Hello all,
I came across this site while researching the effects of meth on the brain.
I used to use a lot. Slamming and smoking. I no longer slam but as of late can not quite kick the habit.
I had quit for a couple years then slowly started using again. This mostly came about for two reasons. The first is that I am on an anti psycotic for obsessive thinking and severe social anxiety. These meds leave me with little energy or motivation to do things. From the standpoint of taking something to help me stop obsessing over traumatic life events, it works for the most part. But the side effect is that i sleep 10-12 hours a day and all I want to do is sit around and watch TV. I would then get frustrated and use so I could do things that needed to be done like write a resume and look for jobs and organize my files and stuff like that. The other main reason I would use is when a life event would be so traumatizing that it overwrites the medication and I enter into a state of mind where I obsess over something that cuts me at my very core. Something that happened that I had no control over and is indescribably unfair. It makes me feel sad, angry, helpless, hopeless, enraged, depressed, inadequate, makes me feel stupid, ashamed, and lost and I do not think I conveyed how I truly feel. It continues making more and more painful thoughts in me about how I mishandled and continue to mishandel this debilitating situation in my life. I hate being in that state of mind and will avoid it at all costs because I know the result leaves me a broken mess that hates himself over a tragic event that I had no way of knowing how to handle.
So where do I turn to avoid this train wreck? The pizzo. That piece of glass that will take me away to another land where I put my problem on a shelf for the next 6-12 hours while I engage in other thoughts, conversation and hobbies. While there are severe consequences taking this drug, it really does a good job of getting my mind on other things.When it's over my debilitating situation is still present in my mind, it's just not so loud that I can not hear anything else. I can be sad and still participate in life in a diminished capacity.
So now I am at a point where this bad situation does not take over my mind like it used to. And now that things are different, (i am not sure its better but it's different) I can no longer justify smoking meth like I used to. I also stopped taking my meds so I am getting up earlier and all that. It's kinda scary because I don't have the numbing chemicals in me but at the same time I feel like the new pattern of thinking is embedded and if I take it slowly I should be able to manage upsetting life events. How? I watched how my brain responded to the meds. I watched how it changed my default reactions to common life events. I looked at the before and after and saw how the meds mechanically stopped my default thought process of obsessing on the negative. Instead I had some of my normal initial reaction and thought but it just trailed off. I thought 'wow, this is different' as I was left in a new place, a middle ground where I did not have a negative or positive reaction. I literally just stood there because I had not yet learned what a more reasonable (or normal) reaction would be. I was so used to assuming the negative that I actually had to teach myself to consider a wider range of where the person was coming from. So there I was glad to see I was not having my old, negative, paranoid Social Anxiety poisoned reaction while at the same time standing there like a deer in the headlights. To teach myself I analyzed the interaction and came up with what I would say next time a similar event occured. And the answer was just to get clarity on where the person was coming from - I just ask them why they felt that way and then believed them. Over months and years on the meds I have taught myself how to read people better and know where they are coming from. Now I react to what people do or say in real time for the most part. And when I am unsure I just ask.
So now I have what others of you got naturally - a way to think that draws conclusions that do not put me in a negative state of mind. A way to think that leaves me in a better place. A way to think that is more closely aligned with how successful people think. And I think I can now do this without Meds. We will see. I have a friend who is helping me through this and we will see if I am able to go through some life events without reverting back to my old way of thinking. If I do get spun up again I will ask my doctor for a new script.
So that said, I wonder why I still do it. Why am I still smoking? I wonder why I don't call someone or go through some type of mental exercise to convince myself to not go get it. I used to be able to manage it so well but not anymore. Now that I am further along in managing my emotions and life then I used to be, why am I weaker when it comes to this. Why am I doing it without the need to cover up something that I don't want to experience? Is this where I accept that I am not so different than other addicts? That I am more like a normal person who is just addicted to the shit. A person who no longer has the personal inner strength to say 'not this week, no matter what happens I am strong enough to stop for the next X weeks'. Its weird to me that when my mind was less evolved and very reactionary I had more of an ability to stop for months and even years at a time.
I do have this image of myself as a man who got played and was taken advantage of and was abused. I feel like he should be punished for not being able to look out for himself. I wonder if that's related.
Anyway, this is why I am here. I feel like for me to move forward with the next stage of my life I have to put the pipe down. All things being equal I do not think that anyone knows I am using again, but I know and it's frustrating me. I don't have an excuse right now. I could have one but I want to grow up past this dysfunctional stage of my life and see whats on the other side of it. I may use again to keep my head out of the really bad place I described earlier, but I do not want to use when things are ok, to use just for the sake of using. I think it's gonna be hard as I am thinking about smoking when I am done writing this. Why and I like that? Fuck this fucking life.
