The first thing I remember from treatment was a sign that said, "We are not bad people trying to be good. We are sick people trying to get well."
That the people that use it ain't bad people, it's just the drug itself is bad. It'll grab you and never let go.
That there is hope. The AMA, pharma, countless rehabs halfway houses, outpatient programs and insurance companies are stealing the right to recovery from their clients. Recovery does not have to be impossible, relapse is not necessary, one does not need to acquire a trigger list and avoid these things at all costs, drugs cannot treat drug addiction. No one has to shelter themselves from everyday life, to stay off drugs. Hope and the power of purpose is all anyone needs.
I hope America decides to look at results of alternative treatment. Rather then dumping more money and creating more beds for a solution with recovery rates in the single digits. There are great programs that are underfunded and cannot receive insurance that have 50-90 percent recovery rates. This is recovery not maintenance. It is freedom from addiction, freedom that does not require a person to avoid people places and things, one that does not need you to attend a meeting every day like your life is dependent upon it. Freedom that is offered "freely."
How it can take over anyone's life. My childhood was beautiful. My life was beautiful. I was motivated, active, successful, and loved my family. My addiction stole everything from me. Recovery is possible though. In two years clean and sober I have gained so much back.
My issues with painkillers started about 5 years ago. A condition known as 'testicular varicosele' found its way into my life. I was in college at the time, and without insurance. As a recovering alcoholic, I know that I am susceptible to addiction, and did my best to stay away from opiates. However, two unsuccessful surgeries later, and then a third to remove a malignant tumor from my kidney (and most of my kidney with it) and I finally broke. I couldn't take it anymore. I had been living my life like someone was hammering on my testicles for 2 years at this point. I found a doctor that took mercy on me, and I have been on a slowly rising dose of narcotics ever since.
I'm stuck. I have to take the pills or I get sick. Painkillers have helped give me some quality of life back, while simultaneously sacrificing other parts of my life. It is a terrible burden. My wife doesn't realize the extent of the grip these things have on me. I don't know how to even begin working away from opiates at this point. I have been very diligent in trying to keep my tolerance down, but my dose slowly rises over the years, and now I take between 200 and 300 milligrams of opiates every day. I am back at work after the kidney surgery, but how long can I do this? How long can I just take this dangerous medicine til it catches up with me? But what else to do? How many times do I let them cut me?
I am not homeless. I am college educated and employed. I have a family. I'm not out robbing people to get my fix. So I'm not your stereotypical junkie living in a van under the bridge. But could that be my future? Who knows? I've never tried heroin, but had I not found a sympathetic doctor, who knows? I suspect my story is not unique.
It doesn't always begin with a conscious choice to become a junkie, and it certain isn't just a poor, under-privileged minority problem. I was raised in a white, middle- to upper- class suburb and am well-educated with a masters degree and my opiate addiction began with prescriptions from my doctor who one day decided to stop writing the prescriptions without any instruction or attempts to wean me off even though I had been taking opiates for years. Physically dependent, I had no choice but to either be sick or self-medicate.
Already in pain from the fibromyalgia and arthritis that had been the reason I was taking the pills to begin with, I was not going to suffer through a withdrawal so bad that I thought I was dying as well. So I bought pills on the streets. When it got too expensive to keep buying pills and with supplies not always being consistent, I turned to heroin. I am a perfect example of how addiction does not discriminate.
For opioids, the entry is to manage real pain. For me, a near fatal bicycle wreck broke my back and every bone in my skull. Thus, real pain results from real trauma. Enter painkillers. Enter dependence to not only chase away the pain, but to invite the velvet, where for a moment, there is no more fear, no more anger at the injury, only the velvet lie of a fleeting potion that over time, steals more than it heals.
And then you are back to the beginning, what to do about the pain?
I wish people understood how much I wanted to stop, how much I hated what my life had become. I think people assume that there is a lot more choice involved than there is. But I don't think anyone really chooses to become a heroin addict. I chose to start getting high initially but something changed in me where pot and alcohol weren't enough and I compulsively sought better ways to get high. By the time heroin came into the picture it was too late, I was already gone. Heroin does not sound like a good idea to a rational human being and some people can use other recreational or prescribed drugs and remain rational. Those of us who become junkies are people who are rendered incapable of making good decisions when mind-altering substances are introduced to our bloodstream. You might call it a slippery slope, the regression from casual partying to heroin but it's really a very slow process of accepting different levels of normality.
