Wasted time!!!! My life is one big tomorrow!

[HChow]

HI Bluelighters!

I used to just lurk but I joined so maybe I can help myself and others by telling my story!

I was taking Suboxone for about 4 months for maintenance after a 16 month long opiate addiction. At the end of said addiction I was talking around 600-720mgs of Oxycodone insulfflated. During this time 16 month period I wasn't working, nor had I worked a year prior to that. I was basically burning thru my retirement money on drugs, which are almost completely gone.

I get out of rehab from my 16 month run in May of 2011. I stay completely clean, no subs, no nothing for six months. During these six months I was attending IOP, AA meetings daily, therapy....yeah my body was there but my mind never was! I was always worrying about all the money I pissed away, how was I going to find a job, how I was going to stay with my gorgeous toxic girlfriend 12yrs my junior without getting high? Yes I had no coping skills and here I am in my early 40s, jobless and broke. You would think that being sober would at least be seen as a great thing Aand that a start towards a new beginning. Well I find myself grabbing a handful of Oxys and using for a few days and then stopping. All this time I am looking for work in my field half-heartedly since I only felt comfortable when I was high. In November of 2011 I had sucidal thoughts and checked myself into a mental hospital for a few days. I didn't think I was really suicidal but just didnt know how to cope with life without using opiates anymore. I kept attending meetings again and was making some progress but not the progress my you g girlfriend thought I should be doing. She's has her own coping mechanism which is to binge drink. Well a few months go by and I am clean and doing the "right" thing whatever that is by going to meetings and sharing....but Im still out if work and have all this time on my hands. I wind up picking up again for a few weeks which was May 2012. I was told by my psychiatrist that maybe I should try Suboxone. I was so anti-Suboxone from reading about getting off it and how much worse it is to get yourself off of Suboxone. Well I didn't want to keep running to drugs all the time so I decided to get on Sub Maintenance. My cravings for opiates were gone and I was actively pursuing work...actually went on a couple of interviews. I started tapering down from 4mg to .5mg pretty rapidly since things were getting better for me...But my girlfriend felt like I wasn't doing enough for our relationship and that I should at least be working at McDonalds in order to help out with the bills in the house. Well eventually she left our home in October and the day she left was the day I started on my 2.5 month love-hate affair with opiates. I blew thru around $6k in these 2.5 months which isn't really a lot. What scared me the most about this last run was that I was meeting people off the Internet to cop drugs, and the last transaction was for a small purchase of heroin in order to stave off withdrawals had I not been able to score any Oxys. I decided I wanted off these things and to get back on the Suboxone since it did help me tremdously in dealing with being unemployed, financially bankrupt, being in a relationship that I knew wasnt something I could be in while trying to get sober...all of the triggers that bring addicts back out. So today I was going thru withdrawals waiting until I could dose my Suboxone again. I got up to 18 hours of WDs and started rummaging thru my drawers looking for a little blue pill. Well I found one and I crushed it up and snorted it. Now I'm back to waiting the 24-36 hrs in order to start my induction.

Why did I write this? Well hopefully someone can relate to my story and is going thru or has gone thru the same thing that I have and am going thru. And another reason is maybe I can get some great feedback from others that have been where I am at. Either way, God Bless you all!

 

[hthr007]

Welcome to TDS

I've been addicted to opiates for 1 1/2 years, using on a daily basis. I know how hard it is to quit. I've tried to quit, and I couldn't even make it through one day because the withdrawals were so bad for me. I don't think I'm fully ready to quit yet. I want to, but there is something holding me back that I need to address.

Relapses are part of recovery. It's okay, everyone makes mistakes, everyone falls down. You mention attending AA meetings, are you also battling with alcohol addiction? You also mentioned in your post that you checked yourself into a mental hospital for suicidal thoughts and drug rehab, have you considered drug rehab again? In order to get clean, you have to have an inner desire. You have to want to do it for yourself. To me it sounds like you have that.

Just remember a relapse isn't the end of the road, it's an opportunity to improve.

 

[CrazyC]

Hi there!

The title of your post attracted me right off the bat, I have that feeling ALL the time! I am in my 40s as well and completed rehab for a nasty drinking/benzo habit in Oct of 2011. I can relate to what you are saying about being there in body only, that was me as well....I never missed IOP, never failed a screen, attended all the required meetings. But the necessary mental and spiritual changes were never addressed, and I relapsed on the booze at the first opportunity. I had also decided that, since I had a legitimate pain condition, that I could use opiates safely. Thus kicked off a year of opiate abuse, interspersed with disastrous drinking binges. I could get clean for a little while, then some evil part of my brain would provide some ludicrous excuse to start picking up again. I have blown through most of my retirement money on pills, and the only reason I still have a job is because I am union-protected and have a small group of people, including a supervisor, who covered for me through the worst of it.

The toxic boyfriend...wish I could say I made the right decision there, but unfortunately, as with most things that are bad for me, I continued to rationalize the need for his presence in my life. I have come to realize that I CANNOT stay sober while we are actively dating. In fact the last time we went on vacation, in Sept, I had run out of pills and he stressed me out so bad that I started sneaking alcohol out of his cooler. So here he is bragging on how well I am doing with sobriety when all the while I am sipping behind his back That binge brought me to the hospital with severe gastric bleeding that required emergency surgery. I know now with certainty that if I drink again, I will die. But the opiate habit is in full swing now and I don't see a way out of it until I can find a way to like being me, chemically unaltered. Facing life sober and clean is just a bizarre concept to me.

I spend a lot of time regretting the things I have lost ....time, money, relationships.....but I do know that things can ALWAYS be worse. I can't change the past, but it would be nice to look back at this time in my life and think, "thank god I got off that train when I did."

I wish I had a success story to share with you, but at least you can know that you aren't alone in this struggle! I hope we can find a way of living without all toxic things, relationships included.

Peace,
C.

 

[HChow]

Welcome to TDS

I've been addicted to opiates for 1 1/2 years, using on a daily basis. I know how hard it is to quit. I've tried to quit, and I couldn't even make it through one day because the withdrawals were so bad for me. I don't think I'm fully ready to quit yet. I want to, but there is something holding me back that I need to address.

Relapses are part of recovery. It's okay, everyone makes mistakes, everyone falls down. You mention attending AA meetings, are you also battling with alcohol addiction? You also mentioned in your post that you checked yourself into a mental hospital for suicidal thoughts and drug rehab, have you considered drug rehab again? In order to get clean, you have to have an inner desire. You have to want to do it for yourself. To me it sounds like you have that.

Just remember a relapse isn't the end of the road, it's an opportunity to improve.

Thanks for responding. I attend AA since I prefer AA over NA meetings and there are many more AA meetings in my are than NA. I don't think I need to be in rehab this time. I've been in two rehabs in the past three years, attended IOP and never failed a screening either, what more do I can I get from rehab. I just had to stop and stay stopped. I'm waiting to take my sub, going thru withdrawals right now. I know when I was on Sub I wasn't thinking about getting high, I wasn't high at all and it has helped me as much as I allowed it to. I really need to make some difficult decisions that I have already made one of my biggest ones which was not to contact my ex and to get off this run I am on. I know it may sound like I may be blaming my ex for EVERYHING but you need to understand, I have a harder time not picking up the phone to call her than I do calling a drug dealer. She's a drug for me no doubt and I am hoping to stay strong and use my network to get thru this difficult road.