What Were You Running From?
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Join Date: Aug 2011
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What Were You Running From?
It's a simultaneously simple and complex question.
When we addicts use drugs, we use them for a different reason than your non-addict drug abuser. Unlike them, we weren't just using to get high. We were the ultimate escapists. For many of us, we hated reality and sought to leave it by using drugs.
So what were you running from by using drugs? What feelings, thoughts, situations, and facts of life did you hate enough that you poisoned your mind and body to escape from?
When we addicts use drugs, we use them for a different reason than your non-addict drug abuser. Unlike them, we weren't just using to get high. We were the ultimate escapists. For many of us, we hated reality and sought to leave it by using drugs.
So what were you running from by using drugs? What feelings, thoughts, situations, and facts of life did you hate enough that you poisoned your mind and body to escape from?
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Posts: 142
Personally, I was running from several big things all at once. It was hard for me to quit because when I quit, all of these things hit me like a brick wall.
First I was running from anxiety. I don't know why, but I've always had brutal anxiety. I now feel like anxiety is the exact opposite of a heroin high. I even get the opposite feeling in my chest. Usually with heroin, I felt physically good in my chest, but when I'm anxious I feel physically bad in my chest. With me, I literally don't need to be worried about ANYTHING to get anxious. I can be thinking about NOTHING and be anxious. This anxiety issue is only completely gone when I'm high. The second I quit, it all came back with a VENGEANCE.
Second I was running from my own situation in life. I have a lot of bad memories of my childhood. My dad was a brutally abusive alcoholic, he beat me up physicslly AND emotionally, and I cant tell you which was worse. He handcuffed me to my bed. He locked me in the closet for hours on end. He beat me so bad that my elementary school teachers called CPS, TWICE! he used to tell me I was a worthless, stupid ******, and that he wished he never had kids. He just did things that were so hateful to me that I still can't believe he possibly could have loved me. Even though he was drunk, I still don't think you can possibly do or say the things he did and said to me if you have any love for someone at all.
To this day I still get feelings of such hopelessness and self hate that I KNOW were caused by abuse because I felt the same way when he was beating me up. As a kid I LOVED my dad, even though he beat me, I always blamed myself for it. He never beat me out of the blue. I always did something to set off his temper, so naturally it was easy to blame myself.
These feelings I got as a kid when by dad was beating me...the absolute hopelessness...the pure self hatred and despair, they're still completely with me. When anything bad at all happens to me to this day they all come back, just as powerful as they were when I was a kid. I need to really get over this and find a way to move on.
You see I didn't use heroin to "forget" about my childhood. I used it to become numb to it. When I was high, I was almost immune to the negative thoughts of self-hate and helplessness. I was never completely immune though, the feelings still punched through. I never realized this until I quit...but the main reason I always NEEDED to get HIGHER, the reason I never was high enough and OD'd several times...was because I subconsciously thought that if I were just a BIT higher, I WOULD be immune to feeling so COMPLETELY worthless. I never did get high enough to get over those feelings. They just numbed me enough to the point where I could talk and think about events from the abuse that didn't send me into a panic attack. They made the nightmares much easier to deal with.
Mostly, heroin made me apathetic. It's easy to deal with bad memories, bad people, and bad situations when you truly don't care about anything. And that's what I liked about heroin. It made me so content with my life that it made it easy to not care about anything. And I absolutely loved it.
It's sad when you hate your life so much that you enjoy states of pure apathy. It's sad when you're only comfortable with life as long as it doesn't matter to you whether you live or die. Because when you start caring about things and people, they have the ability to hurt you.
Also, I was running away from depression. Mental pain runs through the same circuitry in the brain that physical pain does. It feels to me the same way. And what do painkillers do? They kill pain. And since physical and emotional pain are the same thing, opiates will kill them both nearly immediately. I have been so incredibly thoroughly depressed in the past that I felt physical pain from it. I've been so depressed that I pissed into a bottle because I was too exhausted to get out of bed to go to the restroom. I don't even know why I get this depressed.
I'm trying to fix myself so I can deal with these things without drugs. Drugs are fake. I need to learn how to make myself feel good without using this horrible chemical, heroin. I'm taking Prozac which has helped me TREMENDOUSLY with my depression and anxiety. I'm beginning to realize that I have not been sentenced as a punishment to live with these awful feelings. I used to feel like a prisoner in my own head.
I used to wish for death. I wanted it badly, the sweet release of death. I was too afraid to deal with life without heroin, but eventually I realized even the heroin wasn't helping anymore.
