Heroin - f*ck me!

Man just dig deep for a change. Beating an addiction is not an easy job. whatever the substance is.
You still young and you have a future in front of you.
I v been less then a year in recovery and i still feel like crap.
but you know what when my family and friends look at me now they see me as an inspiration and man that feeling is so good that all you want to do is keep pushing.
Be prepared make a plan just be active and everything will be fine.
Good luck for your journey and see you soon on the other side.

Nb:sorry for my English i am self-taught

You need to get in treatment with a substitute opioid so you don't have to use to avoid withdrawal. This will enable you to make choices based on your goal. You can either engage in a structured plan or become a recreational junkie.. At the moment you are ambivalent because you have no focus so give in to cravings easily because it allows you to avoid reality and facing your addiction. Get a script then make choices.
Best wishes

BigBrotherGrimm wrote: Want me to say you were right? Want me to feel stupid?

No one has any idea why you are acting so weird you said...

Maybe if you were okay with feeling stupid and acknowledging other people are right, you would not be in your current situation.

Maybe if you went to your parents and instead of hiding from them, because you don’t wish to feel stupid, you could get help. Your parents can offer you a hell of a lot more help than anyone in here.

So yes, swallow your pride. It isn’t doing you any favors. Take a deep breath, walk down from the attic to your parents and let them help you out of the situation you have created.

Hey!

Thanks for all your concerns and replies!!
Even though me feeling so bad did not make me feel very decisive in taking this step, I went to NA last Tuesday morning, and have been clean since Sunday, I have already attended over 6 meetings and have shared the situation with my parents and other important loved-ones.
I believe NA will make things waaaaaaay easier for me to prevent me from falling back into using.
Over the years my addiction has worsened slowly until about a year ago and that's when stuff started to fall apart.
I can see the bottom and know that I cannot accept myself to become depressed enough to feel suicidal anymore... because I have worked so hard for years in the past to overcome that problem.
But then I became an addict and it took a turn for the worse.
I am sure, that this is the only option for me! Nothing worked (durable) to keep me from using.
Not therapy, not counseling for addiction..
But now, in NA, there are endless of lovely supporters who work together to keep from relapsing!
Once again! I thank you all for your minding my agony!
I have never felt this good- this soon- after 'quitting' my drug-use! It always takes me a week to bounce back from the heroin sickness.
Enough drinks and enough snorts for me! No thanks! Not today I won't!!
I feel like myself for the first time in a loooong time today!
Also spend time with my best friend today and haven't had so much to laugh about with him also!
Wow!!! Did NOT expect this to be so intense!

BigBrotherGrimm wrote:...and have shared the situation with my parents and other important loved-ones.

Awesome.

Really good to hear, BBG!

Okay! So tomorrow I'm off heroin (clean and serene- no weed or beer even).
After about 13 visits to Narcotics Anonymous, meeting other recovering addicts (short and long-term), starting the program in my life (reading the basic text, daily prayers/meditation) and keeping close contact with my sponsor (a guy who has been sober for over 4 years now after about 20 years of active addiction- including heroin, which is very rare these days where I'm from), I have already achieved a lot of understanding about myself.

I have explained to my ex what it was that broke us up (I steadily denied anything being wrong for about a year) and finally we can talk to each other in agreement again. That's such a relief. And it's also very sad. Because she had been asking herself for the last 10 months that we were together what the hell was happening... and I lived from high to high and moodswing to swing.

It's special this time... because I am not alone in this, and I am also not to blame for my addiction. I am however, responsible for my recovery. And if my literary hero Jim Carroll could do it at 28, I can!
During my active addiction, each time when I stopped using, which was about twice a month the last year, I was steady and happy for one or two weeks, after which I became tired and bored again, and relapsed, and then again was angry and unhappy because it felt like failure, lack of discipline, unwillingness, or even a reason to commit suicide.

Now it is time to finally launch my life and face my inner traps in ways that I have been avoiding since age 12 or 13, but actively and full time since 14. I am an addict. And I can finally understand and acknowledge what the hell has been wrong with me for all of my life. Nothing helped. No doctor, no psychotherapy, no religion or yoga could prevent me from succumbing to the urge to use- or being in a using mindset- Mr. Hydemania is what I might call it.
But now I finally know what has been my problem, and I understand now that ALL of my problems- even long before I started using- have to do with my addiction.

Thank you all for being welcoming again. I will keep this thread going I guess.
Let you all know how my recovery is going from time to time.
And as they teach me in NA, Just for Today - I won't have to pick up the first drug.
And in case that I do.. I will sober up and head back for the program.
Everything is better than being an active addict.
The way it was going, I wouldn't have much time to live left, I believe.
Below a history of my addictiion.

My best wishes and prayer with you! I think we humans are capable of doing anything we set our mind to.I strongly believe our minds and brains are not the same. The mind has full control of brain and is stronger than rock. It just need a little working to awake it up. You are stronger and a harder then stone and you will kick addiction behind—I truly believe in you brother!

My history with addiction and depression.
Maybe I was already an addict (or someone with a addictive personality) about 6 years before I ever took my first drug.
I remember being very intrigued at age 6 or 7 by the evening news and all the stories about drug smuggling and such.. my parents were drinkers, both still pretty big at that time, but of course they disproved of drug use. So I was like 'what the hell are these forbidden fruits all about then?'.

It were years were I formed my very low self-worth, taking it that my opinions or feelings came second because I always had to incorporate my brothers expectation first. There were also many losses within the family during those years and my teenage sister was already crazy at that time, attacking my mom whenever she could. I remember at age 8 I occasionally ran away from home and sorta hated and was shameful of my family in ways angstful teens often are.

