Old 12-05-2008, 12:26 AM
  # 8 (permalink)  
sleepygoat
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Hackettstown, NJ
Posts: 692
Most (if not all) of the recovering addicts are know are too full of emotions. We are sometimes emotional wrecks. I believe my problem as an addict was never the absence of emotions; its was not knowing how to deal with them that made me want to use, especially the feelings of fear, sadness, hurt, anger. Happiness was OK to feel, but I felt it seldom,unless high. I want to also say that when I was on antidepressants of the SSRI type I had very flattened emotions. That is one of the main reasons I no longer take them. Using addicts have a lot of emotions too. I was always crying, or yelling - one or the other. My daughter, a using addict, is a jumble of emotions.

HOWEVER - remorse is another subject altogether. I don't consider remorse an emotion actually. I consider it (at this point) a sign of recovery and maturity. I had a lot of trouble with that, especially when I was using. I still have trouble admitting when I am wrong, although in recovery I usually am able to admit to myself that I am wrong, and then I force myself to admit it to God and someone else, and then hopefully (usually) I am willing to make that amend. Never, ever, did that stuff happen when I was usiing. I always blamed somebody else and rationalized my own actions. My AD does know how to apologize for her actions, but I wonder if she does that as a sort of manipulation just to get off the hook. She isn't really capable of changing since still using drugs, so getting off the hook for her actions would become the goal for her.

Just my 2 cents....
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