my struggle with addiction
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: United States
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my struggle with addiction
(First of all I would like to apologize for my bad grammar in advance I'm writing this really late at night because I feel the need to at least get my story out there because even if I help just one person or even provoke a thought of recovering then I will have achieved something that will make my story more than just a biography of a kid who thought he had a bad life and decided drugs were the answer.) Anyway, my name is Josh and my age I feel is unimportant because when it comes to addiction and dependency to any substance I feel it can happen to people of all ages. I've been sober for over a month or so and just want to share my story in hopes of assisting or maybe even inspiring someone to make the decision to begin the process of recovery. I've tried just about everything you get told to stay away from as a child except for hallucinogens, main reason being they aren't common in my area not to mention I get paranoid without being under the influence of something that could possibly make me witness things that are often seen in nightmares so it probably wouldn't have gone over well. I was dependent on prescription pain medication, mostly Percocets because when I actually had a prescription to vicodin I experimented and snorted a few and didn't feel it. which has always been a problem with pretty much any sort of drug before i tried before Percocet s sadly my tolerance for every thing has always been high. Whether it's due to inheriting my Dad's tolerance or the fact that the majority of my family members abuse or have abused something or other. alcohol pot heroin you name it. there's been someone in my immediate family that's done it my grandparents on both sides and even my parents when they were younger. Basically I was pretty much set up for disaster. If you made it this far then I'm glad I'm not boring you to death with the background for my story and now we finally get into how it all started. I first came into contact with weed when I was in 7th grade and refused to try it and continued to be "drug free" as my school liked to call it on red ribbon day which to this day I never understood because all of the "addicts" and "stoners" were the ones handing out the ribbons that stated "proud to be drug free" to all the kids that walked into the school. Growing up I was always shy and didn't make friends well. I learned in 7th grade that the nicest people were the ones that liked to get high, the very same people our elementary school portrayed as being "the bad kids" By the time I was in 8th grade the majority of the people I was friends with did or sold drugs but I still didn't try it. The summer before 9th grade my cousin shot me in the chest with one of those high powered pellet guns that you see people actually hunting with on the outdoors channel. It didn't hurt too bad and there wasn't much blood so I assumed it just broke the skin but nope that pellet was fractions of an inch away from hitting my heart and was lodged 2.5 inches deep in my chest sideways not straight in thankfully. Some point between that day I sort of became a different person and before the drugs it was definitely an improvement I talked to everyone had tons of friends I was happy for the majority of the time and I felt great. After I had the pellet surgically removed I was given vicodin for the pain and at that point I had no clue that painkillers could be abused and I wouldn't have done them at that time anyway but long story short with the vicodin they didn't work I never took them and ended up selling them and as I stated previously I tried snorting them but didn't feel it. After all this it came to be the middle of 9th grade and I smoked weed for the first time. It was from a makeshift pipe and I didn't feel a thing. I didn't try it again till the first day of summer vacation this time we used a g-station and Damn did I feel that. My first time ever being noticeably high and after that I wanted to always be high but I didn't like how weed felt on my lungs so I didn't do it often. The story of how I started Percocets is a long stupid story about a girl and we both know you don't wanna hear a high school sob story so I'll save you the trouble and just sum it up as I like the girl for a long Time when the incident happened I felt that she broke my heart etc. I was depressed and started using the Percocets. They were easy to get because my dad had a lifetime prescription for legitimate medical reasons and I found an almost full bottle of 100 or so 5-325 at first I just took like 2-4 by mouth and eventually tried snorting and that was it I was hooked. The next 2 years consisted of me making money and buying percs and snorting them by the end of the summer of 2013 If I had enough I was going through almost a whole bottle of pills per week and I didn't care about anything I didn't care that all the girlfriends I had in those two years had left me because I was irritable and not enjoyable to be around. My average day was wake up clean the blood from my nose off of my face and sometimes my clothes shower eat snort some pills and then I'd enjoy my second favorite thing right behind the pills which was Copenhagen Wintergreen chewing tobacco which I didn't mention this before but I love chewing and started when I was 14 I know I should probably quit that too eventually but hey one thing at a time I suppose. I had Percocet 10-325s now because I didn't want to O.D. on the Tylenol in them I didn't care that I was single and probably would have been happy like that forever. But there was this girl that I had taken a notice to over the previous school year in my tech class. She was from a neighboring town to mine and was different from all the girls I knew. Before I knew it I had a huge crush on her an going into my senior year I felt I should at least try to have one decent relationship and so I started