The first time I knew of one of my friends shooting up I was disgusted, but it gradually became less foreign and one day just didn't seem like a bad idea anymore. After that point it is a quick downhill to rock bottom. The first time I shot up I had just turned 18 and that afternoon I was leaving the country to visit my parents for a month. I dreamt of heroin every night I was gone, And while I knew it was a bad idea, I knew as soon as I got back to the States I was going to do it again, just one more time. I spent the next three years waking up every day with the intention of getting clean but a few hours into the day I'd think, just one more time, then tomorrow I will do things differently.
It's hard to explain to anyone who's never been through it and I can see how it would be hard to understand because it doesn't make sense, but there was no choice. Even now, I have to keep reminding myself because it doesn't make sense to me anymore either. I have been clean for six years and am married. I, no joke, drive a minivan, have three small children and a nice house with a pool. Most people don't know and would never assume that I spent any time living in a tent behind a supermarket using dirty needles and rainwater to inject heroin into my neck. So that's the other thing I wish people knew, and really believed, is that we change. We Hate ourselves as much as society hates us but we don't have to stay that way forever, we can change into amazing beings.
That its impossible to get better without support. I wouldn't be here if my family had not stuck by me.
How hard it is to get off and stay clean because your own body and mind are at war with themselves.
I wish people understood that it's not as simple as "just stop!" Addiction to pain medication happened quickly for me and I was so ashamed to admit it. I wish drug addiction was not such a stigma. Being addicted to alcohol is the same thing, yet alcoholism seems much more "socially acceptable" if that makes sense?
It's not something you want to happen to you. I had a great life, goals, asspirations, but once I tried heroin I became a slave to getting high.
That it's a public/mental health disease, it's not about being a bad person or morally weak. I also want people to know that with proper long-term treatment it's possible to recover and live a beautiful life. I feel incredibly fortunate to have my recovery of almost 6 years and to have my life back.
It effects everyone, everywhere
The getting "high" part goes away pretty quickly, giving way to just getting relief. BOTH feelings are strong, but once you are in the spider web, relief is the best one can hope for...
It's not a choice. After you take that first one and you get addicted it takes everything from you. You're just a shell of a person.
That you can overcome the addiction.
You can become addicted to prescription opioids and not even realize you have a problem, till it's too late. In the haze of the high and loved ones saying they're worried about you, you lie to yourself and them and say you need the pills, that the doctor wouldn't give you something that would hurt you, that you need them or the pain will be unbearable. So you pull away from everyone so they don't see you high. Not realizing you are not just taking the medicine for pain -- you now need it daily to just to get out of bed. Without it, you're physically sick. Your whole body hurts, and you know the answer to fix it all is the opioids.
I stopped using, I got help and got to see there is still life left to live. My younger brother passed in December 2014 from a combined drug intoxication and heroin was one of the drugs that helped take his life along with prescription drugs. He lost his battle but I am fighting it in his name to try and help bring this front and center, and let people know there is help out there, there is life after all this. They have to want to get clean, more than they want to get high.
I wish that people understood that heroin/opioid addiction has no face. It spares no soul, and once it has you in its tight grips, you'll spend your lifetime fighting out of its hell hole. Opiate withdrawal relieves you of all morale and ethical codes you thought you once lived by, and transforms you into a hollow shell of the human spirit you were born with. This drug was beyond a shadow of a doubt the scariest most difficult drug I've ever had to quit.
I wish people could understand that being an addict doesn't make you a bad person or ignorant. It means you have made a series of poor judgments that have brought you to this illness.
For me it was about not being alive. [Being] too scared to kill myself, and heroin took all of those feelings away. It's a magical, beautiful, musical high. The dark side of heroin addiction is the act of getting the drugs: getting the money, going to the worst parts of Detroit, having the drugs cut with God knows what, etc. If they took all of those negative aspects out of it, I think people would be a lot safer.
I have no regrets. The warm loveliness of the high far outweighed the negative. I have OD'd myself, and I have lost many of my loved ones to heroin and I can't unsee what I saw. It's been 18 years since I've done heroin. I'm oddly not an addict, I've come to terms with the darkness this world we live in holds. I have a theory that a lot of addicts have tender souls, too tender for the darkness, so they seek out ways to numb it.
