Slipping Down the Slippery Slope

[adillonm15]

This post will kind of just be an unorganized mixture of my thoughts, I just need to get this stuff out to someone so please listen if you can. It might be a bit lengthy but id really appreciate to get my thoughts out to someone. I'll try to make it as short as possible though.

Ever since I started taking opiates, which was vicodin at the beginning of 2011, i remember being told by almost everyone, "Be careful man, opiates are a slippery slope". I never really completely understood what that meant, Still whenever anyone asked me about opiates, I felt incline to tell them, "be careful man, its a slippery slope."

I felt in control and just like I was experimenting though. I loved the high, probably my favorite drug at the time other than Ecstasy. I did it about twice a month for a couple months. Oxycodone had such a negative stigma in my head, from all the media of its addiction and abuse and all that, that i told myself, 'yeah, i love hydrocodone, but ill never try oxycodone.'

So one day, I had no vicodin, and was offered some percocet (oxycodone). I knew the high was similar and i had no vikes, but being offered that same high, I had to accept. I was expecting to be completely blown away and out of it, assuming oxy was MUCH stronger.

<snip>

I was now using oxycodone about once every other week, sometimes once a week, and using hydrocodone when i couldnt find oxycodone. I still felt completely in control, and that the drug only benefited my life, other than spending too much money on the drug, though i still had plenty of money to live comfortably. I noticed no negative health effects, no signs of addiction, and even kept my tolerance pretty consistent at 60 mg for about a year.

I still had such a bad stigma of heroin in my head and told myself i'd never try it. I just didnt like the idea of not knowing how much im exactly taking and not knowing what exactly is in the substance im injecting, and i didnt have any problems telling my peers i was using oxy and hydro, but i know so many people would look down of me for dong heroin.

Well, about 3 weeks ago, my girlfriend of 2 years broke up with me (it ended up just being a break and were back together now). and I was insanely depressed. I am so in love with this girl, and i was having trouble with my parents at the time, and just a lot of things were going bad. I wanted to get high on some roxy, so I called my dealer and he said hed give me some and to come over. When i got there he said he was really sorry and he was out of oxy but he had some black tar heroin.

I was extremely frustrated, and so depressed, not thinking straight, and said fuck it. And that was the first time I tried heroin. I chased the dragon, which I absolutely love doing. <snip> For some reason though, the next day I felt like doing it more than i'd ever felt like doing any other drug. I did it the next day again and loved it again. I think being so attracted to the idea of chasing the dragon greatly adds to my want to do it.

My girlfriend and I started talking again the next day and made up and thats when i decided to stop heroin. I tried getting oxy though, and for some reason it is now impossible for me to get (shes okay with me doing oxy..not H!). I tried for about a week, lost money, got frustrated, and ended up getting some more black tar heroin. I have now done it 13 times since then (chasing the dragon everytime), which was 14 days ago! I;m fianlly starting to understand what 'slipper slope' means and i feel myself slipping fast!

Someone please give me some expereience or ideas to help me out. What should i do?! Try to stop completely/! That just doesnt sound appealing to me at all! Someone please put me in check! I'll make a list of pros and cons of using heroin by chasing the dragon, and i'd appreciate if you could add some cons (and pros). And it would be cool if people that have been in a similar situation as me could tell me how its ended up. Im kind of scared but i just dont feel like stopping.

Heres the list of pros and cons of chasing the dragon. I'll add more later as i think of more, its getting time for sleep now lol. And again please give me stuff is should add to either side.

Pros:
Increased Sociablity
Confidence
Better Outlook on life
ability to meet more people
feeling great all the time
fun of chasing the dragon
ability to last long in bed
more openness and ego softening
not caring what others think about me, always seeing the best in people
great sleep
more caring of others, going out of my way for them (this happens for me)

cons
spending all my money on it
addiction big possibility
freaking hard to pee all the time
scratch marks on back
irritable when trying to get the drug
having to hide it from my girlfiend and family
becoming dependent on the drug

REALLTY appreciate if any of you read, please give me some advice. I will add more later, Goodnight!

