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growing out of addiction

user name1

user name1

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
107
Hello dear BLers friends and my very underground colleagues!

i have read that researchers are proposing that most addicts simply "grow out of addictions", especially if they started drinking or abusing narcotics after the age of 18 with every year postponed the percentages of quitting is higher and more likely - they say that just about 4% of addicts stay in the cycle of addiction in their mid 30's and even less in their 40's..

although i started smoking weed daily at 15 and took acid and ecstasy randomly at 17 i only started with cocaine and heroin at age 25 or 27, becoming addicted to crack and H in my early 30's (i'm 40 years old) the likelihood of me still being addicted, according to researchers, is less than 1%..

should i be glad that i'm such a rarity? are all those researches bogus? maybe biased somehow?

i never wanted to be a conformist or just another sheep in the herd of humanity but i would prefer not being consumed with drugs and\or thoughts of how to get more drugs or money, the stressful waiting and waiting, the repetitive driving to and from dealers, this (almost) 9 to 5 job that instead of making me money just making me poorer and poorer - again and again like a nightly nightmare for every waking moment of my stupid, empty life. that's for damn sure...

just needed t get it of my chest..
thanks in advance for reading.

all the best,
jona
 
There might be some credible stuff in those claims, but they're not necessarily iron clad. Everyone is still different.

Addiction can definitely be all consuming. It sounds to me like you at least have some mental clarity and are being open and honest with yourself. If you want to get out the cycle of addiction, I think you are in a good headspace to do just that.
 
I have always hypothesized that something like this was the case based on my own experiences as well as looking at greater trends overall but I feel like it's not so much an age thing as a time frame that most people remain in active addiction. Ie I had a normal 20s and didn't get into the harder stuff until right before I turned 30 and now at 36 I'm much more content with being on methadone and dabbling here or there rather than trying to live my life in active full blown polysubstance addiction. That lifestyle wears on you and even if you have the financial means or motivation to keep it up, the daily stress will mentally and psychologically wear you down to the point that being sick is almost easier until you throw in the towel completely and reach the point where maintenance meds are more appealing than being able to get wrecked here and there but suffering the majority of the time. Again just my theory and personal experience but I know I'm not the only one.
 
S&Em said:
I have always hypothesized that something like this was the case based on my own experiences as well as looking at greater trends overall but I feel like it's not so much an age thing as a time frame that most people remain in active addiction. Ie I had a normal 20s and didn't get into the harder stuff until right before I turned 30 and now at 36 I'm much more content with being on methadone and dabbling here or there rather than trying to live my life in active full blown polysubstance addiction. That lifestyle wears on you and even if you have the financial means or motivation to keep it up, the daily stress will mentally and psychologically wear you down to the point that being sick is almost easier until you throw in the towel completely and reach the point where maintenance meds are more appealing than being able to get wrecked here and there but suffering the majority of the time. Again just my theory and personal experience but I know I'm not the only one.
Click to expand...
Hi S&EM!
thanks for your reply. like you me too are on substitute drugs - i have been on subutex for about 10 years but i use it in a "junkie" kind of way (snorting it, selling it etc.) and always use it to "con" the enemy i.e. sobriety - when my smack tolerance is so high that i cant afford being on H i come running to the sub clinic and get my 24mg's a day subutex prescription just so i could get my tolerance down while not being in hell proper but just a few days lockup in purgatory. i snort my 3 8mg's subs a day for a month or 2 and return to my "real lover" - heroin; we have such a relationship that i believe could be described as a love-hate relationship and she's (yes, i see and address heroin as a woman - a noir film's 'femme fatale') always available as long as i got the bread. i know its all a lot less complicated in real life but i must have a narrative that seems logical to me as an un-logical person and it might seem completely banana's to the logical person... i can live with the subs and H alternating against the enemy but the real motherfucker is the hard rock, or the soft gram of coke that i came to love cooking into a solid state free base cocaine - i probably destroyed between 10 to 15 grams of coke until i learned the simple technique of cooking coke and like almost every other drug and\or addictive behavior in my life i became addicted to the rituals of preparing drugs before and after consumption - the scraping of crack res from the pipe, the cooking of H (i dont inject myself and it's have been many years since my glorious last shot) but i did, in my un-numbered sins, cooked for and injected others which were incapacitated or otherwise indispose for the price of a few brown lines and the symbolic "attaboy" pat on my proverbial antisocial, narcissistic-perfectionist shoulder that i have for injecting like a veteran nurse without any scarring, bruises or ever missing any kind of vein no matter how collapsed a person veins are, I've always managed to find one or in the most hardcore of situations of nowhere to inject i have multiple times injecting to the neck's main artery or to the blood vessel in the loin area..

well, i have no idea as to why i just wrote all that and why i have steered off this thread .

i guess i'm just some kind of batshit crazy guy and i apologize for this blunder.
tnx in advance for reading this though.

I hope that all of my bluelighters brothers are well, taking care and keeping up the good work.

all the best regards,
Jonah
 
I think I'm like this. Im 36 now and a former opiate and amphetamine addict. I find i can do an occasional line of meth without wanting to stay up for a week (this was not the case when i was 20). Also, I'm sure i don't want to roll continually now where i used to try.
Also i occasionally use heroin but not enough to get addicted due to experience with oxy addiction in my youth.
The only thing i think i might be up for a light addiction to these days is benzos.
 
I don't think people "grow out of addiction" exactly.

What I think is that some people's addictions are heavily driven by mental illness, and mental illness often starts to stabilize as people get older.

Also the longer people use (and survive) the more likely it becomes that they get so fed up with it that they get serious about quitting.

None of this promises anything though. Not everyone will age out of their mental illness so to speak, some people will be at high risk of relapse for the rest of their lives.

I've known plenty of addicts in their upper 30s to mid 40s.

And even if the odds of people continuing to use drops as they get older, that doesn't mean they're not still addicts. Just because you're not using doesn't mean your addiction is cured. Your addiction is only "cured" if you return to the kind of risk as someone who was never an addict, and I don't think that's common at all in anyone who has gotten into a severe addiction at some point.

So, no, I don't think people grow out of addiction, I think there are variables that change as you get older that create the appearance of people growing out of it. But actually growing out of it in the way that I think most people would assume this to mean, I don't think is common.

The experiences and habits you get into in a severe addiction don't go away. They may become dormant, but I think the danger is unlikely in most people to ever drop to the level of someone who never had those experiences.
 
Well I'll be damned I am the alcoholic variety of addict they talk about in that Big Book the four percent
 
First step is admitting something is really wrong and it keeps getting badder.



I wanna be sober with or without AA and other meeting programs but the truth is in this modern society I cannot for the life of me at present.

So if my only chance at getting and staying sober is by going to meetings just to help others as I can get myself clean I will do it

This says I have a pride problem. Knowing I can I do not and I grow more selfish by the year. Something within knows this isn't the right way for my future joy and freedom.

My ego is tamed in meetings as I have nothing else right now that can check that sick clown bastard into humbled contented sanity
 
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