taking her places and hanging out more than we normally would and toward the end of September her best friend told me that the girl whom I was actually trying to be serious with wanted to date me so I made a plan I decided it was finally time to rehabilitate myself and get on the straight and narrow four days before the day I decided I was gonna ask her out I snorted one "last" round of pills and tried to quit cold turkey which worked about as well as every time I've tried to quit chewing. I made it almost 2 weeks and at this point I was dating the girl an realized that I truly did care about her a whole lot more than any other girl I dated and when I gave in and snorted a pill I cried for the first time in as long as I could remember at the time. I sat there wallowing in my own self pity like I usually did when something bad happens and when I sobered up I almost sort if heard what I like to think was a voice in my head pointing me to the path of a second chance that I felt at the time that I didn't deserve I mean who knows how many "second chances" I had given up on before. But something in my head wanted to do it this time which I know realize that the only way you are ever gonna kick an addiction the first step is to whole heartedly want to quit for yourself. I thought up a plan and followed through with it. I took one a day by mouth for 2 days and then half of one each day for two days until I had tapered it down to an 1/8th of a pill a day which is really hard to cut without a pill cutter btw. Now came the fun part where I began skipping days until I was confident that I could do it. The whole process of the tapering took a Month give or take a few days and once I was done I flushed my personal stash of pills and started through the hardest 1 maybe even 2 weeks of my life. Every day I was in pain and every day for the first week the only thing that crossed my mind was "just one more won't hurt" and this temptation was even worse due to the fact that my dad had bottles everywhere because he rarely used them. I think the fact that my morals were stronger than the addiction is probably why I never stole my dad's after the first bottle cause even though he had lost them and pretty much forgot that bottle even existed I still felt absolutely terrible. After the first two weeks I was over the peak and coming down the other side it's been a least a month and a half since I took that last fraction of a pill and the other day was the first day that I acted like the happy upbeat person that I used to be. My friends thought I was on speed because of how excited I was about things. I am amazed to this day that I wasn't addicted to other things because in those two years I did meth heroin and no matter how good it felt I always went right back to the percs. I am do glad I made through that alive and without too much damage to my body and I couldn't have done it without the inspiration of wanting to be a better person for myself and my girlfriend. I've been together with her for 4 months which isn't very long yet but I have high hopes and even if we don't make it I will be forever grateful for giving me a reason to want to go through recovery and get my life on track. A tip for others struggling when you get to the point where you can't take the symptoms of withdrawal anymore don't give up find something you love to do and distract yourself with it in my case it was music I went for whole days without ever taking my headphones off and it definitely helped. Ever since I started caring about my life again I have now been accepted at the best school in the USA for the field I want to go into and I'm back to being social again which I think I missed the most. If you read through this and if it helped you in any way shape or form then I've accomplished what I was aiming for and if you have many comments feel free to say whatever you want and share experiences and struggles that you've been through.
Member
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Midwest, USA
Posts: 1,022
Reprinting original post, but with some editing for readability, I hope you don't mind.
I would like to apologize for my bad grammar in advance.
I'm writing this really late at night because I feel the need to at least get my story out there -- even if I help just one person, or even provoke a thought of recovering, then I will have achieved something that will make my story more than just a biography of a kid who thought he had a bad life and decided drugs were the answer.)
Anyway, my name is Josh, and my age I feel is unimportant, because when it comes to addiction and dependency to any substance I feel it can happen to people of all ages. I've been sober for over a month or so and just want to share my story in hopes of assisting or maybe even inspiring someone to make the decision to begin the process of recovery.
I've tried just about everything you get told to stay away from as a child except for hallucinogens, main reason being they aren't common in my area -- not to mention I get paranoid without being under the influence of something that could possibly make me witness things that are often seen in nightmares, so it probably wouldn't have gone over well. I was dependent on prescription pain medication, mostly Percocets because when I actually had a prescription to vicodin I experimented and snorted a few and didn't feel it. which has always been a problem with pretty much any sort of drug before i tried before Percocet s sadly my tolerance for every thing has always been high. Whether it's due to inheriting my Dad's tolerance or the fact that the majority of my family members abuse or have abused something or other. alcohol pot heroin you name it. there's been someone in my immediate family that's done it my grandparents on both sides and even my parents when they were younger. Basically I was pretty much set up for disaster.
(If you made it this far then I'm glad I'm not boring you to death with the background for my story and now we finally get into how it all started.)
