Regret - Temptation - Reprieve -- Where Are You?

Below is how Heroin is marketed...stamp names so you know who hasthe best dope around so when you come back you ask for it by name.   I like the ones that say thingslike "RIP" or "Lethal Injection."  Its dark humor at its finest.

When I fall into this trap, I have people around me that tell me that I should stop feeling pity for myself.  It's very easy to say "move on" but the losses are devastating.  Over the course of a few years, I lost everything that meant anything to me, from personal possessions to life long friendships to respect in the business community.  All of it shot down. Stealing from family and going to pawn shops, I would never think that was me.  I was rationalizing my use like this:  I do not party or go out, I like to be educated, hang out with people who are liked minded, do volunteer on the weekends, and help out any friends or family that needed me on some weekends.  I was also in graduate school.  Why can't I have an addiction if it makes me a better person?  I should feel great now but honestly I don't sometimes.  Perhaps I lost too much of myself using to ever go back to a normal life?  Its like at the end of Lord of the Rings, the hobbit couldn't go back to his village, not after all he has seen and done.




Okay, perhaps a bit melodramatic but the truth of it is, that these fucking urges are annoying.  I should realize what hell this took me too, but even with that acknowledgment, there is a urge to want to enter that world again.  The process of the preparation of the needle and the injection followed by instant relief is burned on my mind so heavy.  Why can I not remember the days of having no home, no money to eat, shitting myself, crying day and night, and so on...Instead, I engage in the behavior of day dreaming about using.

Its very defeating sometimes to think like this all the time.  This can't be the way I will live my life, can it?  To always have to be on the defense?  Some say stay on suboxone for life but I rather not, even the 6 months or so I have been on it, I think its too much.  I am slowly tapering off that but I notice now that the cravings and urges have come back because my dose is getting lower and lower.

Is regret a trigger for me?  No its not, its just adds wood the my self-pity fire.  Somedays I just wake up so depressed because I had it all and lost it.  Whats worse is the lingering feeling of wanting to use again.  How could I think like that?  Why do I still think these things?  Will they ever leave me or is it here for life?  How can I be strong and on the defense forever?  How I stay sober is that I exercise daily, whether its biking or walking.  I also do yoga and I try to do at least one or two meetings per weeks.  I did mention that the NA AA doesn't work for me, as a be all end all, but I take what I gain from the meetings.  It is a supplement to my recovery but not a primary component.  Again, this is how my recovery works, for many, they would say that I'm struggling but people should do what is in their best interest in hopes to remain sober from their drug of choice.  Its only been tempting me this past couple of weeks.  I then google heroin news in the towns I use to cop in, and then these stupid message boards where people review heroin stamps.  I mean, no wonder this is happening but I feel helpless and hopeless some time.







I am leaving in a few months to go back to the US and I am glad I feel this now, I have to make sure by the time I leave for home again, I'm as solid as I can be because if this was how I would feel if I were at home, it would be only a matter of time...what a sad, pathetic, and hard life I have given birth too.  Where is my reprieve?

Beginning this Blog - A Intro Involving My Transition (**disclaimer at the bottom portion)

You found a blog about the discussions I have with myself regarding the concept of living a life of purity and the challenges contained herein.   I'm am attempting to live a life outside of opiate abuse.  I wanted to write something to release all the insanity I sometimes feel inside my head during this struggle.  At the most, people perhaps find some relation to it.  At the least, its an avenue to get lingering thoughts out of mind.  This helps.

I began at 18 with pot during college, followed by exctasy and cocaine throughout the the later years.  A time of experimentation for me and my contemporaries.   After some time, when I was about 26 years or so, I was only blowing lines and drinking.  I believed it to be manageable because I held a great job, made money, and still found a second job to continue securing my present and my future.  To me, if everything is going good, then that means I'm good and in control.  I was introduced to opiates in my late 20's...an instant hit, I was the best version of myself that I didn't know existed.  I was social, well liked and known.  I held responsibilities and I felt emotionally great.  This was how I always pictured life would feel.  The feeling of opiates didn't hide the dirtiness of the world, but it helped me cope with it much better.  I wouldn't be anchored by feelings of insecurity, depression, anxiety, or doubt.  If people take pharmaceutical drugs, why can't I take opiates?  It made me functioning at an exponential positive rate.  No way I was stopping this.



Opiates became expensive at one point.  I live in North Jersey, 12 minutes outside of the George Washington bridge where I had my job and my town house.  I had needed a bigger opiate intake because at this point, I was using the blue 30mg roxy, about 5 times a day.  At one point, I was forced to stop, so I entered rehab.  I was forced in the sense of an intervention with my close friends and family.  I went in for pill addiction and came out as a seeker of an upgrade.  Living relatively close to Paterson, NJ, I was close to the heroin capital of the USA.  The available of hard drugs in Paterson is laughable.  In half an hour, you have 15 new phone connects, and by that time, dozens of corners had their merchandise for sale, hooting and hollaring as if it was a flea market bazzar in effect.   That area always has and always will be an open air market, and that thirst covers the entire state and neighboring states as well..  Ghettos will always be around and with heroin, it would be a matter of time that I would end up in some kind of ghetto, if I was lucky and didn't die or get locked up.  No, I was dealt a tougher sentence than that.







