progress/things i?ve learned so far in recovery

yep ash i'm pretty fucking psyched!!! thanks for popping by!! how you doing?

never ever thought in a million years i'd ever do this. 90 fucking days.

had an ace time at my mates. was really gutted another friend from rehab is already back in. it upset me more than it should have at the time, but i'd been pretty concerned about him leaving cos he seemed over confident and wasn't going to put much time into his recovery.

its getting easier and harder at the same time. easier day to day, i'm increasing in confidence that i can do this. harder as the reality of what my addiction did to me and those around me hits home. i thought they were being silly stressing about the possibility of me dying now i realise it really was a possibility.

still got so much work to do.

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edit: i'm actually learning to tolerate pain. my left calf and entire back were hurting, still do, after ending up in a mosh pit on monday night. usually i'd use that as an excuse to use. but i haven't wanted to. it reminds me of what a good time i had. it was better than a lot of the smack i done in the past 6 years, and if i'd done that instead, i'd still be sick and hate myself for it. so pain for something that's relatively healthy (i'm a slim woman i chose pits wisely otherwise i could really get injured) doesn't feel like such an issue.

chinup said:

yep ash i'm pretty fucking psyched!!! thanks for popping by!! how you doing?

never ever thought in a million years i'd ever do this. 90 fucking days.

had an ace time at my mates. was really gutted another friend from rehab is already back in. it upset me more than it should have at the time, but i'd been pretty concerned about him leaving cos he seemed over confident and wasn't going to put much time into his recovery.

its getting easier and harder at the same time. easier day to day, i'm increasing in confidence that i can do this. harder as the reality of what my addiction did to me and those around me hits home. i thought they were being silly stressing about the possibility of me dying now i realise it really was a possibility.

still got so much work to do.

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edit: i'm actually learning to tolerate pain. my left calf and entire back were hurting, still do, after ending up in a mosh pit on monday night. usually i'd use that as an excuse to use. but i haven't wanted to. it reminds me of what a good time i had. it was better than a lot of the smack i done in the past 6 years, and if i'd done that instead, i'd still be sick and hate myself for it. so pain for something that's relatively healthy (i'm a slim woman i chose pits wisely otherwise i could really get injured) doesn't feel like such an issue.

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Most of the people you went to rehab with are going relapse. Sad fact of this disease. Everyones journey is different. It took me years of trying to get relatively clean where my buddy just decided to quit one day and hasn't used since

yep guess i was forgetting that. relapse rate is over 90%... argh i feel like i want to throttle him now cos he's certain again that he's 'got it,' he was certain last time and relapsed in less than two weeks. i don't know how to explain to him how worried i am about his attitude. he needs to put serious work in.

i think this is one advantage of having truly reached some lows, anyone who's read my threads will know i did some horrible shit to support my addiction and that my addiction could very easily have killed me. i have so much fear. he's never lost anything, and i hope he doesn't but maybe he has to. a week before i was due out, i'd been looking forward to being able to do all this stuff i wanna do, then i had a dream that ended with me using a visibly dirty needle off the floor after none of the pharmacies had any kit and it destroyed me cos i knew i'd probably do that in that situation. i looked at him and how confident he was about being ready to be out and felt way behind and wasn't sure i was ready to go. one of the support workers basically said he was complacent and my fears healthy, i'm coming to understand that.

still being haunted by the past.

keep getting images of a pool of blood, with the bits in it from it congealing on meeting oxygen, outside my house.

my mate robbed a dealer, got stabbed, came to mine cos he'd no phone and needed an ambulance. bled a lot outside. i slept through it cos i'd had a lot of dark and my housemates dealt with the ambulance and the police. when i saw it in the morning all i could think about was whether the people who'd stabbed him had seen it and whether they'd come to the house. now its occurring to me my fucking poor neighbours had to leave for work and walk past a pool of blood. that must be awful.

i really don't want to be haunted by this over christmas it makes me feel so sick but i've tried sharing about it at NA, tried distracting. argh its just the enormity of how many people i've affected so negatively. i don't know what to do.

