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The idea of being "CLEAN" - How do you define it? (Poll, but please reply too!)

1,2,3,4?

  • 1

    Votes: 12 17.4%

  • 2

    Votes: 15 21.7%

  • 3

    Votes: 33 47.8%

  • 4

    Votes: 9 13.0%
  • Total voters
    69
K

Khadijah

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The idea of being "CLEAN" - How do you define it? (Poll, but please reply too!)

A discussion in another forum made me really think about this, and I want to know how others feel about it. This is a poll but please add your thoughts in a post after you vote, and if you click "other" PLEASE reply with your feelings about it since other can mean anything its up to you to tell us how you feel.

this aint the official kind of poll, becuz the options only allow a small amount of characters and it would be too hard to explain each option in a actual voting-style poll, so Ima just list the options here and please choose the one that sounds most like your attitude towards "being clean." When you vote, list the option that you agree with the most in your reply but ALSO, PLEASE elaborate on your feelings and describe wat you consider 'clean' to be.

POLL OPTIONS:

#1 - Clean is: NO DRUGS AT ALL, OF ANY KIND. No using any drug, regardless of if its one you are addicted to. No Methadone or Suboxone, no psychiatric meds even if they are prescribed to you, no medications, prescriptions, or drugs of ANY KIND, and NO DRINKING EITHER.

#2 - Clean is: You are off the drug(s) that you were addicted to, and you dont use or abuse any other drugs recreationally. Psych meds and Methadone or Suboxone (Maintenance medications) are OK. Prescribed meds, as long as you ONLY USE THEM AS PRESCRIBED AND DO NOT ABUSE THEM.

#3 - Clean is: You are off the drug(s) that you were addicted to, and not abusing any drugs. Some smoking weed is OK, a little drinking is OK, as long as you aint overdoing it and are using it healthily and in moderation. Taking prescribed drugs AS PRESCRIBED, not abusing any drugs, and being on Methadone or Suboxone or any psych meds are OK.

#4 - Anything that aint listed here. Please let us know specifically how you feel in your reply, since there is so many more options than we have here, I just didnt want to make it too complicated.

I realized that many people got different feelings of exactly how a person got to be living for them to consider them 'clean' , and I want to hear the different opinions that yall got. I know some people feel like as long as you get off the heroin or coke or w/ever, you are clean as long as you only smoke some weed here and there or etc. Some people feel that even being on Methadone makes you not be 'clean', and other people got much more liberal definitions of clean. So please share how u feel about it and let us know, this is a very interesting topic to me and I think many addicts would also like the chance to put their 2 cents in.
 
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The poll isn't showing up for me but I define it as completely abstaining from your drug/drugs of choice. Opiates was mine . I will smoke occasionally,have a few drinks or occasionally take a xanax but I consider myself "clean" because im not getting high on opiates every day.

Okay I see the poll now so Ima vote number 3
 
Not high or sick anymore from opiates specifically.

TiHKAL defines it as 4-5 days after last use. Sounds about right.
 
^^Iunno if you just jokin around or bein serious, so if you just playin, my bad for bein dumb and not getin it.

But, I mean the idea of the addict getting "clean". I am a (ex) heroin addict. I used everyday for years. Eventually, I stopped using and got on methadone, and every couple months I would use dope again for one day, and then the next day, get back on methadone. I did that for 9 months so far, and I consider myself 'clean.' On the days I was using, i definatey wasnt, but i still feel that its totally, 100% appropriate to say that I been clean for 9 months. It aint like I used, went back into a weeklong binge, defaulted back to all my old habits, and then kicked. It was just a little "pause button" on my not using, you know?


Another poster totally disagreed with me , and said that I aint been clean for 9 months becuz I used occasionally.

So, obviously people got different ideas. And i made this thread to find out about those ideas becuz its interesting to me the different ways people feels about "being clean" and wat it means to them personally. In the end thats all that really matters. As long as you honestly, truly believe inside yourself that the way you are living is right , and healthy, and truly the best thing for you, then it really dont matter if somebody else thinks you aint clean even though you been off heroin for a year just becuz you smoke weed on the weekends, or drink a glass of champagne at a wedding. It really matters how you define clean and if you honestly in your heart believe that you are living up to that definition.

