Thread: how can I?
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Old 05-11-2010, 09:09 AM
  # 25 (permalink)  
kj3880
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: md
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How do you know for sure that he is not using heroin?

I personally steer clear of judging whether an addict is clean or not while on suboxone. A lot of people who take it on a doctor-supervised plan are staying clean and leading purposeful, healthy, constructive lives on it. There is evidence that many long-term opiate addicts permanently damaged the part of their brain that tells the body to make and feed the chemicals that keep people feeling good (endorphins). This group of addicts stays in a constant state of severe depression when they go off of their opiates. This eventually leads to chronic relapsing. So for some, one good (in my opinion and experience) answer turns out to be medical maintenance on a small dose (8mg is small enough for many to stay on) of suboxone.

For these people, they don't feel "high" or even any different then you do every day, and the suboxone functions much like an anti-depressant does for other clinically depressed patients. I don't like the idea of saying these people aren't clean. I think that if they stick to the prescription exactly as the doctor prescribes, they are as clean as any psych patient or diabetic who must take medication to function normally every day.

But I don't think this applies to your b/f. I think if he did research (as I did) and made an informed choice (as I did) to take this medication for a long period of time, that he would have told you about it, for there is nothing to be ashamed of in doing that. Indeed it's a proactive thing to do, if he is willing (as I was) to also go to meetings every day, get a sponsor, work steps, and do all the inside work of recovery. I don't hear any of that going on with him, unless you didn't share that part of the story with us.

Suboxone isn't good or bad in and of itself. It can be, if properly used and doctor-supervised, a useful part of an opiate addicts' recovery plan. It isn't supposed to be a last resort that you take only on those days when you can't get heroin or oxy. People that do that just make it harder for those who are really working a program, because they give suboxone patients a bad name. And that is what it sounds like your b/f is doing.

If it were me, I'd get out while the getting is good, before you have any babies and permanently tie yourself to this sick man. You can't help him, and you may actually be hurting him by assisting him in not reaching bottom. Some of us addicts only seek help when we've lost everything and everyone who cared about us. We have to seek treatment ourselves. It doesn't matter if he takes that job or not, because in the long term he will lose that job and everything else he touches will turn to sh@t until he accepts that he is powerless over opiates and becomes willing to do whatever it takes to get and stay clean.

Keep coming back, because you too will eventually learn that just as your b/f is powerless over the drugs, you are powerless over him and his recovery. When you accept that, deep in the fiber of your being, your own recovery will truly begin.

Love,
KJ
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