Now I just want to live with minimal pain. I'm also seeing a good counselor specializing in addiction and trauma. He says I had such a traumatic upbringing that I used heroin to deal with the lasting emotions of. Now I'm learning to deal with them without heroin. I feel like my life is a lot less fake now. I'm no longer hiding from my problems. In fact I never was hiding from my problems. I was simply burying my head in the sand, pretending my problems weren't there.
I hope some of you get something from this. I gained a lot of insight into myself just from writing it.
The funniest thing was that I didn't realize how HUGE my drug problem was until I quit using. I thought I had a high-tolerance problem, cause I could never get high enough to numb myself completely! In reality I was trying to get as far enough away from myself as I could, and never did. Once I came out of my emotional anesthesia my problems were as big and nasty as they were when I started using.
First I was running from anxiety. I don't know why, but I've always had brutal anxiety. I now feel like anxiety is the exact opposite of a heroin high. I even get the opposite feeling in my chest. Usually with heroin, I felt physically good in my chest, but when I'm anxious I feel physically bad in my chest. With me, I literally don't need to be worried about ANYTHING to get anxious. I can be thinking about NOTHING and be anxious. This anxiety issue is only completely gone when I'm high. The second I quit, it all came back with a VENGEANCE.
Second I was running from my own situation in life. I have a lot of bad memories of my childhood. My dad was a brutally abusive alcoholic, he beat me up physicslly AND emotionally, and I cant tell you which was worse. He handcuffed me to my bed. He locked me in the closet for hours on end. He beat me so bad that my elementary school teachers called CPS, TWICE! he used to tell me I was a worthless, stupid ******, and that he wished he never had kids. He just did things that were so hateful to me that I still can't believe he possibly could have loved me. Even though he was drunk, I still don't think you can possibly do or say the things he did and said to me if you have any love for someone at all.
To this day I still get feelings of such hopelessness and self hate that I KNOW were caused by abuse because I felt the same way when he was beating me up. As a kid I LOVED my dad, even though he beat me, I always blamed myself for it. He never beat me out of the blue. I always did something to set off his temper, so naturally it was easy to blame myself.
These feelings I got as a kid when by dad was beating me...the absolute hopelessness...the pure self hatred and despair, they're still completely with me. When anything bad at all happens to me to this day they all come back, just as powerful as they were when I was a kid. I need to really get over this and find a way to move on.
You see I didn't use heroin to "forget" about my childhood. I used it to become numb to it. When I was high, I was almost immune to the negative thoughts of self-hate and helplessness. I was never completely immune though, the feelings still punched through. I never realized this until I quit...but the main reason I always NEEDED to get HIGHER, the reason I never was high enough and OD'd several times...was because I subconsciously thought that if I were just a BIT higher, I WOULD be immune to feeling so COMPLETELY worthless. I never did get high enough to get over those feelings. They just numbed me enough to the point where I could talk and think about events from the abuse that didn't send me into a panic attack. They made the nightmares much easier to deal with.
Mostly, heroin made me apathetic. It's easy to deal with bad memories, bad people, and bad situations when you truly don't care about anything. And that's what I liked about heroin. It made me so content with my life that it made it easy to not care about anything. And I absolutely loved it.
It's sad when you hate your life so much that you enjoy states of pure apathy. It's sad when you're only comfortable with life as long as it doesn't matter to you whether you live or die. Because when you start caring about things and people, they have the ability to hurt you.
Also, I was running away from depression. Mental pain runs through the same circuitry in the brain that physical pain does. It feels to me the same way. And what do painkillers do? They kill pain. And since physical and emotional pain are the same thing, opiates will kill them both nearly immediately. I have been so incredibly thoroughly depressed in the past that I felt physical pain from it. I've been so depressed that I pissed into a bottle because I was too exhausted to get out of bed to go to the restroom. I don't even know why I get this depressed.
I'm trying to fix myself so I can deal with these things without drugs. Drugs are fake. I need to learn how to make myself feel good without using this horrible chemical, heroin. I'm taking Prozac which has helped me TREMENDOUSLY with my depression and anxiety. I'm beginning to realize that I have not been sentenced as a punishment to live with these awful feelings. I used to feel like a prisoner in my own head.
I used to wish for death. I wanted it badly, the sweet release of death. I was too afraid to deal with life without heroin, but eventually I realized even the heroin wasn't helping anymore.
Now I just want to live with minimal pain. I'm also seeing a good counselor specializing in addiction and trauma. He says I had such a traumatic upbringing that I used heroin to deal with the lasting emotions of. Now I'm learning to deal with them without heroin. I feel like my life is a lot less fake now. I'm no longer hiding from my problems. In fact I never was hiding from my problems. I was simply burying my head in the sand, pretending my problems weren't there.
