Gateway Drugs
 

Some will agree and some will disagree with the following statement - "A drug is a drug is a drug." :hypnotize

I agree with that statement today becuase I found out the hard way - through my own lived experience - how true it is. First of all, alcohol is a drug. I am not clean if I am not sober and I am not sober if I am not clean.

The first time I got clean, I kept drinking. For 7 months, I did not pick up my DOC (which is opiates), but I kept pouring the drinks down my throat. More and more and more... which is really what my disease wants - MORE (of practically anything). I wasn't getting high, and I felt awful, but I kept chasing that chemical oblivian. Oh... and my point? My point is that I went back to my DOC. Hence, the term "Gateway drugs." Once a mood/mind altering chemical gets into my body, I am likely to go back to my DOC.

I shake my head at the people who quit drinking, but their pot intake increases accordingly. Once I would have agreed with that, mind you... but the Truth of it for me is that any mood or mind altering chemicals (*warning* I am not talking about medically necessary, taken as perscribed Rxs here!) are put into my body, my defenses are down, my disease (which has been doing push-ups in the parking lot this whole time) gets awakened and my battle becomes almost impossible to fight.

Let me tell you a story about a young man who lost his life to this disease earlier this year. He was in and out of NA, AA, treatement, detox - you name it - for years for a very bad crack addiction. He was fighting a good fight - had gotten a sponsor and had gotten 4 months of clean and sober 24's. Then one Friday night, his disease taked him into having a 22 oz. can of Light Beer. Only hours later he was at the crack house, trading in his desire chips for one last high. It was his last high. He overdosed and was in the hospital, brain-dead, until they turned off life support 48 hours later.

His mother (who has now lost both of her sons to this disease and is a 17+ year recovering addict / acoholic herself) tells me that it was the beer that killed him.

See? It wasn't the crack. Maybe.... just maybe, he could have resisted the deamon whispering in his ear one more time if he hadn't put the first drug (alcohol) into his body. I don't know, nor is it my place to know.

What I do know for sure, for me, is I know that if I mess with pot or alcohol or sleeping pills or too many Ebay purchases ( :09: ), I am gonna end up right back where I started from... or worse. I know now that it is not the caboose of the train that will kill me - it's that first "whatever" I pick up.

So, let's get honest here. What do you think? How has this played out in your life?

:grouphug:

I agree with you. Drugs have never been my addiction, but I can relate because wine was my gateway to stronger things. I'd swear off vodka and go cold turkey, then ease back into wine coolers, then increase the number, then go with wine so I could reduce the mixer percentage. Then the really clever demon would say "Whoa, babe, that's a ton of calories! You COULD get the same effect from just one glass with a bit of vodka in it." He's such a reasonable b**tard, isn't he? So down the slippery slope I'd go once again!
Maybe my version of your opening phrase would be "an addict is an addict is an addict"!

Yet again Phinneas, direct connect. Another example of head ruling over heart. At the core this is a spiritual disease, at least as much (more?) than it is mental, and physical. We can know everything there is to know about addiction and recovery and the way every drug affects the mind and body, but if it isn't integrated with spirit, it's mere rhetoric. The information inside the head must connect with the spirit within.

So, to be honest. For 19 consecutive years I smoked pot daily, there were years of using throughout the day morning, noon, evening all. That drug held the steady base, providing daily escape...in-between the sought after psychedelic or hallucinogenic trips, of organic or chemical origin, it didn't matter. THAT has been the focus, planning/ finding/ acquiring/ using any of those substances. The pot just perpetuated the dissolution, kept me stuck in that mindset, continuously.

Keeping myself sedated I can't see what's going on over there in the enshrouded recesses of addict-thinking mind, but I know something is, it's paying close attention, just waiting for opportunity to arise, scheming, waiting for a crack to appear through which it can make a move and get what it wants. And because it's doing this without my awareness, it catches me off guard, coming up with newer-stronger-better techniques to work around my knowledge, override everything, and off I go again. I've seen it in action (in retrospect) hundreds of times. Seal up that crack with more information, continue smoking pot, and sooner or later, another crack appears, this disease seeps through, and I don't see it until after it's consumed me again. Around and around and around we go.

