Eve,
Awesome decision to avoid those people/places associated with negativity! I've met a lot of men who look down at me because I "only had a year probation" and have never been officially incarcerated for any length of time in either a county, state or federal institution. Fuck, I have met people who judge/have judged me because of the way I speak (which is rather formal), cross my legs when I sit down and use complete sentences in conversation. When I was much younger I was judged and ostracized for being mildly intelligent, made to feel like an alien-being destined to be alone, so I stopped being myself, started purposefully behaving like a "normal" teenager, changing my tastes in music, clothes, misbehaving, not participating etc, to "belong". Because I obsessively conformed I wound up with a horrible case of social anxiety and 4 wasted years academically speaking. When I began regularly using with other addicts I was judged for choosing oxy over heroin. So I caved and started doing dope to satisfy their expectations and avoid judgment. In rehab I was judged for choosing not to use intravenously. Everywhere I go, every human being I speak with, I'm afraid I'm judged. No matter how painful judgment is, it's much more painful to live out the sentence, especially when you DON'T have to and the judgment comes from people who are often times hopelessly engaged in the eternal otiose struggle to think better of THEMSELVES. You can be judged by other people, or you can choose to let them drag you down to their perspective- in my experience it's inevitably and unavoidably a long, strange, pointless way down. Any drug is just a chemical compound, and if you use it enough, the end result is always the same: addiction. As SH said, "addiction is addiction". Codeine or heroin, you suffer, you live in pain, and no matter what anyone else says their words are fundamentally incapable of minimizing, capturing, invalidating/validating and defining what you've been through, what you're going through and who you are. The less people know the more they speak. (Haha I guess that explains the average length of my posts!) Language has a way of colorfully shading ignorance, but ultimately the truth lies in actions, not words. You're doing what you believe to be best for yourself. There's NO shame in that, at all- as a matter of fact I believe that, given everything you've done, you have a great deal to be proud of. I have a lot of respect for you just from the few posts I've seen in this thread, just on that basis. Keep it up!
"The instant you begin to care about what other people think you become their prisoner." -Lao Tzu
Allow that fact to affect you instead of the superficial, inane judgments of others. You will be infinitely happier (and, incidentally, a good deal more truthful and accurately introspective 
Feel very alone. My local parents have always been there for me when I need, but without that I just dont know. My drug addiction has been off the rails the past few weeks... its the only way to escape, but of course it just makes things worse in the longterm.