I first came into contact with weed when I was in 7th grade and refused to try it and continued to be "drug free" as my school liked to call it on red ribbon day (which to this day I never understood because all of the "addicts" and "stoners" were the ones handing out the ribbons that stated "proud to be drug free" to all the kids that walked into the school.) Growing up, I was shy, and didn't make friends well. I learned in 7th grade that the nicest people were the ones that liked to get high, the very same people our elementary school portrayed as being "the bad kids"
By the time I was in 8th grade the majority of the people I was friends with did or sold drugs, but I still didn't try it. The summer before 9th grade my cousin shot me in the chest with one of those high powered pellet guns that you see people actually hunting with on the outdoors channel. It didn't hurt too bad and there wasn't much blood, so I assumed it just broke the skin, but nope, that pellet was fractions of an inch away from hitting my heart, and was lodged 2.5 inches deep in my chest (sideways, not straight in, thankfully). Some point between that day I sort of became a different person and before the drugs it was definitely an improvement. I talked to everyone, had tons of friends, I was happy for the majority of the time and I felt great.
After I had the pellet surgically removed, I was given vicodin for the pain and at that point I had no clue that painkillers could be abused (and I wouldn't have done them at that time anyway), but with the vicodin they didn't work -- I never took them, and ended up selling them, and as I stated previously, I tried snorting them but didn't feel it.
After all this, it came to be the middle of 9th grade, and I smoked weed for the first time. It was from a makeshift pipe and I didn't feel a thing. I didn't try it again till the first day of summer vacation, this time we used a g-station and Damn did I feel that. My first time ever being noticeably high and after that I wanted to always be high but I didn't like how weed felt on my lungs so I didn't do it often.
The story of how I started Percocets is a long stupid story about a girl, and we both know you don't wanna hear a high school sob story so I'll save you the trouble and just sum it up: as I like the girl for a long Time when the incident happened I felt that she broke my heart etc. I was depressed and started using the Percocets.
They were easy to get because my dad had a lifetime prescription for legitimate medical reasons, and I found an almost full bottle of 100 or so, 5-325, at first I just took like 2-4 by mouth and eventually tried snorting and that was it I was hooked.
The next 2 years consisted of me making money and buying percs and snorting them. By the end of the summer of 2013 If I had enough I was going through almost a whole bottle of pills per week and I didn't care about anything. I didn't care that all the girlfriends I had in those two years had left me because I was irritable and not enjoyable to be around.
My average day was: wake up, clean the blood from my nose off of my face (and sometimes my clothes), shower, eat, snort some pills, and then I'd enjoy my second favorite thing right behind the pills which was Copenhagen Wintergreen chewing tobacco (which I didn't mention this before but I love chewing and started when I was 14 I know I should probably quit that too eventually but hey one thing at a time I suppose).
I had Percocet 10-325s now because I didn't want to O.D. on the Tylenol in them I didn't care that I was single, and probably would have been happy like that forever, but there was this girl that I had taken a notice to over the previous school year in my tech class. She was from a neighboring town to mine and was different from all the girls I knew. Before I knew it I had a huge crush on her an going into my senior year I felt I should at least try to have one decent relationship, so I started taking her places and hanging out more than we normally would, and toward the end of September her best friend told me that the girl whom I was actually trying to be serious with wanted to date me, so I made a plan: I decided it was finally time to rehabilitate myself and get on the straight and narrow.
Four days before the day I decided I was gonna ask her out I snorted one "last" round of pills and tried to quit cold turkey, which worked about as well as every time I've tried to quit chewing. I made it almost 2 weeks and at this point I was dating the girl an realized that I truly did care about her a whole lot more than any other girl I dated and when I gave in and snorted a pill I cried for the first time in as long as I could remember at the time.
I sat there wallowing in my own self pity like I usually did when something bad happens and when I sobered up I almost sort if heard what I like to think was a voice in my head pointing me to the path of a second chance that I felt at the time that I didn't deserve I mean who knows how many "second chances" I had given up on before. But something in my head wanted to do it this time which I know realize that the only way you are ever gonna kick an addiction the first step is to whole heartedly want to quit for yourself. I thought up a plan and followed through with it.
I took one a day by mouth for 2 days and then half of one each day for two days until I had tapered it down to an 1/8th of a pill a day which is really hard to cut without a pill cutter btw. Now came the fun part, where I began skipping days until I was confident that I could do it. The whole process of the tapering took a Month give or take a few days and once I was done I flushed my personal stash of pills and started through the hardest 1 maybe even 2 weeks of my life.
Every day I was in pain and every day for the first week the only thing that crossed my mind was "just one more won't hurt" and this temptation was even worse due to the fact that my dad had bottles everywhere because he rarely used them. I think the fact that my morals were stronger than the addiction is probably why I never stole my dad's after the first bottle cause even though he had lost them and pretty much forgot that bottle even existed I still felt absolutely terrible.