Knowing this, the necessary elimination of all mind-altering chemicals should be perfectly clear and made. Now three months away from tripping, and five months of serious investment of thought here and in NA literature and other spiritual texts and some meetings (people in person remains very challenging), has provided time for clarity to return, I see and know and feel what changes need to be made to move all this knowledge about recovery from my head to my heart, so to integrate with Spirit. And yet, I've not closed the back door. Smoke still sometimes filters in, I've not yet completely gotten away from that. It's all around me, it's habit, so deeply ingrained. Just by leaving the option to smoke open, leaves the port of entry for the psychedelic drugs to enter in. That it enters my mind daily is testimony that I'm keeping that option alive. Hacking it back with every tool I can grab hold of. The pot only serves as fertilizer to encourage it to grow back again. OK, thanks for the prompt to write here. I will positively get past this.

Phinny;
I watched this with my son, over and over and over again.
He'd try to get off heroin and use pot to do so. It didn't help that his NA "sponsor" told him to do it that way. That man HAD kept clean from heroin using methadone and pot regularly. He was also stoned regularly.
Repeatedly, I watched in horror as Trevor slipped down that slope. I would tell him my observations over and over. He didn't hear me. He was going to do it *his* way. And afterall, what did *I* know when his sponsor showed him by example that he stayed off heroin by using methadone and pot.
(I am not saying anything one way or the other about methadone. If someone uses that to stay off heroin, that's a valid decision, in my opinion. I already know others disagree.)
But, the pot brought Trevor right back to heroin each and every time.
And he didn't even like pot!
So, I hear what you're saying. A drug is a drug is a drug. My beloved, addict son cannot use any drugs at all. He always falls right back to his DOC, heroin. And it will kill him one of these days if he doesn't learn.

Thanks for your share... :hug:

Shalom!

Oh how true a drug is a drug is a drug - it is way too easy to slip into using our DOC when the addict inside of us says "FEED ME"!!!! Staying away from all mood altering chemicals is a given if one wants to be truly free of their DOC.

Seems like common sense, especially knowing that the addict that lives inside of us is always lurking and hoping for the opportunity to "REAR IT'S UGLY HEAD"!!

I agree that if we use anything we are just fueling up and giving the addict inside of us the energy it needs to come alive.

IMO Addiction isn't drugs, we should all know that from the literature that we have. Drugs are just a symptom of our dis-ease. Most of the time we say that drugs were are problems and yes the didn't help matter at all. But it wasn't the drugs that cause everything to happen in my life (although they helped) it was me ME ME ME>

For the longest time I blamed everyone and everything for my problems and yet the problem that I had besides myself is that I didn't know how to live PERIOD> That is what the program teaches us, to learn how to live. This Thread is called the Gateway Drugs, well I guess that you are applying it to only drugs however, character defect are usually the things that takes us into the gateway of drugs. It is those Character defects that we don't want to get rid of that eventually takes us to active addiction to drugs.

One of my gateway drugs which wouldn't be considered a drug is relationships with the opposite sex. It seems that most of my relapses have happened when I get into a relationship so that would tend to tell me that this certain Character defect/shortcoming is one of my gateway drugs even though it isn't considered a drug. A drug is a drug is a drug but addiction is addiction.

Love Vic :bananadan

I never could grasp the disease model of addiction. I stay away from dope. I do drink beer every now and then but not much. I can drink 1 or 2 on a weekend then not touch beer for a week or a month. I have no cravings for booze and no desire to get drunk. I know that many can't take a drink. I have to keep my dog brain away from opiates & benzos but if I drink a beer I don't spiral outta control and end up in a gutter somewhere. There's a lot to AA that I agree with but the disease concept ain't one of them. But that's just me and I'm pretty much a ***** (insert word for *mentally challenged*).

Thanks, family. Awesome discussion we've got going here. I'll reply in more detail when I have more time.

:grouphug:

Just slightly off topic, though still in the theme, if I may respond to Windysan's post, as it also appears in his current thread about drug courts.
About the definition of disease. I balked at this concept too, though by definition it fits. According to Webster's--

Disease: a disordered or abnormal condition of an organ or other part of an organism resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, nutritional deficiency, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness.

