• H&R Moderators: VerbalTruist

-The- Heroin & Opioid Mega Discussion Thread (Volumes 1+2 Merged)

I can relate to this a lot. Whenever I see such an area I get an immediate adrenaline rush and a strong urge to go and score. A few weeksI coincidentally drove through an area where I bought drugs for some of my worst crashes and I was indefinitely glad that I was in a car with a friend and didn't sit on the drivers seat because I felt that I wouldn't have been able to stop myself... Sometimes the same happens when I see run-down drug victims that everyone else would consider the perfect drug deterrent.
 
Red, I'm sure you know even elements indirectly associated w/ use trigger the nasty recall. It's like a haunting, and even worse if someone feels positive adjectives apply. Anyone who shared your practical method for obtaining drugs in strange and unknown lands would know exactly your meaning.

So, I feel completely broken and almost hopeless after another relapse. Can I only get 5 days? I've grown to an adult under the auspices of substance abuse, and it is now almost every social prospect presents cravings. My only idea is to just put myself on self-confinement in my house, maybe only going out alone, but even alone I'll worry I'll find myself fighting it. The last 2-3 days were the worst of my life, and while I should just take it as the final lesson I need, it's draining any positivity and confidence I have, and I'm frankly scared at the notion it is not unrealistic I'll put myself through it again. For 2 days and 3 sleepless nights I destroyed all my faith in myself, destroyed my relationship with my sister, and probably lost a few friends horrified by all the signs I was just not really there. My mom noticed the change in my face which always take shortly when I use speedballs. The worst was the loss of sleep, which at the time didn't bother me much. I don't need to recount the experience here, although I have to remember the damage it did, yet my concern is I've lost my will to live a fulfilling and happy life. But I don't want the heroin/coke life with its pitfalls, I just do it b/c it's easier then struggling out of the place I'm in addiction/mentality. What do you do when your will runs out. I can try for others I love until I find my will, I suppose, but I don't know how long that way will hold me. I hope I just need to get a few days clean and it'll return. I knew when I first tried to get clean and had confidence I would hit a challenge, that it wouldn't always be good or easy. I hoped it wouldn't be this severe, that it wouldn't destroy my drive to even live. Any advice is helpful, b/c I feel so defeated all I can do is sit here and hope w/ no certainty I will begin to want to live again.
 
Red, I'm sure you know even elements indirectly associated w/ use trigger the nasty recall. It's like a haunting, and even worse if someone feels positive adjectives apply. Anyone who shared your practical method for obtaining drugs in strange and unknown lands would know exactly your meaning.

"Haunting" is an appropriate word choice. I've been addicted to a lot of different things at several different stages of my life, but heroin is the only one that really haunts me. I can do the whole 'spinning it into a learning experience' with most of my struggles, but heroin and its collateral damage still sends chills down my spine. The further I get away from that and the bits of self-respect I'm starting to find seem to be correlated with an increase in post-traumatic stress from what the heroin game put me through (not just the drug, but anyone who's been deep into it knows what I'm talking about, especially for an admittedly sensitive person like me). I almost wish that I had one of those complexes where I dealt with my PTSD by blocking things out. Cravings I've learned to deal with and I'm also getting pretty good at just saying "no." It's the fucking memories haunting me that keep my heart pounding and my eyes wanting to tear up. One could make an argument that the dopesickness and whatnot can give a person a reality-check and be worked into a learning experience, but I honestly want to talk kids out of trying heroin just so they don't ever have to go through a lot of the trauma that comes with keeping a habit going for a long time. Nobody should ever have to know that side of life.

Any advice is helpful, b/c I feel so defeated all I can do is sit here and hope w/ no certainty I will begin to want to live again.

MOE, this is going to be unorthodox advice, but it might be helpful (it has been for me). I've noticed that you do romantisise your addiction at times, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it can be a bit enabling. You need to learn how to romantisise your recovery as well. You've a very good writer and I can tell that you're very in-tune with everything going on in your life. You just need to try and channel all of that into really turning yourself into the person you may have wanted to be growing up. Do you have any artistic or musical ability? If so, use this.