I eventually lost everything I every had plus life savings and I was homeless and in debt.  I just couldn't stop using heroin.  My last rehab I had developed an intimate relationship and after a while we relapsed together and she introduced me to the needle, as well as crack.  Both addictions destroyed and almost killed me.  In the past 2 years, it put everything I was destroying and losing in turbo mode.  Only by going to a rehab in another country helped me.   Now I am with my family here in Europe.  Sober 4 months.  I smoke pot and drink seldom.  Its not to an addiction point or danger point.  Smoking twice a month and drinking on the weekends, and that would be a couple of drinks.  I started taking suboxone in September, that helps (8mg, now 2mg, I will jump at .05, and be done in about 40 days).



The reason AA/NA is a turnoff because it has an absolutist approach with I do not do well it.  If it works for you , great, but if I'm different, don't view me as fail.  What the hell is that shit?  I am too complex to be in that box and I wish I had the furor other people have but its not for me, and I keep quiet about it.  It helps other but I'm doing in a way that helps me the most.


I'm not sure if I'm the only one that has experienced that feeling as to going to that rehab that first time.  Perhaps because I was forced to go, I came thinking I was going in for one drug, seeking out another on my exit.  Isn't that counterproductive?  I've been to 6 rehabs and 4 detoxes.  At the end, for me at least, they were only baby steps in building blocks.  I did everything they forbid at the long term rehabs I stayed in.  You make friends with recovering addicts and when you get out, they are your new friends.  statistically, they will relapse.  I had 7 friends die in one year.  I never thought I would have that experience.  If I would have known that, I would have stayed a mute at all my rehabs but its impossible, its bound to happen.



It seems that during the end of the 2009s, that pill epidemic if Florida supplied most of the states with opiate medication.  Once this stopped, I think many people needed to fill in their need for opiates by getting heroin at this time.  Its the same feeling, but only insanely better and cheaper.  For me, I had no reservations and each time I relapsed, I only said it would be today only...or this weekend only...or this week only.  There is no "just once" for me.  With dope, you try it and you are hooked.  I never did it as a party drug, I did it because it helped me heal.  Only when it took over did it become toxic and soul cancer was it turned to a monster.

Its seems cliche at this point to tell you that I'm not the typical heroin user, ie. homeless, thief, low class, uneducated, etc...the reason so is because in the last decade or so, heroin as effect all walks of life and all the spectrum of the socioeconomic status.  I can recall my last run of days using heroin.  I was homeless, shitting in garbage bags, throwing up daily.  Now I am in the middle of my graduate studies in clinical psychology.  This drug is an equal opportunity life fucker and I've seen judges, lawyers, police officers, and medical doctors in rehab.  Its not about low bottom people anymore.  Opiate has made a strong impact and it should effect the country by 2020 in a way that will really cripple some states of the US.  I was stealing from my mom and dad and pawning their shit in their home.  It was bad, I felt like death would set me free but I did a detox and now take suboxone which I'm trying to cut out as well.

Some behaviors that really fuck with me are that sometimes I daydream of using heroin.  I have a dream about it and those suck for sure.  I then type heroin searches on the web or look it up on youtube.  I will use google maps and have it run through the ghettos to find the drug corners.  Its bad behavior to do that and why can't I just remember how much this has fucked my life up?  How can one still want to use this?  Sometimes I wonder if I will ever manage to stay clean once I go back home to the US.  It scares me to know that this will always be with me.  Seymor Hoffman at 23 years was still fighting it everyday.  What chance do I have?  But I have to, I do not want this to be an obituary.

As it stands now, I have been lowering my suboxone dose, taking Wellbutrin, and exercising.  I am craving the drug a lot but I am far away from NJ now.  I just hate the fact that other people can party and I can't because I can't control myself.  I don't consider pot and alcohol to be hardcore for me, but that is my limit.  I may do Ayahuasca one day or take mushrooms if the chance comes up.

People say how the obsession goes away after a while.  Some days are good but other days I can't help but to fantasize about it.  How could I?  I destroyed everything that I loved and I stilll crave it.  Your brain is a house and therein, there is a door that opens the door to the heroin room.  In that room, you have peace, contentment, happiness, purpose, and joy.  Once you recover you essentially shut that door and live your life in the rest of the other parts of the house, however, you always know in the back of your head that this room exists, just waiting for that door to swing open by temptation and a silent undercurrent obsession.

**Disclaimer**

I am not a medical doctor or psychologist.  I'm an addict in recovery.  I do not endorse any medicines. DO NOT mimic what I do, since it may cause death or a serious health issue.  I will not be held responsible.  That is why you must speak to a license health practitioner before attempting any changes in mental, physical, and emotional issues that you are going through.  

This blog is meant to be read and get an insight into how an addict in recovery deals with life after drugs, which includes the tools used to take ME there.  I will try to answer any questions/comments you may have in the capacity of a person in recovery and not as a doctor/shaman/psychologist/psychiatrist.  

In recovery, what works for me is knowing other people are going through something similar.  I try to learn from their words.  I hope mine can have a positive influence and be part of the catalyst that helps you to get back on the side of light, love, and health.