Hey
@riora69 First of all, congratulations on your awesome handle. I too love 69'ing; that is, the act of inserting the number 69 when and wherever possible. I like to think it will make the person who sees it giggle and that they will then pay it forward, writing 69 on things and bringing anonymous joy to the world.
I'm really sorry I wasn't able to help with this. My colleagues, as always, have given you some great advice probably better than I ever could. I'll throw my hat in the ring though. Hopefully it helps a bit.
You're past the acute phase, which is arguably the "hardest" part of recovery. It's physically and mentally about as bad as it gets in this life outside of having your fingernails torn out. It's all subjective. In the beginning, all you need to worry about is staying clean. In a way, acute withdrawal is easier due to its relative predictability and well-known licit/illicit means of treating symptoms. It is a known danger, as opposed to an unknown danger. Basically, once you are through your major withdrawal, you need to prepare.
Some short term stuff would be deleting numbers from the phone, giving your money to another person, staying away from certain areas etc. This is all real common sense stuff in my opinion. You are going to be rebuilding your psyche. You need to have an alternative to the drug in your life. In early sobriety, I think you should be figuring out who is still by your side, be grateful if they are still there and dedicate your life to making their lives better. I can't tell you how to do that, but I can tell you that part of this equation is your sobriety. You can only control a few things in your environment at this juncture. You can be honest. You can go to work. You can be sober.
I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm a believer in their system. I don't preach to anyone or claim supremacy or anything like that. There are elements of the program that I feel are undeniably helpful for addicts like myself.
1. Regularly checking in. This is one of the simplest and most effective things for me. Every day, I would consider my actions, my morality and my hopes/dreams. I had to talk to these people without lying about anything. It didn't take long for me to realize I was a bad person. When I couldn't compartmentalize it, justify it and isolate myself, these seemingly, glaringly obvious negative behaviors, it became harder for me to live.
2. Friends. At the end of my addiction to Opioids/Alcohol I had different groups. There was work people, there was my family and then everyone with whom I dealt outside of these groups were other addicts/dealers. It might sound odd, but the friendship was great.
3. Everyone involved in AA does so for free. There are no financial incentives or motivations. It's my true belief that the Rehab industry, especially in the United States is dedicated to profit. They saw the epidemic, they did what an umbrella salesman would do in a hurricane, capitalize on the fear. These programs simply do not work. If they do work, I believe it is by a combination of positive therapy at the program, change of scenery and freedom from dealers etc. I don't believe their actual program has some cutting edge, unknown, knuckleball to throw.
I think people, in the moment, realize that rehab is a big thing, that they're on their last get out of jail free card, so they develop some motivation to stop, which is helped along by the isolation of going to rehab. Fuck, you go to AA meetings in rehab and most folks say it's the only time they felt true relief from their guilt and shame.
I guess, the biggest thing is that you have to decide to quit. You have to be honest with yourself. There are things like maintenance, rehab, therapy, religious shit; none of it will work if you cannot be completely honest in all of your dealings. I feel like AA is a program for teaching liars how to be honest, first and foremost. Being sober for long periods of time is a side-effect of embracing Truth and hope.
There are plenty of other programs out there. There are agnostic AA meetings (I go to one pretty often if you want the link), different programs altogether like SMART, which I'm pretty unfamiliar with. I think honesty is number one and having someone to check you is how you learn. Any program that embraces these principles is great, but I do think you need a program.