I hope some of you get something from this. I gained a lot of insight into myself just from writing it.
The funniest thing was that I didn't realize how HUGE my drug problem was until I quit using. I thought I had a high-tolerance problem, cause I could never get high enough to numb myself completely! In reality I was trying to get as far enough away from myself as I could, and never did. Once I came out of my emotional anesthesia my problems were as big and nasty as they were when I started using.
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Posts: 142
I never realized until this last monththat my childhood had so much to do with my drug use. Fortunately this addictions counselor I'm going to has pointed it out and I'm beginning to see how incredibly right he was.
You know the saddest thing about it all...when I was a kid, I used to literally dream that one day my dad would love me. That maybe one day, I could be a good enough person that he wouldnt beat me and hate me anymore. I dreamt once that on my graduation day, he told me he loved me and wasn't just saying it as a drunken mess like usual cause he felt bad about something he did to me.
He used to feel guilty about what he did to me, so I literally felt guilty too, and used to tell him that what he did to me was ok. I used to dream that one day when I was better, bigger, and stronger, that he'd love me for who I'd become. I used to wish that when I did get bigger he'd love me and quit beating me, not because I was big and strong, but because I finally was a good person.
I used to think it was ENTIRELY MY FAULT when he hurt me. That whatever I did (or WAS) was bad enough to warrant it. I thought I was a terrible person. I knew most dads only punished their kids when they did something bad. So when my dad did it every night, I naturally thought I was a horribly bad kid.
He pushed me away so much. And all I ever wanted, as a kid, was for him to love me. That's it. I remember him drunk one night telling me he was sorry for hurting me earlier that night...and I told him that it was good, that it was helping me be better and reminding me I was bad. How sick is that! I didn't realize that at the time how sick it was I truly believed it!!! I believed he was like a god, that he could do no wrong. So his abuse towards me wasn't HIS fault...it was my fault. These feelings eventually turned to such powerful self-hatred and despair that they've still managed to stick, as strong as ever, after all these years.
I'm so sorry to carry on and on about it. But writing about it and talking about it helps a lot I find. It helps me process it, which is something I've NEVER done. I've never cried so much in years as I just did writing this particular post. I totally didn't expect it coming into it. I still try not to hate him. He was drunk and whatnot. So it wasn't entirely his fault. It just sucks it had to happen to me when I was a defenseless kid and didn't know any better.
I am still shocked at how much of an effect it's had on my drug use. I never realized, when I was using, that I was running away from so many feelings and pain especially from my childhood. I never used to believe in the whole "childhood psychology" thing about talking about your childhood. But it has helped me a lot to talk about it with my counselor and to write it here. Sorry to rant about my sob story everyone!!!
You know the saddest thing about it all...when I was a kid, I used to literally dream that one day my dad would love me. That maybe one day, I could be a good enough person that he wouldnt beat me and hate me anymore. I dreamt once that on my graduation day, he told me he loved me and wasn't just saying it as a drunken mess like usual cause he felt bad about something he did to me.
He used to feel guilty about what he did to me, so I literally felt guilty too, and used to tell him that what he did to me was ok. I used to dream that one day when I was better, bigger, and stronger, that he'd love me for who I'd become. I used to wish that when I did get bigger he'd love me and quit beating me, not because I was big and strong, but because I finally was a good person.
I used to think it was ENTIRELY MY FAULT when he hurt me. That whatever I did (or WAS) was bad enough to warrant it. I thought I was a terrible person. I knew most dads only punished their kids when they did something bad. So when my dad did it every night, I naturally thought I was a horribly bad kid.
He pushed me away so much. And all I ever wanted, as a kid, was for him to love me. That's it. I remember him drunk one night telling me he was sorry for hurting me earlier that night...and I told him that it was good, that it was helping me be better and reminding me I was bad. How sick is that! I didn't realize that at the time how sick it was I truly believed it!!! I believed he was like a god, that he could do no wrong. So his abuse towards me wasn't HIS fault...it was my fault. These feelings eventually turned to such powerful self-hatred and despair that they've still managed to stick, as strong as ever, after all these years.
I'm so sorry to carry on and on about it. But writing about it and talking about it helps a lot I find. It helps me process it, which is something I've NEVER done. I've never cried so much in years as I just did writing this particular post. I totally didn't expect it coming into it. I still try not to hate him. He was drunk and whatnot. So it wasn't entirely his fault. It just sucks it had to happen to me when I was a defenseless kid and didn't know any better.
