is all about.
As far as im concerned, the TRUE mark of conquering your addiction, is BEING ABLE TO USE THAT DRUG IN MODERATION. Sure, you can just TOTALLY AVOID IT becuz you cant control yourself....Or you could actually try to FIX YOURSELF....Fix the problem inside of you , the addict mentality, the junkie brain, that way of thikning, that caused you to act that way, figure out why you use to be that way and do somethin about it. once you work thru all that shit and learn how to be a normal person again, you are finally gettin somewhere. THAT is the goal--to not live a life that is obsessed with gettin high. to not NEED to get high anymore. to have a HEALTHY mind....Not to just not use drugs. Quitting all drugs aint gonna fix your fucked up head.
Instead of bein like the little kid who says 'fuck this, im taking my toys and going home, i dont wanna play no more!" learn how to compromise. its EASY to "just say no" and to never be around drugs at all. its a whole lot harder to actually be able to use that drug without goin out of control again. And once you can do that, its pretty safe to say you are a recovered addict. if you gotta avoid it, if you have to stay away from it becuz the instant you do it youll go outa control--then you aint really too far along in that recovery. if your recovery is so fragile that it can break the instant you got one milligram of oxycontin in you or one bag of dope, then it was never really all that real to begin with.
that aint all that I think about this whole thing, but i dont want to make this post so long that nobody reads it, its already logn as hell so ima leave it there for now.
and evilthree please feel free to keep writin, i read your post i dont mind that its long cuz i agree with you and i like to hear wat you got to say so dont worry about makin another long reply, write that whole book about it right here if you want to, you know that at least one person, me, is listening
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