I had picked up from somewhere which drug required which paraphernalia and I secretly knew that I would someday try them all!

I felt like a victim of being from a stupid family, bullied by brother, told what to do by mom and bullied in school. At age 11 I was already depressed (and had been mourning many family-members and the effect of their deaths on my living family members) and did not want to go to school any longer. I first went to see a therapist and not long after that a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ADHD (of course! Why would you walk into their office otherwise??) and was prescribed Ritalin.

This all did not stop me from developing my first suicidal thoughts and culminated in one of the few 'attempts' I ever undertook to end my depression. This was when I was 12 years and two months old and the reason was because I had scored extraordinary low at my exams in 6th grade.

In about 6 hours I will be SOBER FOR TWO WEEKS!!!
Completely, except for tea, coffee, chocolate.
So that's more sober than I have been for over, let's say, 15 years.
Do I have cravings? Yep, lots.
But as long as I am loyal to NA and keep on going to the meetings, I will be safe.
The junkieman in me sneakypeeks and whispers that I can do it once more, out with a bang, whatever.
Not now I don't. I have to get to my 30 days.
Could I relapse?
Yeah sure, but not for longer than a day because it will make me feel shitty as hell and I walk sober up and right back into the meetings.
I will never have to use the way I did anymore. I will have to face my fears, desires and aching in a normal way.

If I would relapse it would be because I am still in the process of learning and it's still very soft and small, but a relapse would also mean to experience losing 'my self' for a couple of hours/days and returning to the trusted feeling of 'not being myself'.

This sense of contact with the self has up to now been my biggest achievement and pride.
It never happened before when I sobered up because I always used something, a beer or a supplement, to cope with the initial withdrawal.
I am really very happy with finding my self back. Even though my moodswings do require some attention and care, but I just have to trust that easy does it and I will end up smiling back at my reflection.

But boy oh boy... did I age rapidly in the past 18 months!!

30 days tomorrow and still clean!
Do need to stay in touch with my recovery all the time!
But it's a learning curve I'm sure.
At times I have desire rather than the harsh cravings that I had during the past weeks.
As well as suicidal thoughts.
If have learned to keep in mind that being Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired may push me to the edge.
Through that knowledge, my desire to use or die often dissolves within minutes.

Except for today. But it's probably just a result of having to much things pulling my attention since Thursday (took on a very hard but creative film assignment and had three days 17 hours in a row- without time to attend any meetings or really get into the literature).

One very fascinating thing about 12 step recovery (I haven't even got started with the steps yet) is that I am aware of my behavior in a different way- more as a spectator / observer). This results in me being dragged down through the motions of feelings and notions but all the while I can look at it and observe what's actually going on.

This, combined with the aspect of honesty, openness and willingness makes it hard to keep certain feelings sticking in my craw and easier to speak out to somebody.

I also know now that feeling this dread and longing for death IS the addiction in me. Dread is the void in my spirit that makes it hard and annoying to get through the day, often taking shape of total depression, and death is the quick fix to relieve the pain. It's weird. I have spend years complaining, opening up, shutting down to therapists, friends, people here on the forum that take it to their hearts, because I just didn't see, or didn't acknowledge, that all those disorders are just symptoms of one disease- the one that was spawned by my personality.

One thing that will end up lucky through my recovery is that before I turned 11 and really started to develop an organ trained in self-isolation-and-pity, I already had a lot of experience coping with pain, such as mourning.
It wasn't until I turned 15 (when I was already using more than being sober) that I started to develop these (typical pubescent) social phobias (talking with girls, being honest about feelings or sexual desires) and not until my 17th that I just started to spiral down into complete isolation because I couldn't cope with feeling like I was the only one being left out. By that time I had already done coke and was into psychedelics hardcore even though it was for the first time that I carried my inner depression around like it was my identity.

Well... I am actually not a bad guy at all. It's just that I didn't turn out to be great with teaching myself!

Hey just to check in. I have been clean for 206 days now!
Although its quite tough at the moment, for it's the first autumn/winter that I live through entirely sober in 15 or 16 years from when I was about 12 or 13 up to now.... I didn't even know I had seasonal downs... It's quite heavy at times actually.. either cannot stop thinking (never had sleeping problems before ever in my life)... hard to enjoy things (even though I have found a home for the coming years - one of my own; renewing relationships and friendships; figuring out fundamentally new ways of relating to the world and my condition within it)...

it's just hard sometimes- even harder when I have to face the same demons that brought me to sign up to this forum years ago... depression and suicidal thoughts.. But i am seeking help, reaching out, helping others and have overall a much better outlook on life. I am not alone.

Saddens me, naturally, the amount of damage it took to get me on the track in a new way of living and looking out... I signed up someday in 2011 or 12... and the depressed life of an addict just kept rolling and rolling on... and now I am here, emotionally cripple, and sometimes superhumanly esteemed all of a sudden... and then helpless again. Rollercoaster high and low tides. Jeeeeez-lou-eaze!! Sobriety is not boring at all that's for sure!

yeah... like an addiction counselor told me last week... "He'll almost take me for a recovering addict..."

I'm going to take this as overall an upbeat post. Well done for staying clean, and I'm glad you say sobriety is anything but boring.

BigBrotherGrimm wrote:it's just hard sometimes- even harder when I have to face the same demons that brought me to sign up to this forum years ago... depression and suicidal thoughts.. But i am seeking help, reaching out, helping others and have overall a much better outlook on life. I am not alone.

All good stuff. A demon exposed is a demon vanquished, or something like that. Don't be sad about what led you to these insights, because that's what it took. There's power in saying I am where I am. Now, what can I do to improve things?

It's good to see you back.