I'm a good person. I'm a contributing member of society. I'm educated. I have a good job, make good money, have wonderful relationships with my loved ones. I'm so completely average. The only thing that sets me apart from that other young business professional that seems to have it all is that I'm addicted to opiates. And the problem is that I tell myself everyday it's not a problem because I am able to carry my life on in a normal way...I'm not a typical addict. I don't steal, lie to borrow money, I don't manipulate people, I don't engage in promiscuous activity...since it's not ruining my life in the way of major money, legal, or relationship issues I tell myself that it's not ruining my life. I'm delusional.
We don't choose to be this way.. we don't want to be addicts.
You can not help anyone who does not WANT to get better, and you can not take everything personally an addict says or does while in active addiction. The drug will come first until they make a conscious decision to get help.
I was a Registered Nurse. I never imagined that I could become addicted to opiates...lose everything I owned. I wound up homeless, on public assistance. Lost my license to practice, was chronically in trouble, in court, arrested. My life went from comfortably upper-middle class to indigent in less than six months. I used to be judgmental. I used to say, "I would never do that!" I would have the public know…Don't judge. Never see yourself as someone who "would never." I started with prescribed Vicodin. I've been sober now seven years. Every day, I'm grateful for life itself. My mother died of overdose on October 12, 2007. I've seen hundreds die before their time. We have to help each other.
It breaks down every aspect of your physical and mental health. You do things you know are wrong, and slowly even that fades. Just stop. Before it's too late.
It is not something you just quit. It is a painful everyday battle, whether you are using or not. I have been fighting for 18 years. I have been to the needle and back and am currently on a Suboxone program. I really wish "maintenance" programs were not looked down upon as they are. It has saved mine and many others' lives, but yet it seems to have a bad reputation.
Who it really affects. And how hard it is to get off of it without using worse drugs like methadone. The consequences last longer than the use. I'm over 3 years clean. My wife just got off of methadone but was stuck on it for over 2 years without a way to get off.
You must be vigilant at all times against relapse and you must surround yourself with different places and people. Being in recovery is hard. It's almost impossible if you stay in your neighborhood and are friends with the same people. You basically have to dump your life and start over.
I never woke up one day and decided that I wanted to become a drug addict.
I was in college and working full-time when I stepped on an earring in my apartment. The earring pierced my left heel, and days later an abscess formed. With fevers above 102.5 F for several days, I went to the ER for treatment.
I got IV antibiotics and hydrocodone. The infection cleared, and the pain ceased. I took the extra hydrocodone anyways. It made me feel happy, and dulled the stress of work and school. I started buying OxyContin from someone with a prescription.
Once the makers of OxyContin revealed the abuse-proof formula, the doctor started to prescribe morphine (much cheaper). So, I bought morphine. First, I thought it was okay as long as I only used on my days off. I graduated college so things weren’t too bad…right? Pretty soon I told myself I was okay as long as I only used after work. Then it was okay as long as I only used on my break.
My addiction progressed to using all day everyday. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t support my habit anymore and lived with a constant struggle of trying to find more. Then, I found out I was pregnant. He saved my life.
I finally got help. I have a 6-month-old son, a loving fiancé, a supportive family. I have 14 months in recovery. I am not a junkie. I am someone’s daughter, mother, sister, and friend. For me, it started with a snap decision to take a pill just for fun. That decision nearly destroyed me.
I wish people could take a walk in my shoes, because (before receiving treatment) I loved the feeling I got from opioids, but when dependent, I hated the fact that I couldn't stop it. I stole massive amounts of prescription grade opioid analgesics from a friend's father who was a physician. For some reason he had massive amounts of these drugs in his home in pharmacy stock bottles. People need to understand that we are affected by a horrible disease. We hate the disruption and pain it causes with friends, family, and peers. We are also very functional. I began using when I was 15 and I got good grades in high school while on these drugs. By 16, I had a dependence, and when I could not access the drugs at times, I would have to endure withdrawal syndrome. It was the acute phase that lasted about a week, but then afterwards there is a long period of anhedonia.
I have an anxiety disorder along with depression and ADHD. I would say that most opioid abusers have an underlying mental disorder. I finished high school, and went off to university and I was out of options until I found that Oxycodone was in a new formulation that was nearly impossible to abuse. So I switched to heroin, and I also used a needle exchange program and clean syringes. This was in the spring of 2011. I was an isolated user, and I worked hard on my studies and did well. Finally everything came tumbling down while on summer holiday. I decided to go onto Suboxone (buprenorphine naloxone medicine) therapy. I did inpatient, and then did an intensive outpatient program at the hospital system in my area. I saw a private practice physician within my insurance consortium to obtain access to the buprenorphine therapy. I think this drug is much better than methadone, and it is outpatient. I was 19 at the time and I really needed help. I have no desire to consume opioids, and I also see a psychiatrist for my underlying mental health issues.
