Hi CC. I was addicted to pain killers for about 2 1/2 years. The last year I was taking hand fulls of xanax bars on top of the 20-25 painkillers I was taking daily. I detoxed in August of 06 and relapsed on hydro in February of 07. I had clean time and felt OK but would obsess about getting high again. One day I ordered a remaining refill of 90 and ate it in about 4 days. Getting high again just reinforced what I already knew, that if I continued to live like that I would be dead very soon.
If you remain sober for long enough, you will wake up one day and realize that cold hard truth that this disease WILL kill you if you let it. Would I like to get high today? Hell yes! Am I going to? Heck no, and that is the difference. We are all different and yet still the same. We all need to find whats going to be right for US to remain sober. What WE have to do for ourselves. Once I understood that for the first time, remaining sober became the most important thing to me. My life actually became much simpler and really put outside things into a very manageable prospective.
Another thing I did to keep sober was remain challenged. I'm doing quite a few things right now as my career, that in a combination may seem very strange to some. I cant do the 9-5 anymore and for good reason. It never challenged me working a normal job for somebody else. I work twice as hard working for myself and it doesn't even seem like work anymore. Good luck, I like the avitar.