The beginning

[engineercchad]

What began your issue? What was step 1 in your path?

For my person, it was failure to accept myself and desperately wanting others to offer that, apparently the others were a bunch of idiots that misidentified "friend" as simply "common interest" (obtaining and using substance) but even that came only after my first contact with a doctor that (while I wish could be so sure) intended no harm but put me in the "pill for every ill" mode for over half my life.

My biggest hurdle to overcome these days is my mistrust issue with the medical profession. I'm 34, my health has never been better since getting clean so.... It's not so unreasonable just yet to avoid them like the plague, but I wonder what one day may bring and it concerns me, at times, where I will be then.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

I liked getting fucked up.

 

[Azure Cloud]

I liked getting fucked up.

Honestly I like this answer. No matter what we believe is the underlying issue that lead to using -be it acceptance, depression, isolation, abuse- there is no way out until one takes 100% responsibility for her/his addiction. I know the violence I witnessed as a child between my parents traumatised me and greatly influenced how easily I've gone down the path of addiction, but that doesn't give me an excuse to keep fucking my life up. Others have been thru worse and didn't become drug addicts. But I do forgive myself because I was self-medicating the best I knew how.

Plus I loved being fucked up!

 

[engineercchad]

Honestly I like this answer. No matter what we believe is the underlying issue that lead to using -be it acceptance, depression, isolation, abuse- there is no way out until one takes 100% responsibility for her/his addiction. I know the violence I witnessed as a child between my parents traumatised me and greatly influenced how easily I've gone down the path of addiction, but that doesn't give me an excuse to keep fucking my life up. Others have been thru worse and didn't become drug addicts. But I do forgive myself because I was self-medicating the best I knew how.

Plus I loved being fucked up!

Yea, I guess you're right there. Phew! So, it can normally be placed so simply to a counterproductive "like."

I've been noticing since I started refusing to use to get fucked up that it seems like an astounding number of people like getting fucked up? Normally, if I make all substance both legal and illegal inclusive, I find it to be about a 75% that anyone new I meet likes it.... I never knew it would be such tough work to keep clean by not allowing nearly 75% any access to my person on nearly any level.

 

[Azure Cloud]

It can be as simple as "I like it " or as complicated as the level we wish to explore. At some point drug use became the overwhelming problem in my life, much worse an impasse compared to whatever the original issues were that lead to it.

However I'm starting to think I do need to better understand the root of my addiction. Personally I'm stuck in my recovery. Generally not using but not really making anything that feels like progress anymore. Maybe addressing the underlying issues is something I need to do at this point.

 

[herbavore]

I think as a society we really miss the boat when it comes to people seeking and enjoying and benefiting from changing their consciousness through substances. If we were able to impart to our young people that certain substances, by altering "reality", can actually benefit spiritual and personal development but that it comes with lots of risks and dangers and should never be undertaken in isolation or without both intention and guidance, we would see a very different relationship to getting "fucked up". Of course you would have to have a society that values spiritual (by that I only mean harmonic) and personal growth for the good of all. Therein lies the problem. We not only do not live in a society that values that--we live in one that lives in fear of it.8(

So many of us self-medicate and become "hungry ghosts" trying to fill the unflllable void. Or we simply seek oblivion because life is too painful and we have zero tools for dealing with personal pain. Add to that that we are held personally responsible for the pain inside and you have a perfect storm for abuse. Who does not want pain to go away? Who would not choose to end pain, even temporarily? Eventually the rational mind steps in and says (hopefully), "This is not working. You now have MORE pain."

But the impulse itself is completely understandable and rational.

 

[FlyLila]

I've been struggling with this topic since I quit 6 days ago. What made me use pills? Why? Yeah it started as pain and I vividly remember the day I got hooked. I wanted to sleep that day and took my 1st prescribed Vicodin. Instead of sleep and resting to heal, I wanted to paint the house.
Now here I sit 15 years later on day 6 of withdrawals and I wonder why I did allowed myself to follow the rabbit hole of addiction. Why do I think I can't do anything without it even though it isn't true? I can do things without the addiction but my brain doesn't feel that way. Weird.

 

[Azure Cloud]

Relearning life without pills is tough. I can be productive at work without pills but as soon as I am in an unstructured environment, forget about it. But honestly after my own 15 years of addiction, I wasn't really getting much done anymore while on pills.

 

[herbavore]

^ and ^^ yeah, I think that why you were susceptible to addiction at first is very separate from how you learn to think once addicted. The addicted brain will always serve up the same reward menu, delusional as it has become ( as in something used to help, now hinders, but you convince yourself it still helps). I remember my brother telling me about the end state of his crack addiction. It was when he could actually see the false promise for what it was and still could not stop. His brain would just keep looping back to the false promise even though he knew it was going to be incredibly painful to snort, give no detectable high once in his body, etc. He said that was one of the most helpless feelings--to be that disconnected from what he actually knew he knew; to not be able to act on his own instincts. He said he felt like a "host" body for a parasitic life (addiction itself). It's a pretty terrifying idea but he did beat it.