 

[Pagey]

Just one thing - be careful with your glorification of drug use in this forum, it's triggering. Not easy for a recovering oxy addict such as myself to re-read how awesome it felt

I'm in no way going to add to your 'pros' list of smoking h. You've seen how quickly opiate use escalates. We all thought we'd be fine at first.
I only have one thing to add to your 'cons':
You're going to become addicted if you continue using like this. Actually scratch that - you're going to become addicted, clearly, unless you get out now.
With addiction it's likely you'll lose not only your girlfriend but close relationships with friends and family members as well. You're not gonna care about anything else, you're gonna be miserable unless you have heroin in your system until one day it won't even do anything for you and you'll be miserable even when you have it. Except that if you want to stop taking it, you're giong to be so violently sick you'll just convince yourself it's not worth quitting.
There's no pro to taking heroin on such a regular basis, from what I understand you're using daily?! You'll probably even already experience withdrawals if and when you quit (and I really hope you start putting your mind to that now). If you were managing to use opiates only very regularly and to control it entirely I'd say fine, that's cool (that's what I think I'm doing right now) but smoking smack daily? You're not on your way to the slippery slope, you're very much on it. You just need to stop now. I'm sorry to be so harsh but you seem painfully unaware of how much this has the potential of hurting you.

 

[badfish45]

Try not to be so demeaning in your posts hazey420. The OP realizes his choice to use opiates as bad and the question to you "Why would you take them for something to do" can be answered by the numerous opiate addicts on this forum.

The fact that you decided to go to heroin as a way to cope with your emotions is a clear sign that you need to get off of opiates while you're not in too deep. Any physical addiction shouldn't be too difficult for you to handle at this point, but just know that using again is only going to make it harder and harder. I suggest going to NA meetings or doing whatever you can to get off of them, whether it be on your own or rehab, this slippery slope only gets more slippy

 

[paranoid android]

You want to know what my morning routine is right now? I wake up prep up my shot hopefully before the morning dopesickness set's in and then go on about my day until i start getting sick again. With say dilaudid you can find yourself shooting up about 5 times a day easy. The all my problems go away feeling well goes away pretty fast. You are just left with the cons far outweighing any pro's.

Get out now because if there is one thing i know is that it just get's much harder the longer you keep it up. The longer you keep using the higher the price you pay for doing so

 

[adillonm15]

Thank you so much for the replies and for reading.

Yes, I'vw been smoking daily for pretty much the last two weeks. And I expected to hear something harsh and the dark side of things, I mean i did post in 'the dark side' afterall.

It definitely helps hearing people say that I need to stop now other than myself at some points. I mean my girlfriend and my family would tell me stop obviously and try to help me but i cant tell them im using, itll break their hearts. This other girl ive been hanging out with is a bad influence and calls me pretty much every day to smoke dope and hooks me up with free dope if i give her a ride to pick up from her dealer. I'm gonna tell her I'm sorry but I can't help her anymore.

I have about a 20 sack of dope left on me right now. I think i'm gonna smoke it today, and after that, try to take a break from all opiates for a couple months. Then if i get back into it I think i should stay away from H and use oxy maybe a couple times a month. I had no problems doing that before and i obviously cant handle using H responsibly, but im sure not many can.

 

[herbavore]

Pros:
Increased Sociablity
Confidence
Better Outlook on life
ability to meet more people
feeling great all the time
fun of chasing the dragon
ability to last long in bed
more openness and ego softening
not caring what others think about me, always seeing the best in people
great sleep
more caring of others, going out of my way for them (this happens for me)

What if you took opiates out of the equation and made this a list of the goals you have for your life? Your personal development is a process. Most of us make a ton of maladaptive habits that sabotage our mental states and maturity is learning how to rid ourselves of these bad mental habits. There are many ways to achieve that list that don't involve addictive substances--but they are neither fast nor easy. Maybe looking at the false promise that opiates have given you that there is a fast and easy way to be the person you want to be without any effort is what you should add to the Cons category.

Check out the Octsober thread here in TDS. It might be a timely aid to help you give up H. I'm going to edit your first post for triggering content. Good luck with everything--sounds like you know what you need to do and with some dedication you should be able to pull it off.