So I made this thread to find out all the difrerent ways people approaches this idea.

For example,. The last time i got off dope for about a year, I was clean in my mind. i smoked weed and drank sometimes, but I wasnt on heroin and I wasnt living like a drug addict, wasnt abusing drugs, and to me, thats clean. I think that if a heroin addict is off heroin and living a happy life that aint full of obsession with the drug, and they smoke a blunt every weekend, then they are definately clean. thats just how I feel though. Do you think that means i am "clean?" Or does it mean that if i use any drug at all, even if its a drug that I was not addicted to and do not abuse, that means I cant be clean.

Does clean only relate to your BEHAVIOR towards a drug? Does it mean that you dont use the drug like an addict, does it mean that you dont overdo it? Does it mean that you dont use any drugs that you tend to use and get addicted to, and you only use nonaddictive drugs for a spiritual purpose occasionally. (Such as, if a heroin addict stops using heroin and opiates, and dont use no drugs except a few times a year he smokes DMT or trips on LSD for a spiritual experience, is he clean or not?) It goes deeper and deeper the more you think about it, and the longer you think on it, you realize that it really aint as much of a black and white thing as it originally seemed like.

I think your reply was pretty logical and straight up from a practical logical point of view but i am curious about the definition of "clean" related to a persons addiction or addictive habits, and not the technical, medical definition.

Do you got any other thoughts on it now that I put it like that? I did get a LOL outta your reply dont get me wrong. I just didnt want other people to see it and get confused about wat the topic was asking, and think it was about how long drugs take to get out of your system or somethin like that. ;)
 
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Ima post several situations here to yall, and I want to see how yall think they apply to being clean. So here is a lil game, that you cant win or lose, Its just to try and get a idea of your personal views on this topic.

So, if you want to play, just quote this post, and at the end of each scenario, tell if you think that person is

CLEAN OR NOT???

#1 - A cokehead quits shooting coke and has stopped using any of the other drugs she used to party with. She dont use K, or E, or nothing like that. Sometimes she smokes weed.

#2 - A man who was addicted to heroin for many years quits and gets on Methadone. He has been on Methadone for 20 years, and he dont use no drugs at all. Methadone is the only substance he ever puts in his body for the past 20 years.

#3 - A heroin and pill addict quits using heroin and pills. She aint used painkillers or heroin in 3 months. She gets in a bad car accident and needs surgery. After the surgery, the doctor prescribes her a weeks worth of oxycontin. She takes the pills as prescribed and dont take more than she should, she dont sniff them or try to abuse them but uses them exactly as directed.

#4 - A guy who was addicted to xanax and Vicodin gets bad panic attacks. he had been self medicating with the xanax and vicodin. He goes to a doctor to get on Suboxone because he feels like he wont be able to quit the vicodin without getting bad anxiety. The doctor puts him on suboxone and klonopin. He takes the klonopin when he has a fit of anxiety or a bad panic attack, as prescribed and dont use the klonopin recreationally.

#5 - A heroin addict goes for treatment at a Suboxone doctor. He argues that she wont be fully clean until she also quits smoking cigarettes, because they work on the same part of the brain as any other drug addiction does, so by smoking she is still engaging in addict behavior. She takes her Suboxone and does not use heroin or any other drugs but continues to smoke cigarettes.

#6 - A crack addict stops using crack. He still thinks about crack every day, and is obsessed with not relapsing. He goes to NA meetings every day, sometimes twice in a day, and his entire day revolves around making sure he dont use. He is terrified of using and feels like he has no control over this, other than to continue to go to meetings. He is not using any drugs at all, but every minute of his life is devoted to obsessing about drugs, and he lives in the same fear he lived in when he was addicted. He believes that he "needs" NA, and if he cant get to a meeting, he becomes extremely upset and afraid and freaks out. He smokes 3 packs of cigarettes a day and drinks coffee nonstop.