All you can do is keep looking forward.

You are already doing what you need to. I am so proud of you chinup. I pray that your nightmares stop and that you feel at peace with everything.


If you ever just want to talk, I'm here for you always and I've got your back honey.

I hope your holidays are going well.

Plans for New Years?


Much love,
your friend,
Ash.

chinup said:

yep guess i was forgetting that. relapse rate is over 90%... argh i feel like i want to throttle him now cos he's certain again that he's 'got it,' he was certain last time and relapsed in less than two weeks. i don't know how to explain to him how worried i am about his attitude. he needs to put serious work in.

i think this is one advantage of having truly reached some lows, anyone who's read my threads will know i did some horrible shit to support my addiction and that my addiction could very easily have killed me. i have so much fear. he's never lost anything, and i hope he doesn't but maybe he has to. a week before i was due out, i'd been looking forward to being able to do all this stuff i wanna do, then i had a dream that ended with me using a visibly dirty needle off the floor after none of the pharmacies had any kit and it destroyed me cos i knew i'd probably do that in that situation. i looked at him and how confident he was about being ready to be out and felt way behind and wasn't sure i was ready to go. one of the support workers basically said he was complacent and my fears healthy, i'm coming to understand that.

still being haunted by the past.

keep getting images of a pool of blood, with the bits in it from it congealing on meeting oxygen, outside my house.

my mate robbed a dealer, got stabbed, came to mine cos he'd no phone and needed an ambulance. bled a lot outside. i slept through it cos i'd had a lot of dark and my housemates dealt with the ambulance and the police. when i saw it in the morning all i could think about was whether the people who'd stabbed him had seen it and whether they'd come to the house. now its occurring to me my fucking poor neighbours had to leave for work and walk past a pool of blood. that must be awful.

i really don't want to be haunted by this over christmas it makes me feel so sick but i've tried sharing about it at NA, tried distracting. argh its just the enormity of how many people i've affected so negatively. i don't know what to do.

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hey ash thanks for your reply. how are you? i'm going to an NA thing for new years cos i can't be around people drinking (see below). how about you?

i’m really struggling again. i’d got to my 90 days clean and honestly felt like i might be starting to be genuinely free.

i think being around being drinking at christmas fucked with my head a bit. i wasn’t around anyone actually drunk. it felt fine at the time. but something happened cos i’m back wanting heroin. i was trying to get to sleep the other night trying to work out how i could get away with it. i know i can’t. i know its a bad idea. but i fucking want it. the thing keeping me from using is not wanting to reap that devastation when people around me are starting to heal. i was actually feeling really good and this has brought me down.

i guess i’ve learned a lesson. not to be around people using any sort of drug cos i’m too early in.

NA was fucking pissing me off tonight cos its all the same they got in and it saved them. its a seriously biased sample. it couldn’t save me, rehab did that. i think its contributed to helping me stay clean this far due to adding structure to my life and meeting people in a similar boat. it is a lifeline. but it pisses me off cos i want what everyone shares about having and i don’t have it yet and i’m putting the fucking work in. i know it takes years and i know this will pass but that doesn’t make it easy right now.

i’m also pissed off cos cross addicting to playing the bass guitar has made my arm muscles so tired i’ve actually now got worse at that again. i was trying to play something super hard and keep doing it til it hurts. i've heard the same 13 seconds of music so many times trying to get the intro, the other bits are easier. its again wanting to be able to play stuff people have worked for years at getting to be able to play, after 3 weeks. but playing was bringing me a lot of joy and now i know i need to leave off it so my muscles can build up and anyway it hurting after a few minutes has taken that joy.

What your feeling is very common. I always heard the first 30-90 days of sobriety described as "the pink cloud effect". Sobriety is new and everyone in your life is excited about the changes your making. Then the stressors of real life starts creeping back in. You get tired of all the effort your having to put into staying sober. It happens to just about everyone.

