Nightsd

It's true. In fact, I managed to stay clean for an entire month. A few weeks ago I spent $800 of my own hard earned money to go to a detox (which is a lot to a 21 year old like me). After a month of sobriety, I relapsed a few days ago.

I hated sobriety. I hated every single minute of it. Before I ever used drugs I was never happy. This isn't a rationalization, it's the truth. From my very first memories until high school, I was thoroughly depressed until my very first opiate high. When I first used opiates, I thought to myself, "this is what happiness actually feels like".

When I finally got through withdrawals, I was still miserable. A month later I was still completely miserable. So miserable I would have rather died than continued feeling so miserable.

I just don't know. I realize maybe that was a rationalization. I feel very depressed that I've gone back to shooting up. I cannot believe, after everything I put myself and my family through, that I have gone back to putting a needle in my arm. But when I decided to quit, I thought everything would be better once I got through the physical withdrawals. And once I finally DID get through the withdrawals, I still felt absolutely horrendous. Depressed. Anxious. Suicidal. Whatever. You name it.

Anyways I decided recently that I couldn't do another month of sobriety. I decided that if the next month sober was gonna be nearly as bad as the previous month sober, I'd rather die. I never realized how depressed I was BEFORE I started using drugs, then right after I started using drugs. I've come to realize that you just don't know how bad things really are until you feel something better.

I just don't know anymore. I was SO CERTAIN that I'd manage to stay clean this time. I've hurt my family, my friends, and my boyfriend so much because I started using again. But I've hurt myself so much more by relapsing. I was so certain that I'd get clean, that I'd live a normal happy life. But now I went and relapsed. I just don't know what to do.

I know if I quit again that even once I go through the miserable withdrawals (AGAIN) that I'll feel absolutely HORRIBLE. I will feel this way for at least a month like I did last time. I'll feel so bad I'll become suicidal, just like I did last time. I feel like I'm one of those addicts that will never be able to quit heroin, no matter how hard I try. I've always believed that some people just aren't strong enough to ever quit, that they were biologically programmed to be weak people. Maybe I'm one of those people? Right now, I truly believe that I'll die before I'm 30, from an overdose. I've already nearly died from an OD several times. But if I can quit one more time and not feel so miserable, maybe that won't be my fate.

I want to be clean. But even more than wanting to be clean, I just don't want to be absolutely thoroughly miserable. I can handle being miserable for days. Weeks even. But when I'm completely, thoroughly depressed and anxious for over a month...and I know the ONE thing that will make everything feel better...it just feels impossible to not use. I got to my breaking point, a month of sobriety, and I broke.

I feel worthless, I feel like my life is pointless. If I live past the age of thirty or forty and I am STILL addicted to heroin, what good WAS my life? What was the damned point?

I've let everyone in my life down, and I've let myself down. But I just couldn't take the pain of being sober anymore.

My question is this. When you got sober, did you feel miserable? Like, SUICIDAL miserable for a long time? What did you do to quit feeling so miserable? I know that if I quit and DIDN'T feel such an incredible suicidal depression for an entire month that I'd have been able to quit. But it never went away. Even when the withdrawals went away, my unbelievable suicidal depression never went away. Nor the anxiety.

I just wanna know how I can live SOBER and not feel so unbelievably miserable for so long. I want to know what the hell I can do to make things better. I want to quit. I want to quit SO BAD you wouldn't believe it. But my last month of sobriety was so miserable that I would have rather died.

It wasn't just miserable for the last few days or weeks. Every single moment of it was miserable. For the last month I've been clean, I always felt that I was ONE SECOND away from a panic attack. I always felt like my heart was beating out of my damn chest! I felt so depressed that for the whole month suicide seemed like a good idea.

I just dont know what to do. I wanted to quit SO BAD, but I wasn't strong enough to go another month with this anxiety or depression. I just couldnt handle it. I knew if I didn't use again to relieve the misery I would have killed myself instead. The misery was that bad. I want to know how I can quit using WITHOUT feeling that bad. Is it even possible? I know some people quit using and feel bad for months. I'm not strong enough to feel THAT bad for months. I simply can't deal with that horrible feeling for so long. I'd reached the end of my rope and I would have rather died than continued feeling that way. So I took it away with heroin instead of suicide.

How the **** did you quit? Did any of you feel the way I felt and then found a way to quit??! I want to know how I can quit without feeling so MISERABLE.