After the first two weeks I was over the peak and coming down the other side it's been a least a month and a half since I took that last fraction of a pill and the other day was the first day that I acted like the happy upbeat person that I used to be. My friends thought I was on speed because of how excited I was about things. I am amazed to this day that I wasn't addicted to other things because in those two years I did meth heroin and no matter how good it felt I always went right back to the percs.
I am do glad I made through that alive and without too much damage to my body and I couldn't have done it without the inspiration of wanting to be a better person for myself and my girlfriend. I've been together with her for 4 months which isn't very long yet but I have high hopes and even if we don't make it I will be forever grateful for giving me a reason to want to go through recovery and get my life on track.
A tip for others struggling when you get to the point where you can't take the symptoms of withdrawal anymore don't give up find something you love to do and distract yourself with it in my case it was music I went for whole days without ever taking my headphones off and it definitely helped.
Ever since I started caring about my life again I have now been accepted at the best school in the USA for the field I want to go into and I'm back to being social again which I think I missed the most.
If you read through this and if it helped you in any way shape or form then I've accomplished what I was aiming for and if you have many comments feel free to say whatever you want and share experiences and struggles that you've been through.
Originally Posted by captaindipper 
(First of all . . .
I'm writing this really late at night because I feel the need to at least get my story out there -- even if I help just one person, or even provoke a thought of recovering, then I will have achieved something that will make my story more than just a biography of a kid who thought he had a bad life and decided drugs were the answer.)
Anyway, my name is Josh, and my age I feel is unimportant, because when it comes to addiction and dependency to any substance I feel it can happen to people of all ages. I've been sober for over a month or so and just want to share my story in hopes of assisting or maybe even inspiring someone to make the decision to begin the process of recovery.
I've tried just about everything you get told to stay away from as a child except for hallucinogens, main reason being they aren't common in my area -- not to mention I get paranoid without being under the influence of something that could possibly make me witness things that are often seen in nightmares, so it probably wouldn't have gone over well. I was dependent on prescription pain medication, mostly Percocets because when I actually had a prescription to vicodin I experimented and snorted a few and didn't feel it. which has always been a problem with pretty much any sort of drug before i tried before Percocet s sadly my tolerance for every thing has always been high. Whether it's due to inheriting my Dad's tolerance or the fact that the majority of my family members abuse or have abused something or other. alcohol pot heroin you name it. there's been someone in my immediate family that's done it my grandparents on both sides and even my parents when they were younger. Basically I was pretty much set up for disaster.
(If you made it this far then I'm glad I'm not boring you to death with the background for my story and now we finally get into how it all started.)
I first came into contact with weed when I was in 7th grade and refused to try it and continued to be "drug free" as my school liked to call it on red ribbon day (which to this day I never understood because all of the "addicts" and "stoners" were the ones handing out the ribbons that stated "proud to be drug free" to all the kids that walked into the school.) Growing up, I was shy, and didn't make friends well. I learned in 7th grade that the nicest people were the ones that liked to get high, the very same people our elementary school portrayed as being "the bad kids"
By the time I was in 8th grade the majority of the people I was friends with did or sold drugs, but I still didn't try it. The summer before 9th grade my cousin shot me in the chest with one of those high powered pellet guns that you see people actually hunting with on the outdoors channel. It didn't hurt too bad and there wasn't much blood, so I assumed it just broke the skin, but nope, that pellet was fractions of an inch away from hitting my heart, and was lodged 2.5 inches deep in my chest (sideways, not straight in, thankfully). Some point between that day I sort of became a different person and before the drugs it was definitely an improvement. I talked to everyone, had tons of friends, I was happy for the majority of the time and I felt great.
After I had the pellet surgically removed, I was given vicodin for the pain and at that point I had no clue that painkillers could be abused (and I wouldn't have done them at that time anyway), but with the vicodin they didn't work -- I never took them, and ended up selling them, and as I stated previously, I tried snorting them but didn't feel it.
After all this, it came to be the middle of 9th grade, and I smoked weed for the first time. It was from a makeshift pipe and I didn't feel a thing. I didn't try it again till the first day of summer vacation, this time we used a g-station and Damn did I feel that. My first time ever being noticeably high and after that I wanted to always be high but I didn't like how weed felt on my lungs so I didn't do it often.
The story of how I started Percocets is a long stupid story about a girl, and we both know you don't wanna hear a high school sob story so I'll save you the trouble and just sum it up: as I like the girl for a long Time when the incident happened I felt that she broke my heart etc. I was depressed and started using the Percocets.