You just got to fight through it. This is when all those stress management strategies you learned in rehab come into play. When your having cravings call someone. Get some excersize everyday. Eat good. Try to sleep. If you feel depressed for more then two weeks go see your doctor and get on an antidepressant. Just use all the resources you have available. Most importantly remember that these feelings are temporary. You will feel better soon!

All good advice from cj.

Also remember that a thought is just a thought. I still think about drinking now and then; I just don't act on it. If I had killed every person who'd angered me enough to want to kill them, I'd be guilty of mass murder.

Keep up the good work!

Peace&Love,
jasper


"Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides." -- Anne Lamott

chinup said:

hey ash thanks for your reply. how are you? i'm going to an NA thing for new years cos i can't be around people drinking (see below). how about you?

i’m really struggling again. i’d got to my 90 days clean and honestly felt like i might be starting to be genuinely free.

i think being around being drinking at christmas fucked with my head a bit. i wasn’t around anyone actually drunk. it felt fine at the time. but something happened cos i’m back wanting heroin. i was trying to get to sleep the other night trying to work out how i could get away with it. i know i can’t. i know its a bad idea. but i fucking want it. the thing keeping me from using is not wanting to reap that devastation when people around me are starting to heal. i was actually feeling really good and this has brought me down.

i guess i’ve learned a lesson. not to be around people using any sort of drug cos i’m too early in.

NA was fucking pissing me off tonight cos its all the same they got in and it saved them. its a seriously biased sample. it couldn’t save me, rehab did that. i think its contributed to helping me stay clean this far due to adding structure to my life and meeting people in a similar boat. it is a lifeline. but it pisses me off cos i want what everyone shares about having and i don’t have it yet and i’m putting the fucking work in. i know it takes years and i know this will pass but that doesn’t make it easy right now.

i’m also pissed off cos cross addicting to playing the bass guitar has made my arm muscles so tired i’ve actually now got worse at that again. i was trying to play something super hard and keep doing it til it hurts. i've heard the same 13 seconds of music so many times trying to get the intro, the other bits are easier. its again wanting to be able to play stuff people have worked for years at getting to be able to play, after 3 weeks. but playing was bringing me a lot of joy and now i know i need to leave off it so my muscles can build up and anyway it hurting after a few minutes has taken that joy.

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Just wanted to say that I've read all of your thread, chinup. I am in the same boat as you but not yet in rehab. Nothing will stop me using except rehab. I went to meetings off my box for a couple of months when I discovered them, and knew there was no way I'd be able to quit just going to meetings and calling up recovery friends. I then collapsed into withdrawal and made 24 days clean but ended up relapsing at the first sign of real life stress. Before I know it, I'm pissed up, trying to score heroin and crack off homeless people, and then ordering drugs on the DW. I took some acid because it's the first thing that arrived and now the desire to use has gone. This is really because I don't have any opiates (which right now I'd definitely drop as they are my DOC) and because I could be in rehab as early as Thursday (fingers crossed). I don't want to turn up wired on drugs I no longer can be arsed with as all I have is a load of shit MDMA.

Keep going, mate. Relapse is not worth it now. Even for your DOC. Once you're on the road to recovery, if you relapse, however long that stretch takes, it just feels fucking horrendous once you're back. Last relapse I did a month and a half on a ridiculous amount of drugs and just felt despairing afterwards. Suicidal etc.

Stick to rehab, ride it out, drink a cup of tea and surround yourself with others in recovery. Fight those feelings of shite. And listen to crust punk with a new perspective!

cj said:

I always heard the first 30-90 days of sobriety described as "the pink cloud effect".

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I've been on a pink cloud for 2313 days or 76 months. I have a buddy who has been on one for just over 27 years so I believe I could stay on this allot longer if I allow myself to. The only truly bad day is sitting in the dope house wondering, "how the fuck did I get here again!?!?"

