For me, I started on opiates with kratom. I had tried hydrocodone a good handful of times and never found it all that great (I still never have either). Then I heard about kratom and saw it in a head shop, it was 2003 and I was in college. I LOVED it, I would brew it the traditional way because all you could get was crushed leaf. I started doing it every day pretty quickly, but it felt so easy to abuse, it felt innocent and wonderful, it made me feel more alive. Kratom, with no tolerance or years of opiate abuse, feels different from other opiates. The best opiate highs of my life were my early days of kratom.
Anyway, I soon found myself physically addicted but I got off it and was fine in about 5 days. Then a couple of months later I got another pound, and they sent me 2. I took it on family vacation and me and my cousin and girlfriend did a bunch of it every day. And then for the next 6 years I did it every day. Eventually my relationship was becoming painful (we were together for 12 years and got married in 2008 ), we weren't right for each other and as time went on the pain grew. I started using kratom to help mask that pain, and then the addiction got really bad. I worked up a very large amount of debt because I could order my opiate with a credit card.
Eventually in 2010 I decided I needed to stop, and I decided it would be a good idea to use poppy seed tea every other day, for 4-6 days, until I was past kratom withdrawal. It actually worked, after the 2nd dose, on the 4th day, I felt fine, no withdrawals. But, I liked poppy tea much better (still not as much as early days kratom but kratom had basically totally stopped working for me). So a few days after that, I did it again. And again. And before I knew it I was doing that every day and addicted to it. I went through 3 years of quitting, relapsing, lying to my wife about it, getting caught over and over again. My self-esteem was bottomed out, and things got VERY bad with my relationship. By the end of 2013 I was the lowest I've ever been, I felt dead inside, not myself, horribly depressed... I literally wished I was dead, next step was actually suicidal. The pain of my relationship was so great because of the resentment and frustration, it was crushing me, along with my addiction.
Finally we split up and she moved out and I felt a lot better quickly but I was still a junkie... I lived my life to get high, or rather, avoid withdrawals. Finally in April 2014 I took a flood dose of ibogaine at home with supervision after preparing for it thoroughly and forcing myself to not have any opiates for a week. I really believe it saved my life, it dug out the addiction completely and helped me back to the right path for my life. Ever since then my life has been amazing, I'm in the best place I've ever been physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and everything is going great, lots of new opportunities and pursuits. My thirties are going to be so much better than my twenties, they already are.
I wrote a story about the ibogaine experience if you want to read something very long and interesting (
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...First-Time-Into-The-Flood?highlight=ibogaine).