You did well. I'm really proud of you. So many times I have gone to the dentist and thought to myself - a bottle of vicodin??!! That's DIFFERENT. Yeah right. Over and over, time and again I have come to find out that it just isn't any different. Sure it's not crack or heroin but the funny this is - it might as well be because maybe not that day - but right away I am back to my drug of choice. Sometimes the same day - sometimes a week or two later but regardless, what happens is I get on the road to relapse again...I start the downhill run again, so to speak.
I still think back to treatment the first time in 1998 when they told me there was a rock at the bottom of every bottle. What?? Oh not for me, I thought. I never drank when I smoked - that might happen to those OTHER people that drank the whole time they smoked. Still, while it took me a couple of years of trying to disprove that, in the end, I found that if I drank I would end up smoking crack. Besides, the pain of trying to not smoke crack when I drank was unbearable. If you have ever made it through a night of getting drunk without scoring - you know that deep stomach pain I am talking about.
Well, next I thought what about the MMP - that old Marijuana Maintenance Program - I mean that's how people quit the hard stuff, right? Well right away after trying that I found that if I smoked - generally I wouldn't smoke the other. Yet I got to where I couldn't MAKE myself smoke pot because I knew I couldn't do the other. Eventually even if I smoked pot I was out the door to go score the other.
Gosh this story just goes on and on - from one substance to the next. It took years to prove that they were RIGHT and I was wrong because as usual, hindsight is 20/20. I only learn the hard way. And then even after learning these things - I tend to forget.
Needless to say I am very proud of you. Regarding the novocaine that someone mentioned - I have had something happen with novocaine myself and I think it is because it is a derivitive of the 'caine' family - novocaine, procaine, cocaine...I just found that I got massive cravings one day after being numbed with novocaine and I have heard of others freaking out when that happened to them - wondering why all the sudden after years of being clean they'd have such horrific cravings. In my opinion it is because it is from that same family.
Theresa