I am still shocked at how much of an effect it's had on my drug use. I never realized, when I was using, that I was running away from so many feelings and pain especially from my childhood. I never used to believe in the whole "childhood psychology" thing about talking about your childhood. But it has helped me a lot to talk about it with my counselor and to write it here. Sorry to rant about my sob story everyone!!!
The sun still shines
Join Date: Mar 2010
Posts: 472
Nightsd, what shines through is what a courageous person you are to face your demons and to work through them. I hope you will find it within yourself to give yourself the love you need. No one can take that away from you.
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Join Date: Aug 2011
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Posts: 142
Thanks sunshine. I was really scared that I'd made a fool of myself by posting my childhood like that but my counselor advised me I needed to talk about it, which is something I will never be able to talk about in person.
Sunshine, what thoughts and feelings were you trying to get rid of by using your DOC?
Sunshine, what thoughts and feelings were you trying to get rid of by using your DOC?
The sun still shines
Join Date: Mar 2010
Posts: 472
I am a mother of an AS. I often come here to read. It has given me a total new perspective on my son and his addiction.
When I read what you wrote, I am as proud of you as I would be of my own son if he were to start facing his feelings. I am curious: is addiction always linked to trying to suppress feelings?
When I read what you wrote, I am as proud of you as I would be of my own son if he were to start facing his feelings. I am curious: is addiction always linked to trying to suppress feelings?
Not again
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Central NY
Posts: 1,139
Running from or running to....
I believe that my DOC was related to my ADD, and the feeling of stability in my head made it very enjoyable. FYI; crack and the geek afterwards, which I refered to as putting the blinders on, just sitting and enjoying the ONE thought that played over and over in my head: the cops are outside the window.
For now it's back to the racing thoughts, but at least I have money in my pocket.
Larrylive
I believe that my DOC was related to my ADD, and the feeling of stability in my head made it very enjoyable. FYI; crack and the geek afterwards, which I refered to as putting the blinders on, just sitting and enjoying the ONE thought that played over and over in my head: the cops are outside the window.
For now it's back to the racing thoughts, but at least I have money in my pocket.
Larrylive
~sb
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: MD
Posts: 15,967
Sunshine, for me, it came to not dealing appropriately with my feelings. In a room of one thousand people, if I heard one say, "odd female," I would obsess for weeks or until even now, as to why that ONE person thought I was ODD!
I believe that I am overly sensitive and that I have a disease of addiction that causes a brain-body allergy.
I believe that I am overly sensitive and that I have a disease of addiction that causes a brain-body allergy.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 3,677
sugarbear1,
Last month I was involved in treating mentally ill homeless men, most of whom were diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics. One guy shared with me how out of place he felt everywhere he went. One day he had been riding the bus, something he feared doing but had to do if he wanted to get to his appointment. He heard some laughter and conversation somewhere at the back of the bus. He fled the bus at the next stop, certain that people had "noticed" him all the way at front of the bus and were making fun of him, mocking him.
I thought, oh my god, he's just like me.
Last month I was involved in treating mentally ill homeless men, most of whom were diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics. One guy shared with me how out of place he felt everywhere he went. One day he had been riding the bus, something he feared doing but had to do if he wanted to get to his appointment. He heard some laughter and conversation somewhere at the back of the bus. He fled the bus at the next stop, certain that people had "noticed" him all the way at front of the bus and were making fun of him, mocking him.
I thought, oh my god, he's just like me.
Clever Yak
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: ---
Posts: 4,360
My reason was to escape home life. Not quite as drastically terrible as yours Nightsd, but similar...
Sunshine, not all addicts come from wrecked childhoods but I'd say the basic idea behind addiction is that we're running away from some major stressor in our lives.
Sunshine, not all addicts come from wrecked childhoods but I'd say the basic idea behind addiction is that we're running away from some major stressor in our lives.
Grateful to be free
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Arizona
Posts: 3,680
running from the constant feeling of abandonment and terror that were ingrained in me in my childhood. Running from the terror of knowing I was inherently unlovable and would end up alone, that I was responsible for all the bad things in the lives of the people I knew.
All at the same time I was terrified of disappearing and wanting nothing more than to disappear.
I never used in order to get high, or have fun, only to put myself into a temporary coma, to buy myself a couple of hours of respite from the panic attack that was my life.
All at the same time I was terrified of disappearing and wanting nothing more than to disappear.
I never used in order to get high, or have fun, only to put myself into a temporary coma, to buy myself a couple of hours of respite from the panic attack that was my life.
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