I also think that you can benefit a lot from continuing to help other people and offer advice. If anything, it first takes the focus off of yourself. As well, you'll start to feel better about yourself as a mentor/role-model (even if you're still struggling on your own), and you will establish a standard of respect for yourself in the sober/clean person you want to become.

It's very hard, if not impossible, to make an accurate assessment of your life and what could become of it when that observation is tainted by the drugs being used. I understand that you probably want to make decisions about your future for yourself, as opposed to letting some professional, who is not affected by the same drug, make them for you. Which is fine, but at least get yourself clean for long enough of a time that you can make the most honest assessment of who you are and who/what you want to become.
 
The other week, my mom, who has no heroin experiences, said it may be good if I suffer sickness, as it may serve as a deterrent. I countered if it was an effective deterrent heroin addiction wouldn't be too hard to treat. The promise of sickness when I stop has offered me maybe a moments pause before relapse. Yet, of course in hindsight I wish I knew the power it'd have over me before I tried it. Yet I had many portents in dead and dying friends. I worry now how I will be when and if I get where you are, but for now I'm going to focus on getting past day 5.

I've felt slivers of the self-respect you mention when I began controlling my drinking to the point where I avoided risks and cut down on the associated, dangerous behavior. It has occasionally helped to recall that sensation, but the pride stemmed from avoiding the mistakes I made while drinking in excess. I've had trouble suiting it to heroin, and I think it's because the collateral damage of heroin for me is associated with obtaining the drug, and less so with it. But I don't think that is true, and I need to think more and let myself realize the essential destructive nature of heroin unto itself. I want it to occur to me, rather than struggling to grasp it. I don't have the psychic strength to appropriately make connections, but these things intuitively present themselves over time. The downside is I miss out on a potentially powerful deterrent.

EDIT: To mitigate or ignore the direct damage of heroin is silly of me. Particularly IV use, which at worst guarantees candidacy for blood born diseases, and at least is responsible for two infections on my arms. I think I what I meant was heroin does not cause me dangerous blackouts, and I don't have unprotected sex when high etc. I realized earlier, commenting on another thread, this could be read as dismissive, and even could lead to harming others. Although, here expressed uncertainty in my own sort of streamed pondering. I guess it lead to a conclusion, so it was a helpful exercise.

I do believe the passing of time will and does ameliorate trauma, that is if it is trauma we survive. It will be tragic if knowing there is a place, maybe distant, where peace relatively exists, yet I don't endure. From what I know, you are finding ways to persist, and while it isn't easy you have learned to not only survive, but reasonably manage some of heroin addiction's most effective and tenacious enforcers. I don't know much about PTSS, and I'm sure there are many variants, so I don't want to say it will just get better over time, but I hope as you continue to have purpose and you remember the reasons you abandoned it, it will move further into the recesses of your mind, only visiting your thoughts rarely and w/o pain. And of course it's the time we have to fight by filling it meaningfully. And that takes the passivity out of it, because one needs to be progressive to pass time with meaning and purpose. Here, I'm stuck. Many metaphors fit here, but I'll say I need to break past my inertia, and I'm starting to think it may mean not being so delicate with myself.

Romanticizing is a good way of articulating it. I admit I group heroin with a certain fringe element to which I've always been attracted. I think it's time I move away from that mentality and be a little more innovative in my identity. I think maturity is integral for recovery in general, and this is a good time for me to grow up. And get clean. Of course, up until recently recovery was a very conventional, predictable, one-dimensional cult represented by AA and NA. That's how I thought of it. I don't want to dismiss those programs - I know they people, But I know I'm going to need something a bit more tailored to my, uh, taste. I'm starting to develop associations with my recovery, as I did with my addiction; they are very different of course, as to make a clear distinction. As for creativity and expression, mostly I write for myself, but I want to begin music again.