Allister
I came across this site while researching the effects of meth on the brain.
I used to use a lot. Slamming and smoking. I no longer slam but as of late can not quite kick the habit.
I had quit for a couple years then slowly started using again. This mostly came about for two reasons. The first is that I am on an anti psycotic for obsessive thinking and severe social anxiety. These meds leave me with little energy or motivation to do things. From the standpoint of taking something to help me stop obsessing over traumatic life events, it works for the most part. But the side effect is that i sleep 10-12 hours a day and all I want to do is sit around and watch TV. I would then get frustrated and use so I could do things that needed to be done like write a resume and look for jobs and organize my files and stuff like that. The other main reason I would use is when a life event would be so traumatizing that it overwrites the medication and I enter into a state of mind where I obsess over something that cuts me at my very core. Something that happened that I had no control over and is indescribably unfair. It makes me feel sad, angry, helpless, hopeless, enraged, depressed, inadequate, makes me feel stupid, ashamed, and lost and I do not think I conveyed how I truly feel. It continues making more and more painful thoughts in me about how I mishandled and continue to mishandel this debilitating situation in my life. I hate being in that state of mind and will avoid it at all costs because I know the result leaves me a broken mess that hates himself over a tragic event that I had no way of knowing how to handle.
So where do I turn to avoid this train wreck? The pizzo. That piece of glass that will take me away to another land where I put my problem on a shelf for the next 6-12 hours while I engage in other thoughts, conversation and hobbies. While there are severe consequences taking this drug, it really does a good job of getting my mind on other things.When it's over my debilitating situation is still present in my mind, it's just not so loud that I can not hear anything else. I can be sad and still participate in life in a diminished capacity.
So now I am at a point where this bad situation does not take over my mind like it used to. And now that things are different, (i am not sure its better but it's different) I can no longer justify smoking meth like I used to. I also stopped taking my meds so I am getting up earlier and all that. It's kinda scary because I don't have the numbing chemicals in me but at the same time I feel like the new pattern of thinking is embedded and if I take it slowly I should be able to manage upsetting life events. How? I watched how my brain responded to the meds. I watched how it changed my default reactions to common life events. I looked at the before and after and saw how the meds mechanically stopped my default thought process of obsessing on the negative. Instead I had some of my normal initial reaction and thought but it just trailed off. I thought 'wow, this is different' as I was left in a new place, a middle ground where I did not have a negative or positive reaction. I literally just stood there because I had not yet learned what a more reasonable (or normal) reaction would be. I was so used to assuming the negative that I actually had to teach myself to consider a wider range of where the person was coming from. So there I was glad to see I was not having my old, negative, paranoid Social Anxiety poisoned reaction while at the same time standing there like a deer in the headlights. To teach myself I analyzed the interaction and came up with what I would say next time a similar event occured. And the answer was just to get clarity on where the person was coming from - I just ask them why they felt that way and then believed them. Over months and years on the meds I have taught myself how to read people better and know where they are coming from. Now I react to what people do or say in real time for the most part. And when I am unsure I just ask.
So now I have what others of you got naturally - a way to think that draws conclusions that do not put me in a negative state of mind. A way to think that leaves me in a better place. A way to think that is more closely aligned with how successful people think. And I think I can now do this without Meds. We will see. I have a friend who is helping me through this and we will see if I am able to go through some life events without reverting back to my old way of thinking. If I do get spun up again I will ask my doctor for a new script.
So that said, I wonder why I still do it. Why am I still smoking? I wonder why I don't call someone or go through some type of mental exercise to convince myself to not go get it. I used to be able to manage it so well but not anymore. Now that I am further along in managing my emotions and life then I used to be, why am I weaker when it comes to this. Why am I doing it without the need to cover up something that I don't want to experience? Is this where I accept that I am not so different than other addicts? That I am more like a normal person who is just addicted to the shit. A person who no longer has the personal inner strength to say 'not this week, no matter what happens I am strong enough to stop for the next X weeks'. Its weird to me that when my mind was less evolved and very reactionary I had more of an ability to stop for months and even years at a time.
I do have this image of myself as a man who got played and was taken advantage of and was abused. I feel like he should be punished for not being able to look out for himself. I wonder if that's related.
Anyway, this is why I am here. I feel like for me to move forward with the next stage of my life I have to put the pipe down. All things being equal I do not think that anyone knows I am using again, but I know and it's frustrating me. I don't have an excuse right now. I could have one but I want to grow up past this dysfunctional stage of my life and see whats on the other side of it. I may use again to keep my head out of the really bad place I described earlier, but I do not want to use when things are ok, to use just for the sake of using. I think it's gonna be hard as I am thinking about smoking when I am done writing this. Why and I like that? Fuck this fucking life.
Allister
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