They were easy to get because my dad had a lifetime prescription for legitimate medical reasons, and I found an almost full bottle of 100 or so, 5-325, at first I just took like 2-4 by mouth and eventually tried snorting and that was it I was hooked.
The next 2 years consisted of me making money and buying percs and snorting them. By the end of the summer of 2013 If I had enough I was going through almost a whole bottle of pills per week and I didn't care about anything. I didn't care that all the girlfriends I had in those two years had left me because I was irritable and not enjoyable to be around.
My average day was: wake up, clean the blood from my nose off of my face (and sometimes my clothes), shower, eat, snort some pills, and then I'd enjoy my second favorite thing right behind the pills which was Copenhagen Wintergreen chewing tobacco (which I didn't mention this before but I love chewing and started when I was 14 I know I should probably quit that too eventually but hey one thing at a time I suppose).
I had Percocet 10-325s now because I didn't want to O.D. on the Tylenol in them I didn't care that I was single, and probably would have been happy like that forever, but there was this girl that I had taken a notice to over the previous school year in my tech class. She was from a neighboring town to mine and was different from all the girls I knew. Before I knew it I had a huge crush on her an going into my senior year I felt I should at least try to have one decent relationship, so I started taking her places and hanging out more than we normally would, and toward the end of September her best friend told me that the girl whom I was actually trying to be serious with wanted to date me, so I made a plan: I decided it was finally time to rehabilitate myself and get on the straight and narrow.
Four days before the day I decided I was gonna ask her out I snorted one "last" round of pills and tried to quit cold turkey, which worked about as well as every time I've tried to quit chewing. I made it almost 2 weeks and at this point I was dating the girl an realized that I truly did care about her a whole lot more than any other girl I dated and when I gave in and snorted a pill I cried for the first time in as long as I could remember at the time.
I sat there wallowing in my own self pity like I usually did when something bad happens and when I sobered up I almost sort if heard what I like to think was a voice in my head pointing me to the path of a second chance that I felt at the time that I didn't deserve I mean who knows how many "second chances" I had given up on before. But something in my head wanted to do it this time which I know realize that the only way you are ever gonna kick an addiction the first step is to whole heartedly want to quit for yourself. I thought up a plan and followed through with it.
I took one a day by mouth for 2 days and then half of one each day for two days until I had tapered it down to an 1/8th of a pill a day which is really hard to cut without a pill cutter btw. Now came the fun part, where I began skipping days until I was confident that I could do it. The whole process of the tapering took a Month give or take a few days and once I was done I flushed my personal stash of pills and started through the hardest 1 maybe even 2 weeks of my life.
Every day I was in pain and every day for the first week the only thing that crossed my mind was "just one more won't hurt" and this temptation was even worse due to the fact that my dad had bottles everywhere because he rarely used them. I think the fact that my morals were stronger than the addiction is probably why I never stole my dad's after the first bottle cause even though he had lost them and pretty much forgot that bottle even existed I still felt absolutely terrible.
After the first two weeks I was over the peak and coming down the other side it's been a least a month and a half since I took that last fraction of a pill and the other day was the first day that I acted like the happy upbeat person that I used to be. My friends thought I was on speed because of how excited I was about things. I am amazed to this day that I wasn't addicted to other things because in those two years I did meth heroin and no matter how good it felt I always went right back to the percs.
I am do glad I made through that alive and without too much damage to my body and I couldn't have done it without the inspiration of wanting to be a better person for myself and my girlfriend. I've been together with her for 4 months which isn't very long yet but I have high hopes and even if we don't make it I will be forever grateful for giving me a reason to want to go through recovery and get my life on track.
A tip for others struggling when you get to the point where you can't take the symptoms of withdrawal anymore don't give up find something you love to do and distract yourself with it in my case it was music I went for whole days without ever taking my headphones off and it definitely helped.
Ever since I started caring about my life again I have now been accepted at the best school in the USA for the field I want to go into and I'm back to being social again which I think I missed the most.
If you read through this and if it helped you in any way shape or form then I've accomplished what I was aiming for and if you have many comments feel free to say whatever you want and share experiences and struggles that you've been through.
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 2
Thanks everyone for your responses it means a lot! Thank you Notmyrealname for making it more organized. And FreeOwl even though I never really got into drinking I used to listen to some of my grandfather's AA tapes that were very inspirational and I really enjoyed hearing the speakers stories. If I figure out the guys name I'll have to post it so everyone can hear his story because it was truly amazing.
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