#7 - An alcoholic realizes she has a problem and decides to quit her abusive behavior and excessive drinking. She is totally abstinent from all alcohol for 4 months. Her daughter gets married, and at the wedding she has one drink, a glass of champagne during the toast. After the wedding, she dont drink again for another 3 months. On New Years Eve she shares a few glasses of wine with her husband and they have a nice night together. She dont drink again for another 5 months after that. She goes down to a tropical beach for a vacation and has 2 mixed drinks on the beach and reads a magazine quietly. She continues not drinking except a few times a year on special occasions, when she may have a small drink to participate in the event.

In one years time, she drank on a total of 3 days. When she drank alcohol, it was not because she had a craving and gave into it. She actually chose to drink a small amount as part of a celebration or special occasion. Each time she did not drink to excess and did not abuse the alcohol. Her behavior was normal and appropriate, and she did not regret it afterwards.

#8 - An alcoholic is abstinent from any recreational drinking. he dont use drugs and has no prescription drugs that he takes. He is Catholic, and every Sunday he goes to Mass and drinks a sip from the wine cup during Communion.

#9 - A girl who used to shoot speedballs and was addicted to both the dope and the coke gets off both. She goes thru detox where they prescribe her a low dose of Valium for severe anxiety that she had been masking with the heroin. They also put her on Suboxone. She goes home and continues to take her Suboxone and Valium as prescribed.

#10 - A guy who was addicted to heroin has always enjoyed using psychedelics too, and in the past he sometimes overdid them while he went to hippie festivals. He gets off the heroin, and is not on any kind of maintenance like suboxone or methadone. He stops all his "fun drug" use as well, cutting any and all drugs out of his life, including alcohol, with one exception: About once every 3 months, he takes LSD and goes for a walk, meditating to himself about his life and his addiction. he uses these experiences to go deeper into his mind and understand why he had so many problems abusing drugs, and afterwards he always feels refreshed and even more committed and determined to stay off the heroin and not abuse drugs. He only uses the LSD as a tool to help himself grow, and does not use it "to get fucked up" or in a recreational way to have fun.

#11 - A heroin addicted girl has been off the heroin for a few weeks. She has serious anxiety from quitting dope, and she is not on any maintenance programs. She likes to drink a couple beers on the weekend and relax with her girls. She dont abuse the alcohol or drink excessively, she just drinks enough to get a little buzz and relieve some of the tension in her life. She has not increased her use or started to drink more frequently. The number of drinks she has , and how often she does it, have stayed the same for several weeks, and she has no feelings towards the alcohol like she did towards heroin such as needing it,wanting it, obsessing over it, etc. She has a take it or leave it attitude towards drinking, but does enjoy it and since she dont "love" it the way that she loved opiates, she feels like its OK to drink and that she still qualifies as clean.


Soooooo. Give us your judgement! Read each one of these carefully and think about it, and then decide which ones you think are clean or not clean. I think that it can really help people understand their ideas of exactly wat "clean" means to them. I hope yall enjoy playin as much as I enjoyed coming up with the scenarios. :)
 
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No, I was being serious.

I have never tried H, yet I have serious dependency to pods and pharmaceutical opiates.

I consider myself clean after I detox myself and am not ill anymore, so about 5 days and I am back to normal... although cravings/anxiety/depression can persist for weeks thereafter.
 
Well, I guess I should phrase it like this then--you BEGIN being clean once you are finished detoxing....But, wat things can you do, and not do, that will allow you to CONTINUE being clean?

Like, if you smoke weed, but you dont use any opiates of any kind, are you still clean? Etc. If you drink alcohol but you aint using opiates, are you clean? If you dont use any recreational opiates but your doctor gives you a morphine shot in the hospital cuz you broke your leg, are you still clean? Etc.

Thats wat the post right above yours is all about, each different color is a different situation of a person and the drugs they do/dont use, that I ask people to read and decide if each one is clean or not. I was postin that at the same time as you in my last post, but it explains farther wat I just said here about smoking weed, drinking, etc.