I am 24 now, and I am working and after transferring universities and finding out what I wanted to do. I study mathematics and business (accountancy). I think if the buprenorphine prescribing limits were removed and all physicians had prescribing powers for the purpose of opioid abuse, things would get much better, and had access to universal health care. I wish people knew what it was like to simultaneously love the rush and euphoria of the drug, yet hate how one needs that rush to function properly. I think that the public at large needs to understand that opioid abuse is prevalent nearly everywhere.
I am lucky to be on a medicine that stabilizes me and makes me not desire to chase that rush. 12 step programs made my use worse, and I instead used smart recovery. It is so hard to describe the horrors of being hooked on this terrible drug. There are legitimate pain patients that need it, but some gets diverted. I feel stable on buprenorphine, and this medical option is a tool that works. I am glad I am on it, and I wish those hooked on opioids for the wrong reasons had access to the drug buprenorphine. My heart aches for those that are chasing the high and want to clean up. The war on drugs needs to treat users as a public health issue. Not as a criminal justice issue. Period. Harm reduction works and helps. Access to treatment that I have is necessary for those addicted.
I am a person in long-term recovery -- 27 years. I am also a mother whose son battled an opiate addiction for 16 years. After 9 good months of sobriety, my son relapsed and died on Nov 24, 2015. This plague transcends all barriers. It is a disease that is steadily killing our communities. The only way to battle this is together --educate and prevent. Erase the stigma.
Opiates don't discriminate. They seemingly exist for one reason: to flood you with so many intense, good feelings that you forget everything bad. This effect will happen regardless of therapeutic or recreational intent. For those who already struggle with emotional and mental health issues, sobriety becomes exponentially more of a daunting task. It feels less like an empowered decision and more like waking up to your best friend's funeral every day. Being addicted to oxycodone or fentanyl, you will crave heroin without ever having tried it.
This opioid addiction is terrifying to an outsider looking in, but as a user it seems natural and normal. People don't wish to be this… it seems to just happen. No one grows up saying, "When I grow up I want to be a drug addict." I've been on both sides of the fence. I'm a person in long term recovery. …It means I haven't had a drink or drug since February 23, 2014.
I was that hopeless broken girl, the girl with no purpose, no goals, no values. I felt as though I didn't matter, I didn't have a voice, and I would just die a "junkie." I hated myself and thought "people would be better without me." I had goals and dreams, I had a great family and friends, I had the world at my hands and I traded it first for a pill that later turned into a needle. The needle took me to a whole new world of addiction. It took my morals and values away. It took my family and friends; it took my education, my purpose. Lastly, it took me.
Heroin changed me into this "other" person. When looking in the mirror I didn't recognize my reflection, I no longer was the girl I knew. …At the end my family was done, they couldn't take it any longer. I got an ultimatum get sober or get out. I always thought they hated me but I was wrong. I decided I couldn't live as an active user any longer. I've changed my life around. I work in the field of addiction and I'm a student... taking classes for my drug and alcohol license. I work in a recovery home for women. I see how powerful this disease really is from a different perspective and it's scary. I had so many great accomplishments in a short amount of time. I've rebuilt important relationships that I broke. I worked really hard to get to this point in my life.
The best part of my job is seeing that broken lost girl find her voice and purpose in life just as I did. Seeing the light come back into a girl's face and seeing her shine. I think because there are so many unsuccessful and sad stories out there we miss the successful stories. The stories with hope attached to them. The stories where mothers and children are being reunited, the stories where women are standing on their own two feet and working towards goals and achieving them, the stories where that broke lost girl finds her way and makes it. These are the stories of hope, if you look hard enough they're on every corner... Advice? Never lose hope in a person with substance abuse disorder.
It's not about a moral issue. It's a chronic illness that can be managed with treatment.
When a person is heavily engrossed in the cycle of addiction the notion that most loved ones seem to not be able to comprehend is that of -- "why can't you just stop." This is not a rational thought for an addict. There, within this vicious cycle of lies, pain and remorse that encompasses and takes over a person's thought process one axiom is ever present; that is the complete lack of the ability to say "no."