In regard to the last point you made, if I understand correctly you are saying to wait to make the big decisions for and by yourself until there is enough time sober to know your mind is clear. The difficulty I have is avoiding making big decisions while proceeding w/ early recovery. Right now, it looks like there is no safe path out; some risks, or leaps of faith are required. Half my family really wants me to surrender my decision-making and defer to a professional. I'm so fatigued and seemingly unable to succeed I'm almost willing to comply.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, and I hope you conquer the PTSS. I like the idea of people who get help, and then return the favor - there is some cyclical triumph in it. Also, I'm willing toi admit people like chances to be a kind of expert. Altruism and a self-esteem hike, all wrapped into one. I think my will is returning, and my disappointment is gradually becoming resolve to try again....
 
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Well, I was being naive about the morphine and methadones I was dosing w/. They were maintenance, not a taper. In addition I've only been truly off junk for almost 48 hours, and the real shit is coming on. Not the positive week long honeymoon I had when I first started trying. I'm currently lying in a sick nest I made in the bathroom, ready for a night of shakes and the rest. The only bright light I have is my brother's unwavering support, and I know I can't fail him this time - or myself.
 
An opiate addiction thread without triggers??

I recently quit heroin. I am happy that i quit heroin. I've noticed that a lot of threads in here are people complaining how much opiates helped them, and how "if only it were legal" everything would be fine. If they don't start that way, somebody else chimes in. Maybe this line of thought is true for some people. Maybe that was true for me, too. I was a reasonably high functioning addict, and I used to self medicate for severe depression. At first, opiates stimulated me and allowed me to function much better. Most of my problems started when I started shooting it, which of course I did because I could no longer get high smoking it due to cost issues. But ultimately heroin caused MANY more problems than it solved for me, and I have observed this in every individual I have known that was addicted to heroin.

But guess what. Opiates not legal. It's just reality. As a result of their illegality (and usually for other reasons too, based on my extensive experience) they will fuck up your life.

So can we please have a thread where we talk about the bad things? Talking about cravings is fine, just without the bitching and moaning about how we all wish we could get high but the man is bringing us down.

I will post more later, I got places to be.
 
Merging with the Heroin/Opiates megathread as per OPs request

newskin congratulations on getting clean! That is so good to hear, and I wish you all the very best :)
 
Well, I've succesfully gone one week without heroin, after my slip two weeks ago from my 4 1/2 month period of abstinence. I've been a nervous wreck about it, and have been taking some benzo's, but I hope to put that down soon as well-though it makes everything seem so much more tolerable...

It's funny, I feel so much compassion for other people when they slip, yet I have none for myself. It's like I believe that for everyone else, addiction is a disease, but when it comes to my relationship with heroin, it's just a moral failing and a weakness.

Anyway, I'm glad TDS is here, so I can put all this stuff out there. I've been using my bupe IV for the past few days which is not a very sober thing to do, so I got to cut that out, among with many other unhealthy behaviours and attitude's.

And that's great newskin, stick with it!
 
I am so tempted to use dope right now event though I started suboxone today. I know it's not suppose to work. And I don't have the feeling of crippling sickness that usually motivates me to keep using, but I still have this burning desire.

I took my suboxone supervised this morning because I can't be trusted to take it on my own :( Now I already wish i hadn't. but i know it was the right thing. Have to be clean to visit my family and I'm flying out tomorrow morning.
 
Elkat-I feel ya- suboxone is not always fool proof when it comes to holding off that desire or urge to want to go back to your desired drug. But soon enough, it makes things a lot easier. At least for me, I am so thankful and glad that I don't have to suffer and chase down something that my guy may be out of for the next couple of days; or where and how the next dose is going to be funded- and will I make it through another time without getting caught/arrested.

I'm sure you should get better accustomed to it very soon, and it will continually help you in a positive way. That is if you plan to take it as prescribed.