 

[buster1]

I heard some very sad news today about a beautiful family. Their story is this: One of their daughters, age 22 had just come home from a 3 day trip to the big city. She sat with her family and told them all about her wonderful trip and then said she was going upstairs to sleep. After about 10 minutes her father had a feeling to go up and check on her. Her found his beautiful girl slumped over her dresser and she was blue. God only knows what happened after that. She was transported to the hospital and remained in a coma for 5 days and then she died. I believe she shot up heroin and Xanax but who really knows what happened besides the one who is no longer here. The family is devastated. Drug use let a perfect young body forget to breath. Can you imagine how the Mom, Dad, sisters, brother, and boyfriend feel right now. Your words reminded me of her. I hope you realize how unfair it is to the loved ones just so you can have/be Increased Sociability
Confidence
Better Outlook on life
ability to meet more people
feeling great all the time
fun of chasing the dragon
ability to last long in bed
more openness and ego softening
not caring what others think about me, always seeing the best in people
great sleep
more caring of others, going out of my way for them (this happens for me).

Good luck with your journey.

 

[wonderlandgrl]

I have been addicted to opiates for over 3 years now. I use because if I don't I am so sick I can't even get out of bed. Going through pill sickness is the worse thing I've ever done to myself. I do pills just to get normal and within 6 hours I need another 30mg percocet or im sick as hell. I want to be clean but I can't get past the 3rd day of sickness, I always get a pill or a suboxone. If you are using opiates and are not yet fully addicted my advice would be to stop now because there.is nothing worse than opiate withdrawal. I am 27 and feel so weak and helpless when im sick. I want to beat this addiction and have a normal life. Good luck to anyone trying to quit and to those still using like myself be safe.

 

[Ligaturd]

Heroin is dangerous due to not knowing the potency and also the prevalence of fentanyl being present but it is not necessarily worse than other prescription opioids in terms of addiction and withdrawal, it's the inconsistency that makes it dangerous. I know people who fell absolutely in love with heroin and a lot of that I think is romanticism, the stigma and reputation surrounding it makes it more attractive to people. That being said, if it is adulterated with fentanyl (have read that black tar is also now being adulterated with acetylfentanyl), the withdrawal will be more intense than if it was just black tar heroin (diacetylmorphine, acetylcodeine etc.).

Just get out now, you are very early on in terms of addiction, dependancy, and downregulating your opioid receptors and I can tell you that all this second guessing and realization of how much of a hold it is starting to have on you is something you should embrace. It just gets worse and worse, every junkie ever will tell you that this is a pivotal moment in your life. A chance to avoid hurting yourself and your loved ones. Continuing to use now after having read this would be a purely selfish endeavor. I am probably projecting right now but please think really hard about this, from this point on you will lose more and more control and it's easy to create justifications for it, reasons why you need to keep using. Those pros you listed will cease to exist and you wont be able to function without it, as your tolerance grows it is absolutely guaranteed that you will spend a good portion of your time miserable and in withdrawal. If you decide to quot down the road you will be a depressed and anxious mess for a good part of a year which is the reason why it is so hard to escape, because you wont be able to feel joy in much of anything.

What keeps people from quitting at the start is just encountering the insignificant dopesickness or even making yourself believe that it isn't that bad, that you can handle it and it becomes the norm. Getting used to being sick and miserable cannot be good psychologically. It becomes masochistic, like an abusive relationship. The incredible pain and misery is justified by the warm and cozy relief you get from getting high again. People hear about how bad it can get and when they experience a minor sickness they get scared and work themselves up and use, it's mostly mental in the beginning and it's a trap, it's easy to build it up into something more than it is but giving into that irrational fear will just ensure that the user stays in the cycle.

Ok I'm done with the lecture but for serious, I don't know a single junkie that doesn't wish they stopped when they first started to encounter being aware of the hold it is starting to have on them.

 

[wonderlandgrl]

I have never injected qny drugs im not about that at all. I've saw ppl for it I've saw them nod off and I'd rather snort a perc and talk and smoke a cigarette. I never understood the unconscious type high how is that fun. Sad thing is I've had ppl tell me they have saw me nod off playing on my phone or sitting up and it hits you that you are an addict and don't even realize how high your getting. I will say by the grace of God I have woken up from some heavy nights of pills and Xanax. Really wish I could get myself together and live a better life.