Nightsd

The truth is that right now, the only thing I care about is not killing myself because it would cause all of my loved ones such irreparable misery. If that weren't a factor then i would have offed myself long ago. But the last time I quit I couldn't go on after only a MONTH. I was at the end of my rope, I was so miserable after a month that I would have rather died than feel that way anymore. So I made the idiotic choice to relapse and use heroin, but the truth is I felt like I no longer had a choice.

I feel like my addiction is more powerful than most RECOVERED people's addictions. I feel like heroin is the only thing that makes me truly happy. I feel like I can't live with it but can't live without it. And since I think my addiction is so powerful...so impossible for me to overcome, that I'll be one of those addicts who dies from their addiction. I think I'll be one of those addicts that "must die so that others may live".

I just shot up fifteen minutes ago and I still feel absolutely miserable. I've never gotten "high"'and still felt so terrible I was crying like I am now. I'm not intoxicated, I'm not stupid, and I still feel absolutely miserable. It's like I can't do anything to make myself feel better anymore.

I feel like I'm out of choices. I'd rather die than continue to be a heroin addict but I don't know how to live WITHOUT being a heroin addict. What was your secret to staying clean? How did you learn to live without drugs!!!! Please tell me. I'm so desperate. That's all I want to know. I can't keep going like this. I'm so clueless. I don't know how to make things better. I feel like everything is just hopeless.

A desperate addict,
Brad

Dee74

I'm sorry you feel that way Brad.

I was an alcoholic but I identify with the never feeling happy - at least as an adult - and then finding happiness in getting wasted....

Only it's not happiness - it's at best euphoria and a release - but as you'd know it pretty much ceases to be either.

Getting sober did suck - it was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do.
I was used to instant gratification and instant regulation of mood.

I was cast adrift smack dab into the middle of reality - and I hated it.

But I hated my old life too, and I knew I'd die living that way - so I stuck with sobriety.

I really used the support here - and I really worked on myself - I really looked at why I had never been happy as an adult, why I felt this emptiness and why I'd come to depend so much on substances to regulate my mood.

Gradually, day by day, I learned to live sober - it was no picnic and it took much longer than I wanted it too, but I had to learn stuff from scratch... I'd pretty much checked out from everything from about 16 on...I had a lot of catching up to do.

Now I look back and that process was the best decision I ever made.

Back when I was wasted I used to sit there drooling and dream of a life and the type of man I wanted to be - I still have a way to go, but I'm closer than ever now.

I could never have become the person I am today without letting go of the drugs and booze.

I hope you decide to give it a go again Brad - after all the alternative simply isn't very pretty at all.

D

Nightsd

Dee,

Thanks for your reply. I'm not just a heroin addict I'm an alcoholic as well. Every time I use heroin I also drink. Which is every single day, all day long. I don't even know what to call myself anymore, a degenerate addict or a degenerate alcoholic! I don't feel like I fit in at NA OR AA meetings. Alcoholics don't seem to understand addicts and addicts don't seem to understand alcoholics. I can't understand either! Without alcohol I don't think I'd ever use heroin and without heroin I don't think I'd ever use alcohol. I've always used them both.

And unlike those wonderful folks in AA I don't ever say I just DRANK alcohol. I have always USED it. Drinking implies a simply physical act, but drinking alcohol was never JUST drinking for me. Thus I always used alcohol.

Thus I feel even worse. I know how bad the recovery rates are for IV heroin users are. I also know how bad the statistics are for alcoholics. Thus I feel doubly screwed. I feel that since I always drink when I use heroin, which has been every single time, I'm both a heroin addict and an alcoholic. Thus my own chance of recovery is even smaller than that of just an alcoholic or addict...since I'm both! I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to quit using AND feel anything but miserable. I know for a fact I can quit using/drinking. I've done it before and I can do it again. I just don't know whether I can quit using/drinking WITHOUT feeling so thoroughly miserable and anxious for so incredibly long. I'm not strong enough to deal with it for so long.

Dee74

I disregarded recovery rates - like I said I was at the quit or die stage...so I gave it all I had - and happily I made it

I'm not the only one here either - this place is full of amazing transformations....

don't lose hope Brad - I've seriously never met a hopeless case yet - not anyone who didn't give up

D

Nightsd

Dee, right now, my life isn't enough for me. If I knew that using again would kill me...I'd do it anyways. I know it. Right now I highly doubt I'll ever be able to quit even if it meant I'd die. I think the fact that I've felt that way for years now means I'm probably gonna die as an addict.

That is nit to say I WANT to die. I don't. But right now I feel like my desire to keep using is even stronger than my desire to live.