My main point really was to wish you luck & safe trip/enjoy your family time!^^
 
Notice of Heroin/Opioid Dual Thread Merge

ATTENTION


(...did that work? ;))
Hey hey hey everyone - Just wanted to fill you in that the two Heroin/Opioid Discussion Threads, vol's 1 and 2, have been merged, as both were going on simultaneously. It's going to free up space in the forum and centralize all of your fantastically philanthropic discussion (the threads had both been used multiple times today but ended up on separate pages!!). I don't post often in here as even discussing my DOC is still a big trigger for me, but I have lots of love for this thread and all who support one another tirelessly throughout it :)

Be well :)

~ Vaya
 
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its always going to be a choice tho, once you are clean, its a choice to use again. SMT MMT or not.
 
Elkat-I feel ya- suboxone is not always fool proof when it comes to holding off that desire or urge to want to go back to your desired drug. But soon enough, it makes things a lot easier. At least for me, I am so thankful and glad that I don't have to suffer and chase down something that my guy may be out of for the next couple of days; or where and how the next dose is going to be funded- and will I make it through another time without getting caught/arrested.

I'm sure you should get better accustomed to it very soon, and it will continually help you in a positive way. That is if you plan to take it as prescribed.

My main point really was to wish you luck & safe trip/enjoy your family time!^^

Thanks so much. I made it through the day without using. Although I did take 3 suboxone and some mxe. Which certainly did not give me the high I was looking for and just made me feel really f'd up. So I'm not going to try that again. I figured the mxe worked well with all my other opiates - so there was a chance it would give the subs that extra boost to ge me off, but it didn't So lesson learned. I'm not 2 days opiate free (so far) and I'm not about to take any today.

I was really worried about this trip - first because think my parents already suspect I'm a junkie but second because my mom has a MASSIVE script to oxy 30's that she always has dozens off lying around the house. For years I'm been pinching from the medicine cabinet when I get home. But this time I came armed with my subs, ducelex (lol) and nicorette. And I plan to come clean to them. That part hasn't happened yet. But I'm working on it. Thanks for the vote of support :) I'm definitely not going to take any more than the prescribed to subs a day from here on out. Sticking to the book and playing by the rules, one day at a time.

Even if I can make it through this week and everything really does seem to turn around. My biggest fear is that I am going to live with this burning desire to use constantly for years to come. I've talked to some people who have been clean now and working in sober living environments and are completely happy with their new lives, but they still say that they want to use - years and years later. I wish I never came across this. I wish I was like my friends and always though even oxy's were bad when used recreationally. I've never had the mind set that drugs were bad. Even through my last 10 years of use. 10 years using H that is - started drugs (psychedelics, coke/crack, ex, etc) for almost 17 years. WOW
 
Hey - as I was typing I realized. This is the first day in my memory that I've been 2 days without opiates. I can't fucking believe that!! Holy Cow I hope this gets easier.
 
So, here we are again. my boy friend and i have been doing this bullshit routine for far too long. doing drugs, getting clean, him being on sub, running out of sub, doing drugs, back on sub, trying to quit sub, back on drugs, then to methadone, etc etc etc, i'm sure we all know the pattern. This time were making a real effort to stay clean, or at least more of an effort then ever before. i am also struggling with some bad depression/mental issues, which creates a huge strain on our relationship on top of what we already have - we fight all the time.

Now, weve really been trying to make it all work, but he has come to the decision that after only about 2 weeks of us not fighting and having our relationship on track, that he wants to get off subs. He makes it 1 day and decides he cant do it right now - which works out better because like i said, weve only been functioning on the right path for a short time and this gives me more time to sort my head out, get my emotional issues under control, and be there for him when he decides he wants to try again.

my question is what can i do for him to support him and help him through it. how can i give him strength while keeping myself mentally in order and under control as well? i have a huge problem keeping my cool. last night he threw up next to the bed all over my stuff, and left it there for a good 20 minutes before i came over and had to clean it up. i tried my best to not explode and cause a fight, and i think i did a pretty damn good job, but i was just angry and bitter at him. i know i wouldnt have made it through my withdrawal - amphetamines/meth/coke - without him and others support, but now that were not withdrawing together, i just cant seem to find that support for him. its just every time he says "he's kicking sub" i know its going to be a bad few days, with disappointments, arguments, and tears written all over it. and then my depression comes back hard. i need advice..
 