. I am really really curious to see peoples reaction to each one and see how people define the idea of clean. I would love to see your opinions on it, and since you are in here and online now maybe you could be the first one to participate ( Pleeeeaazzzee? ;) )so if you got a minute please read thru it and post which ones you think are clean and which ones aint clean in your opinion. :)

Im glad that you replied, and I hope that lots more people will participate in this thread becuz its a topic that never stops bein interesting to me.
 
lacey k said:
Like, if you smoke weed, but you dont use any opiates of any kind, are you still clean? Etc. If you drink alcohol but you aint using opiates, are you clean? If you dont use any recreational opiates but your doctor gives you a morphine shot in the hospital cuz you broke your leg, are you still clean? Etc.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. It is difficult replace ones DOC with another chemical. For example, I have been smoking cannabis all week, and all it does is make me a nervous wreck... and I still want to get high.

It would be different if I were to completely replace opiates with tranquilizers or stimulants, or whatever really. At the same pace, carrying the same negative effects, then no, not clean.

On a related note:

A professional in the field said once to me "You have never tried to quit. You have only been clean at times because you ran out of dope and were unable to score.".... Not altogether true, but sometimes, sure.

I need a really good reason to quit for any length of time. When you know how to make yourself feel well and have that extra spring in your step, it is difficult to abstain just because sobriety is an option.
 
Right. I feel like its HOW and WHY you use the drugs and not simply the fact that you do or dont use them, that says alot about if you 'clean' or not.

I feel like its totally ridiculous when somebody tells me that I aint clean becuz I am on MMT. i dont use heroin. I aint a junkie no more. I dont live a junkie life. All that negativity attached to the drug use is GONE. the obsession is gone. all that.

Now if i was on methadone and i was abusing it, takin too much, if i was craving it, if i looked at my methadone like i looked at my heroin, as something that i NEED and WANT and almost lust after like some kind of un-satisfy-able urge, then I wouldnt be clean, IMO.

But , I use it as prescribed. sometimes i even take one or two less pills just to try and see if I can handle a lower dose. I dont think of it as a high, i dont get high from it. I dont even consider it a drug, its just like a vitamin to me , a pill i take in the morning with my breakfast and then forget about it. It aint even on my mind.

That dont sound much like a junkie to me, you know?

But yet there is people out there who will swear up and down that it aint clean.

I also used to smoke weed back when i still could, when i was tryin to get off diesel, and it really helped me. i didnt use it to replace heroin but i found that it usually got me thinkin, and i would realize just how stupid it was to be shootin dope and wastin my life away, and it helped me out alot. i didnt smoke everyday, it was maybe once or twice a week, and I didnt replace the heroin with it or use it in the same addictive way. So to me, that also is clean. i was off heroin, i wasnt using drugs addictively, of course its clean.

But so many people say you aint clean til you aint using NOTHING....

But how far does nothing go, you know? Does it mean you cant take a drug that is prescribed to you if its a opiate? Wat if its a psychiatric drug? And if you cant even take those, then how about like, a cholestorol medication? that too?

Where does the idea of drugs that make you not be clean, end, and the idea of drugs that are "OK" to take and still be clean, start?

It dont make sense to me, to look at it in that black and white kind of way. but so many people see it as a very simple idea, which to me, clean is much more complex and theres alot that goes into it that people totally over look.
 
Yeah, that is the truth. If I stop using but still take some klonopin on occasion (prescribed or not), does that make me unclean? Okay, how about coffee? Tobacco? Hot cocoa? I eat candy like a fiend on dope and off, and am certainly addicted to it....
 
i answered CLEAN to all of those questions except for the lady who was drinking on the beach. That was a tricky one. The alcoholic in church was tough too. My Mom's a recovering alcoholic and a catholic and used to take the communion wine every week even tho she hadn't had a "real" drink in over a decade. Then she relapsed and went into drinking again. Now she's been sober for a minute and no longer does the communion wine. She says its a big topic at her meetings too because a lot of old school catholics won't turn down the communion wine , but a lot of hard-line recovering addicts still consider it drinking.