Did you ever think you'd never be able to quit? After a month of being sober did you still feel really bad? If so how long did it take you to feel happy?

If I knew I'd have ever felt happy again I think I would have stayed clean. But after a month of sobriety and no results I felt like my efforts were pointless.

I just wanna know what I can do.

SteppingItUp

Hey Night,

I'm in the midst of traveling internationally, visiting my family after attending the stunning wedding of a childhood friend, awake at a very early hour and I saw your post. If you don't mind me saying so, you sound a whole lot like me. I'm a heroin addict/alcoholic (or just a run of the mill poly-drug addict, who has tried and failed miserably in the game of substitution), and I've been clean/sober for 2 years and 5 1/2 months.

What came to my mind reading your posts are a couple of things I've come to believe from my own experiences:

Not using/drinking does not treat addiction/alcoholism. Like, I always felt worse when I stopped -- that's why I picked up over and over again, year after year, even when the physical withdrawal was over. Alcohol and other drugs treated alcoholism/drug addiction. You know what I mean? But, since I also got to that point where the drugs were clearly destroying me, and just like you said I couldn't live with them and couldn't live without them, I had to become willing to surrender or die using, which deep in my heart I didn't believe I was put on this earth to do.

As you've seen, stopping is one thing, staying stopped is another. For me, it's not a simple choice of deciding not to use and being able to muster up the will-power to stay stopped -- I actually need to change. I had no idea how to do that, but honesty, open-mindedness and willingness are certainly amongst the keys to the kingdom. And lucky for me, there has been no need to reinvent the wheel because I chose, out of the gift of desperation, to do what other addicts/alcoholics have already figured out to recover.

If you want my 2 cents, rest assured that to me you sound like a typical addict/alcoholic, who is suffering from untreated addiction/alcoholism, including feeling so bad you want to die, and lucky for both of us there is a solution. And, by the way, as far as I'm concerned, that solution is the same, no matter what the drugs (remembering that alcohol is a drug) or whatever combination of drugs. In AA I'm an alcoholic -- in NA I'm an addict; ultimately, I suffer from addiction, which is all-encompasing, and treatment for me in any case is spiritual.

At every rocky place in this journey, the one thing that has gotten me forward comes back to me working the 12 steps. That's it -- well, especially with regard to what the steps have led me to. And some great fellowship, of course. I'm a member of AA and NA, as I feel I have a lot to gain and give in both, and I primarily choose to work the 12 steps out of the Big Book of AA. A spiritual program of action. Chop wood, carry water. What I get is freedom from the mental obsession, along with an entirely new chance at an entirely new way of life. The most amazing, unexpected blessing of my life. Have hope, if you want it. It really works for anyone willing to go to any lengths to get it.

i wish you the very best on your journey.

With love,

SIU

NVRAGAIN3PCT

I'm so sorry for how you feel.

I was hospitalized for suicide last week? the week before?

I get it I totally do.

I'm close to going back in.

Everything I've never dealt with is all coming back now that my precious oxy's are gone

but the oxy's lie,

Death in a bottle

Please consult with your dr. I assure you, there are those out there who do NOT want you to die.

Peace and blessings to you this day

Dee74

I wasn't at all sure I could quit, but I knew it was the only thing left to left to try...and I was determined to give it all I had.

I said I'd probably die before I quit too - then I suffered a series of mini strokes on my last detox.

I'd been in scrapes before but I really felt as if I might die this time - and I found I really didn't want to.

I'd drunk and drugged for 20 years - it was never going to be a quick process for me to come back from that.

For most of the first 90 days I was mostly scared of dying - I resigned myself to a kind of bleak grey existence.

I was pleased to be sober but I had little joy.

Things started to change after 90...joy and happiness came back slowly as my mind and body healed and I tentatively started to meet the challenges of living sober & dealing with the underlying issues I mentioned before.

I had some counselling help as well as the support I found here.

As the months passed I grew more and more confident, and felt more and more better.

By 6 months I was happy and I had a sense of peace - and despite the ups and downs of life, that's never left me since.

It seemed like an eternity at the time, and it seems like a blip now - but I think 3-6 months was a pretty good investment for the rest of my life, nightsd

D

northbelle

I have had a long depressing recovery from heroin addiction as well! The struggle has been relentless and endless.
HOWEVER I have acheived moments of great joy I never would of had I of kept using,,my life was able to take off on a new footing that never would of been possible despite my seeming misery much of the time.