Okay, back on track, and back on subs. Nothing else since Friday night, and I'm feeling like I can do it this time, as opposed to the last few times.

However, I'm bummed because in order to start getting clean I felt I needed to give my Coachella pass to my brother, and currently I'm missing it - it's more important than my birthday and Christmas wrapped in one for me. Also, the last shot I did was a reckless, outrageously stupid one. I had thrown away a cotton and cooker my friend left in the car in a trash can in my drive way - legally compromising, but worse, a day later, fiending, I resurrected it and shot it. It was great - my friend had a lot of gear in there + some coke, but such a downward pull got me right after.

I gotta stop posting, I feel cravings and I need to focus batting them off. Be back later.
 
Got through last night alright and am now well into day 3 and feeling confident. Although last night I did awake drenched w/ night sweats - had to change blankets it was so bad. Also, I had a bad experience w/ a recovery meeting earlier. I think that may require a different thread.
 
I was thinking of making a thread for it, but I haven't yet so.... my problem with the meeting will work out. My fellow addicts in the program are very adversarial and annoying. I know I'm prone to encounter this problem in any scenario, but I think it could stymie my recovery. I get the notion from the juvenile attitude the adults in this program demonstrate, they are attending counter to their will, which worries me they have any of my DOCs, particularly heroin, and will know they'd have a customer in me. Even if that's paranoia, it is still pretty obnoxious. I told my family I'd go back two more times and if I'm not sold I can look for another program.

I'm doing well (about to finish day 3 - 5 days is personal best so far), but I don't want the fledgling structure to turn on me.

Thanks stardust, you're always very nice to me :)
 
I never thought I'd be addicted to heroin. I was the typical HS cheerleader with lots of friends and an everlasting list of things to do to stay away from drugs. I smoked weed ever since but it never gave me withdrawals. Now I live such a lonely life - always rushing back home for my next fix then after that - I just laze around. I used to be so much fun :( My boyfriend got me into smoking H at first then we eventually started to use it IV. I wasn't addicted at first and I didn't think I would be because for the first couple of months I wouldn't feel any symptoms other than cravings - but hell, if I only had cravings now I'd kick it in the ass for sure. I had thousands of dollars saved and had a routine going that would have saved a thousand more - but it's all gone now. For someone as young as me, this truly makes me depressed because I was always taught the value of a dollar. My parents and my managers at work have already noticed my track marks and the more scars I get from shooting, it gets harder to lie about them... or hide them for that matter. Makeup don't work too welll lol. I've been using for a little over a year and after a whole bunch of ups and downs I'm ready to quit. I found a methadone clinic nearby - but I've been reading alot about only postponing the withdrawals with methadone. Plus it's a one time a day only and I'm scared I'll start hurting until the next dose - but I guess that's the price I pay for all the times I used. If me and my boyfriend use 1g every, let's say, 36 hours - does anyone know how detoxing will be like? I go to school full time and work all the other days. I have to be up and running most of the time so I can't rely on curling up in bed for all the times I feel sick. I had a bunch of benzos and a couple subs saved for when I finally decided to quit but with my luck, I lost them all before I made the decision :/ what else can I take to help the chills, anxiety, restlessness, and nausea? Pref. meds I can get over the counter.... My health insurance is down for another month maybe so I couldn't really get any prescriptions to anything. Any help would be appreciated. I have never told anyone about this (other than my bf) so please help :(
 
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