It also fits when considering it from a mental/ psychological/ spiritual perspective of dis-ease,
Ease:1)freedom from pain, physical annoyance. Relaxation or comfort.
2) freedom from concern, anxiety, solicitude.

So to be dis-eased would be to be bound by those trappings. Which addiction certainly directly contributes to, if not creates in itself.

If I may continue slightly off topic (yet still in a theme)
Reminds me of another phrase: To renounce something is to be forever bound by it. Rather, see through it, and it will naturally fail to have power over you.

Which is very much in line with Vic's observation:
Thanks Phinneas for this thread...keeps me THINKING...

Phinny....I love that line....caboose of the train


secondly.....EBAY???? YIKES!!!! is that an addiction?? LOLOL. and I thought I was here because my daughter was the addict...(forget my cigarettes)

If the definition is true then I'm not an alcoholic. I haven't tried to do dope again and I don't plan on trying....I don't wanna go through that again. What I hear from real alcoholics is that that can't take ONE drink or they are doomed. I admit that I'm probably too stupid to even grasp the disease concept. I just got tired of people blaming "the disease" for irresponsible behavior.

Blaming "the disease" for one's behavior would be the same as saying "I'm an addict, therefore I must use." It's a way of relinquishing self-control. Disease, and addiction, can be treated. Not necessarily cured, though if successful can be put into remisssion.

I think it's the concept of retreating into ANY drug, that mentality behind using, that is entering a danger zone for addicts. All mind-alterning drugs do impare the senses and perceptions, it does leave one at least slightly more vulnerable to making ill-thought-through choices, and when in a weakened state where our defences are down, the addict-thinking would likely rise to the surface faster and without warning, than it would if we had all facilities in full operation. It's just risky business, playing with fire.

Strange that you keep repeating how you're unable to grasp the point, Windysan. Fair to suspect a tone of cynicism? Surely you know you're wiser than you're suggesting.

EEEEK! Did my husband put you up to that? http://oldtoolsforsale.com/smiley9/puter9.gif Hee-hee! Seriously, though, I've gotta watch my disease of addiction, because I can easily latch onto anything that gives me a rush or instant gratification, i.e. food, eBay, surfing the Internet, chocolate, etc. I'm even addicted to NA speaker CDs. They're all over my house and car! I can't seem to do anything in moderation. Luckily, I've got my NA family and sponsor to guide me and give me the tools to keep this behavior in check.

Great topic, Phinneas!

Kelly

Nah, I'm pretty much an idiot.

Pot is where my addiction started. I also see my share of addicts in meetings working the "Marijuana maintnance program". I have never seen it work for long though.

Luckily I was introduced to the program of NA...
which states that "1 is too many and 1000 is never enough"...and that rang true for me...I never did anything that I didn't want more of...
the program also tells us that "alcohol is a drug"!
I don't really remember if I first smoked pot or drank alcohol...
I don't "trust" myself to do either in moderation today...
I have an addictive personality, I can be addicted to anything that makes me "feel" good.........
I constantly have to "check my motives", yes! especially regarding shopping...or sex/love/relationships...

Wow. What a great discussion, folks!

I could quote from everyone's posts, but what Cindi just said seems to sum things up quite nicely. Thanks for that.

:c005:

Lots of good comments in this post. I do believe that some addicts can manage to have a drink of alcohol every once in a while without becoming full-blown alcoholics or sliding back into their drug of choice. I have a friend who had 10 years clean and then started doing this. Apparently, it is working for him. That works for about 1% of the addicts I have known. Could it work for me too? Maybe, but I'm not willing to take that chance. There is about a 99% chance that it would not work for me and that I would slide into alcoholism or back into my drug of choice. I'm not willing to take the chance today. Life is wonderful today without alcohol and other min/mood altering drugs. Why would I risk all that? It's just not worth finding out if I might be that 1% who can make it.

It's tough being a minority.

Hey Windysan,
If you don't believe in this NA or AA disease concept or staying abstinent from all mind/mood altering drugs, why do you keep posting on the NA discussion board? There are other boards for people who are interested in other ways...