I don't know my friend Depression has been a cool comfort to me for a long time. When the dope is gone it was always there and I have learned to walk with it . The one thing that has been my saving grace is helping other people . It is the one thing that brings me relief from my own selfish obsession with my own discomfort!

Recovery is not all flowers and betterflies god knows...or so it has been for me. I have learned to stop fighting the darkness and embrace the part of me that hurts . It may not be perfect. It is my very imperfect life and recovery. But today I DON"T have to stick a needle in my arm and kill the pain.
It is WAAAAY better this way..
I SO feel ya! And I also KNOW you can do it. I did.

love norty

FT

Nightsd,

If you think about it, all our self-promises to get clean are MADE WHILE USING. It is EASY to make these promises while high.

My guess is the recovery place didn't address your underlying issues and only got you abstinent. You describe mental health issues that are not going to be fixed by either using or getting clean. Please get up front with SOMEBODY about how bad you are feeling. Yours may not be a simple matter of time, and you need professional help that isn't going to be found in only a 12 step program or on line.

You a clearly are highly intelligent and articulate guy. There's so much more to life than using, and that one month clean wasn't a good example of the great things that could be in store for you.

And, yes, many if not most of us still felt a lot of emotional distress at just a month out.

Good luck.

FT

djensen

Nightsd, you will feel good again, its just going to take time. We have been tricking our brains with our own outside "feel good" chemicals and its going to take a while for our body's to produce it naturally again. I am no doctor and thats not medical advice, thats just my thoughts on the process and maybe some insight on why you still didnt feel "normal" at a month. It could take us longer to get back our natural "highs" but I can tell you one thing, I rode my buddies quad this weekend and it was as close to "high" as I could get!! I am going to keep doing stuff like that to keep myself going and get those natural chemicals going again, it felt good and lasted for hours after I stopped riding too......

Hang in there, you can do it, I know you can!!

DJ

JustAYak

I'm 20, started my "quest" of getting clean at 17. I relapsed a lot, I was lucky that one of those times didn't kill me. I decided to do something I never do...trust people. I trusted the people on SR who told me things get better, and that it sobriety really does ROCK after you get a little clean time. They were right. I am so much happier now that I am clean. I am so much smarter and richer now that I am clean. I'm more of a whole person, granted I still have my faults and I definitely still have down times.

I was suicidal for a little bit there as I got clean and even after I got clean, it felt like the depression would never end, but I got some help for myself and now I'm feeling much better. Counseling helped me immensely...

It can be done. It does get better. You will see if you try and succeed

Nightsd

That's awesome Jason.

Thanks for your posts everyone it means a lot. So when I quit again this time I should go get counseling? Does that actually help anything? How exactly does it help? As a premed student (and an addict) I've always been biased towards pharmacology to solve mental problems. I've always felt that a bad mood or bad state can always be solved by a pill or injection. Maybe I should give that a shot. What type of counselor or shrink do you think I should go to? How exactly does it work and how does just talking to someone and exchanging words actually help? I don't get it.

This may sound weird but for all the people (humans) I want to get clean for...for all the family and friends I love...the creatures I love more than ANYTHING else in this entire world are my dogs. They love me no matter what, whether I'm clean or not, whether I'm in a bad mood or not. Their love is unconditional, it doesn't matter to them how I live my life. They're always there. They are the happiest, sweetest, most adorable creatures on earth and by using I'm doing them a disservice cause I can't care for them as much as I'd love to if I kept using. Unlike people, I can ALWAYS make my beloved pups extremely happy just by taking them for a walk or giving them a bone. Nothing I do in life will ever disappoint them. They are the embodiment of true love, they can express this "love" emotion better than any human being ever can. I love my dogs more than I love my family, and that's saying a lot. I know it's off topic I just wanted to write that. I love my pups so much, I spoil them so ridiculously bad. They're some of the most spoiled pups on earth! They're one of the few reasons actually I wanna get clean and continue to live. If I kept using or died, and became unable to care for my precious pups, it would kill me and them. I'm their favorite human and they're my favorite creatures on earth.

Nightsd

I honestly am not looking forward to quitting again. It's really gonna suck. If I could just put it down now and be done with it, I would be. But I've been shooting up again for nearly a week now and I'd only been clean a month before that. My tolerance is right back where it used to be. God I feel so STUPID for putting myself in this position again.

If I quit again right now I'll go right back to the miserable withdrawals I had a month ago. I've never successfully been able to detox at home, I always break after three days without a single minute of sleep (literally NO SLEEP) and withdrawing hard core. WD's would be possible for me if I could get any sleep at all. The last time I tried to quit I stayed up for the first four nights straight. I felt like a meth user.