i think clean is a combo of you not using your former drug of choice and also how you approach other drugs/situations, just like you said. i know ppl on Sub that take breaks like twice a month to use dope or other opiates again and even divert their script to get money to do so. But then they'll say they're clean. I don't consider that clean at all

interesting topic for sure
 
From Lacey's discussion in another thread- I define clean from a spiritual standpoint. Taking methadone, bupe, and Rx heroin even to live an optimum lifr contituttes being clean. being dirty means the drug getts a hold of you and you and do scandolous things to maintain your habilt that make you dirty. I'm in NA/AA still on bupe and xanax and I still consider myself clean. If I drank or smoked tweek, I would consider myself dirty/trlapsed. My answer is b/w 2 and 4. Sometimes I might need extra meds- but there prn.
 
tl;dr When you don't get high regularly you are clean.

For me I think being clean is a state of mind as lacey said (love your posts, you say it like it is!) because what you tell yourself is more important than anything. I'm not sure which one I would choose, because I never had a habit before. I suppose I would consider a homeostasis of the mind and body the most important for remaining clean. If you get high off your drugs you're not clean. Tapering off your habit is cleaning, but the threshold is where it gets tricky.

When you maintain a habit where the addiction takes over a significant amount of your life, you are going to be in trouble. If someone took meth everyday to function normally the stigma of meth is more problematic than say Adderall. It makes a big difference in what the drug is, if someone took heroin everyday for maintainence versus methadone it would look strange as well. What I'm trying to say is that when you use an illicit drug to maintain your life, it looks awful, and being clean is just maintainence in my opinion.
 
I think all of your examples are "clean" in my opinion. I think when you're living your life in a way that doesn't revolve around drugs, or isn't defined by some obsessive drug use that is clean.

I think if an ex Heroin addict was on subs and taking them as prescribed but still got drunk most nights and smoked weed most days that person would not be clean. However if this same person were to use alcohol and weed only rarely I'd consider them clean for the most part.

I'm currently addicted to opiates, mainly pods, never done h. I'm also prescribed Klonopin daily. I take my Klonopin as prescribed and while I'm dependent on opiates I'm using them more responsibly than ever before. I don't drink or smoke weed anymore, however I do take dexedrine when I have a lot of work to do or sometimes just for fun. I don't consider myself clean, but I consider myself more clean than I used to be. If I was prescribed sub along with my klonopin and took them and only them exactly as prescribed I'd consider myself clean. I think when your medication is prescribed by a doctor and you don't have to score anything on the street you're closer to living clean as long as you're not abusing your meds. When you're constantly hunting down your next high that's when problems arise imo.

It's definitely not a black and white subject, lots of grey area depending on individuals and their beliefs.
 
To me being clean is off of the class of drug that you were addicted to, AND not substituting another very addictive class for it. For example someone gets off heroin and switches to amphetamines is not clean.

If someone quits heroin and drinks and smokes pot and drops lsd here and there....to me thats clean.
 
being clean, to me, means not being addicted to the drug i was addicted to. for me that was heroin, i have since used opiate, at times a bit too frequently, but still consider myself 'clean.' though i doubt many people would agree with my statement. i have been addicted to one drug or another for the last 12 years (im 26). first weed (yeah yeah, i know, but smoking all day everyday is an addiction in my mind), then came uppers, mostly adderall and coke, then slowly transitioned into a heavy drinking habit, then heroin/opiates.

the only drug i still hold respect for is psychedelics.

so #4 i guess. i consider clean, clean from addiction, not clean from healthy, moderate use, of any drug.
 
#3 but maintenance drugs aren't Ok.

To me people who are on a opioid maintenance drug, I don't consider clean. Your still dependent on an opioid and your not on it because of pain.

Clean to me, are people who no longer need their DOC to live a normal day 2 day life.

Lacey, what if your where to run out of methadone early. You would surely withdrawal. Do you think you would go cop some H or other street opioids or just wait it out?
 
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