Hi honey,

You will get more confidence being clean, and you will have what you see in rehab, you're right, it just takes time.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you can't be around people drinking/drugging. I couldn't agree more. Take away that temptation and you will feel a lot more at peace and you won't feel like you're struggling so much.


Thanks for asking how I am, my New Years was quiet, in bed by 10, ahhhh the exciting life of a chronic pain patient on New Years. Lol!!!


Try to be kind and patient with yourself ok? You have already come so far, I am so proud of you!!!!

Keep playing your guitar and just being an all around great person, because you are!!!

Btw, how are things with your mother?

Much love, Happy New Years, I hope you are well.

How was NA on New Years?

Please update when you have time.

Love,
your friend,
Ash.

chinup said:

hey ash thanks for your reply. how are you? i'm going to an NA thing for new years cos i can't be around people drinking (see below). how about you?

i’m really struggling again. i’d got to my 90 days clean and honestly felt like i might be starting to be genuinely free.

i think being around being drinking at christmas fucked with my head a bit. i wasn’t around anyone actually drunk. it felt fine at the time. but something happened cos i’m back wanting heroin. i was trying to get to sleep the other night trying to work out how i could get away with it. i know i can’t. i know its a bad idea. but i fucking want it. the thing keeping me from using is not wanting to reap that devastation when people around me are starting to heal. i was actually feeling really good and this has brought me down.

i guess i’ve learned a lesson. not to be around people using any sort of drug cos i’m too early in.

NA was fucking pissing me off tonight cos its all the same they got in and it saved them. its a seriously biased sample. it couldn’t save me, rehab did that. i think its contributed to helping me stay clean this far due to adding structure to my life and meeting people in a similar boat. it is a lifeline. but it pisses me off cos i want what everyone shares about having and i don’t have it yet and i’m putting the fucking work in. i know it takes years and i know this will pass but that doesn’t make it easy right now.

i’m also pissed off cos cross addicting to playing the bass guitar has made my arm muscles so tired i’ve actually now got worse at that again. i was trying to play something super hard and keep doing it til it hurts. i've heard the same 13 seconds of music so many times trying to get the intro, the other bits are easier. its again wanting to be able to play stuff people have worked for years at getting to be able to play, after 3 weeks. but playing was bringing me a lot of joy and now i know i need to leave off it so my muscles can build up and anyway it hurting after a few minutes has taken that joy.

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jdfisse said:

I've been on a pink cloud for 2313 days or 76 months. I have a buddy who has been on one for just over 27 years so I believe I could stay on this allot longer if I allow myself to. The only truly bad day is sitting in the dope house wondering, "how the fuck did I get here again!?!?"

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I'm not saying relapse is better. Denying that this shit is hard and that there will be bad days doesn't do anyone any good.

thanks everyone for your replies before and sorry for my super slack response i've just been insanely busy. but i need to slow down. still clean and started my step work and need to put in some real work this week cos i'll be going through what i've done for step 1 next friday.

cj said:

You just got to fight through it.!

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that's basically what i did. been feeling pretty flat since then with the occasional good mood. still exercising and trying to eat well, and sleeping better than ever after really fighting not to take sleeping pills a few times over christmas.

i've learned how cravings start and i feel like i'm at the beginning of one. something irrelevant put the thought 'i wasn't that bad' in my head, and my brains latched onto it and its led to using thoughts. i would like to categorically say i know i was bad. i still have ringing in my ears and i've not done a speedball since mid september. so how the fuck do i stop it? i'm trying not to feed the thoughts but each time i push them away they come back.

if i can't stop this in 3 days time i'll be climbing the walls. so any ideas about how to stop getting to that point would be useful.

the drugs services gave me some work on challenging euphoric recall by listing just how bad i got so i'm gonna do some of that.