I can't quit at home, I know I'm not strong enough to go through WD's here and stay clean (staying clean in Vegas is hard enough, buying drugs here is the equivalent of buying beers inside of a bar). And I don't think my insurance will cover a trip to go back to medical drug detox. This situation I've idiotically put myself back into just SUCKS.

djensen

Check with the insurance to see if they will cover it again, if not you are just going to have to do it at home, as much as it sucks.
Just think of the way you are feeling now, you are down, depressed and regretting what you did. Just get back on the horse, it CAN and will be done and trudge through the WD's one more time and be done for good! You can do it, I know you can, you have proven it already with a month clean, just get back on the bike again!

FT

Hi nightsd,

The fact that you can still get pleasure out of your doggies is a good sign that there is still a part of you that is ABLE to feel pleasurable things. The opiates totally f*ck up the receptor sites PERMANENTLY, which is why you go back up to full tolerance of the drug extremely quickly. The withdrawals this time might not be as bad, since you were on the drug less time overall.

Somebody else here has a signature that says, "I strive to be the person that my dogs think I am." I really like that.

Yes, counseling does help. It's not really a fair assessment to gauge how you felt at one month clean to where you'd be in a year. Right now, a year is a huge percentage of the life you've lived so far, and so it seems interminable, intolerable. But it really does take several months for your brain to relearn the pleasure feedback system. I'm only 8 months out, and I'm still feeling better and happier every months. PAWS sucks.

Your naturally created endorphins are barely even recognized early in recovery, because you have napalmed them with the drug. I do wonder if, after a number of years of doing that, if you can ever recover from it. That's why I think it's a good sign you still get pleasure from animals. Think about that. Think about other things you still get off on. There's probably something.

Counseling is more than just talking. When I was severely depressed a few years ago, I bounced from one counselor to another for a couple of years. Most of them just p!ssed me off. One called themselves "Venus and Mars" and it was the biggest pile of crap I ever encountered, and they even displayed the book cover in their office. I found it hard to find a match for me. No one could figure me out, and so I eventually figured myself out. I don't know if you can relate to it, but there is a book called "Worry" by Hallowell. I mention it here and there on the forum. Normally, I despise these stupid "self help" books, but this one had some stuff in it that rang true with me. I realized that I wasn't brain damaged from depression and/or substances, which was my biggest fear. That I had damaged myself beyond all repair. I discovered I had an extreme reaction (deep depression and PTSD) to a horrific event in my life, and it did take me several years, but I did find my way out. For me, it involved quitting all drugs including the psych ones, and only partially some counseling.

There is a way out for you. If you're premed (ah ha! I suspected that!), you're primed for knowledge. One thing that helped my PTSD and depression was going back to school. Busy yourself with learning and striving for your goals. You can reach them.

I wish you so much luck. I hear such potential in the brief words I've heard from you here. It would be such a waste for you to spend the best years of your life mired in this crap.

FT

djensen

OH GREAT Failedtaper, so I am going to be a mental zombie for ever!!!

I am already having more natural feelings than I was a few days ago, saying the sentence above made me smile and LOL!!

NightSD- I know what you are saying about the dogs, we have one dog and he is the only thing that got my wife through a TERRIBLE pregnancy. Just sitting and holding him made her pains go away, without any pills!!!

JustAYak

Nope, not weird at all. You sound exactly like me. I would be nothing without my dog, Goliath.

Counseling really isn't that bad. I was skeptical myself, and yes I'm on anti-depressants and such, but the talking probably helps more than the medication alone could. It's not like you have to cry or anything, you could be stone cold or have a blank look on your face and they don't care. They listen to what you're saying and take it from there. I think it helped me cause for the first time a very very long time, I felt like I was actually be heard by someone and that I wasn't being ignored and that my problems did actually matter to someone. They helped me realize things that I probably still wouldn't know now if I had not gone. It gives me encouragement. I don't know, it's different for everyone but it can't hurt to give it a shot.

ba1614

I understand completely Nights, the 2 in my avatar are my best friends. Outside of my family, I find the more time I spend around people, the more I appreciate the time with my dogs.
I now have them back to a solid couple hr workout, as well as a good walk or swim, and they are lovin' it! This has been great therapy for me this last week and a 1/2 as well.

I'm only approaching 4wks sober from the oxy's, so I don't have any great advice as I'm still fighting the urge at times to use myself, but I do know that in addition to SR, being able to talk to my wife about it has been a great help.

Good luck