Rupert D- if you read this let me know how you're doing i hope you've made it to rehab.

i've been getting some good benefits of recovery though trying to improve my relationship with my mum and got a tattoo on wednesday. it cost ?150. previously ?150 was a teenth of light and 4 dark to me. i would steal food from the shop on the way to score cos i 'couldn't afford it.' so being able to earn and then spend ?150 is pretty amazing. i'm getting obsessed with earning money so i can buy stuff and spending too long working when i need to be putting time into my recovery so that's the flip side.

Ash Na at new years was surreal but fun.i danced to some happy hardcore shite, but it was actually really fun. would have preferred dnb and jungle though. hope your new year is treating you well.

Euphoric recall is a bitch for sure. I get it everytime I think about banging coke. It happens less and less over time though. Time that's the key word in all this. Everything you do in recovery is to put more time between you and the drugs in the hope your brain balances back out enough to make living sober pleasurable. I haven't found any shortcuts.

Try keeping a journal. That's helped me out. Going back and reading previous entries will help you identify distorted thinking patterns. It's really a trip to read something you wrote and be like wtf was I thinking that day?

Hi mate I'm 2 weeks in rehab now, working the twelve steps. Just starting disease of addiction and denial. Going well so far, I'll give you a proper update soon chinup as I only have my phone for a couple of hours and need to hand it back. Chat with you soon x

nice one mate hope it goes well!

CJ thanks man. writing all the shit really helped, its similar to keeping a journal i guess- i did that in rehab and have slacked off, should probably start again. i had 4 boxes to fill out with different aspects of why my drug use was shitty. i was a bit stuck on 'why do you think this was a problem' at first cos i think it was a problem cos it so blatantly was to me and everyone around me but once i got started i had more to write than i had space for. and writing all that shit out made me think using is a really bad idea, and those thoughts stopped, they didn't progress into a craving. i'm massively chuffed about that!!

up and down week. i booked a holiday. my dad leant me the money. my mum's pissed at him for that.

i'm thinking of selling my house. i don't have much equity in it, so if i gave my parents everything i got from it it'd be less than a quarter of what i owe them. but half their savings are gone bailing me out of debt, paying for my rehab, paying my mortgage and bills when i couldn't. but i couldn't live with myself if they had to go in a horrible care home if they got ill, cos they couldn't afford a nice one cos i was too selfish to pay them back. urgh i wanna cry. i'll have lost so much money in that house, its not a good time to sell in the uk, but actually it was less than 1 months of using when i was spending 10k a month, so its a drop in the ocean compared to what i've lost.

sometimes i genuinely wish i could earn money on my back without heroin i was making so fucking much but i just can't even consider it and my parents would never want me to do that to pay them back.

reality hitting is the really shit thing about recovery. 4 months ago i was rinsing my parents for every penny they had and now i've gained a fucking conscience ffs.

The best way to repay them is to live a healthy life. Thats what they spent the money on. This is why your not supposed to make any life changing decisions in the first year of recovery. Your emotionally vulnerable.

ha yeah i hadn't considered that selling a major asset counts as a life changing decision but that makes total sense. thanks!

i still feel a bit guilt cos i've been working my ass off this month so i can buy a new bass guitar, get tattooed and have money for my holiday. i'll have earned more than i was earning in my job. i offered my dad to not buy the guitar and give him the money instead but he recognises that having stuff like that will probably benefit my recovery and the guitar money is less than 0.05% of what i owe my parents.

Just breathe and try to be kind and patient with yourself.

CJ is right, don't make any huge decisions like that for quite some time. Your parents have invested their money in exchange for your happiness and health. They just want you to be happy and well.

I'm really proud of you, you are doing so well honey. Here for you anytime.

your friend,
Ash.

chinup said:

ha yeah i hadn't considered that selling a major asset counts as a life changing decision but that makes total sense. thanks!

i still feel a bit guilt cos i've been working my ass off this month so i can buy a new bass guitar, get tattooed and have money for my holiday. i'll have earned more than i was earning in my job. i offered my dad to not buy the guitar and give him the money instead but he recognises that having stuff like that will probably benefit my recovery and the guitar money is less than 0.05% of what i owe my parents.

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