I know it is hard to comprehend but just imagine waking up in the morning and your first thought being of heroin. The ways and means of how you will get this one thing into your body to make life worth living. Now imagine the person doing these things despite any and all responsibilities that they may have. Children will take a back seat. Basic morality never comes into play when it comes to the end goal of putting this substance into your body. That is what it does to you mentally -- it is an ever present thought. Physically, imagine the worst flu-like sickness you have ever had then factor it by ten. So you have a mentally and physically tortured person who knows that if they obtain this one thing "all will be well." Would you have a choice? It's as if a tortured prisoner were offered the key to their cell door, they are going to take it, there would be no choice. This is the short, short example I have of the cycle. Something drastic has to happen to break it. For some, a stint in rehab works. Others may just experience enough pain and be ready.
But like anything addiction is progressive, I used heroin for over six years, things were bad, very bad, I felt I had no way out. It was either continue using to numb the pain or kill myself. Eventually I was arrested and spent a few months in jail, after my physical symptoms were gone I was able to reflect on my life and at that point I had a choice. Continue to use and die or go to prison, or to do something with my life for a change. I was given Drug Court and the structure of this intensive probation has worked for me. Today, I have not used. Tomorrow morning, I am going to get up, iron some cloths, put on my tie and go to work. This was an impossible task when I was using. But tomorrow I have a choice. I see so many news reports on the heroin epidemic that is widespread and all the fear it must put into every parent. But I see almost nothing about the stories of the people who have battled this thing and won. There is so much hope out there and it was the knowledge that someone else got out of the living hell I was in gave me the motivation to do it too. If you are reading this as someone who is in that cycle right now seemingly without HOPE, know that there is a way out.
I've had 3 back surgeries and began my use with oxycodone which eventually turned into heroin after my script was taken for a bulls*** reason. I do have nerve damage and I've been disabled since I was 28 in 2013. 90% of my effort goes to getting well and ending any withdrawals I currently am suffering through. I refuse to steal or pawn anything so I stay sick often. I rarely ever use enough of any opiate to feel "high". These days I use it to get well.
I struggled with opium addiction for years bc of an abusive childhood and feeling unloved. Being a musician brought easy access to beautiful people who had substances that made the past hurt less. When I became involved in Anonymous, doing peer support for jailed hacktivists, the stress was unbelievable. Even as the founder of Free Matt DeHart and as an activist for Free Barrett Brown, I was still struggling to stay clean. It was only after Matt (who is my biological cousin) won the Courage Foundation Award, that I had time to look at my life and realize my potential to create real change in a suffering world was being stifled by heroin. I went to rehab and have been heroin free since October 2014. I am in school and plan on going to law school and continuing my activism in surveillance, defense, and intelligence reform.
I wish people understood what opoids/heroin do to your brain and your thought process.
The pain of withdrawal, and the mental struggles, including cravings. The amount of time and money addiction consumes. How getting money and selling your body is the only way to get well.... [and] the fear of getting sick.
I wish people understood this could happen to anyone and would stop stereotyping it to dirty homeless junkies. I had a great childhood and grew up in a small town not in the city. My life was great. I had everything I wanted a house, beautiful wife, etc. Then, I had surgery and the doc gave me opioids for pain. That was the start. Just funneled out of control from there.
The irrationality of an addict's mental processes. Heroin use reprograms your mind so you are unable to think about much more than your next fix and the means to get it. You bypass any moral code you may have held in order to get more and keep putting off any feelings of guilt, shame or regret until you have it. Then they don't seem to matter that much anymore until it wears off. Then it's time to worry about the next fix. And the vicious cycle continues. You're not really getting high anymore, you keep needing more and more just to feel somewhat normal, to stop the pain and guilt from crashing down. The physical withdrawals are horrible but the real hell is in your mind. All that avoidance results in a well of stress and negative emotion and when the smack wears off it's like a dam bursting. You are unable to function. You can't even think coherently and that's when reality hits you. Just when you can't process it.
It becomes the most important thing to you. Nothing else matters anymore.
It is an addiction. Yes, we made the choice to use the first, second, maybe even third time but that addiction takes hold and we really do become slaves to it. It requires treatment for withdrawal and staying clean is almost impossible without help. This is a very serious problem in our culture today that needs to be taken seriously. I have many years clean, but I also suffer from a lot of mental health issues that are finally being addressed. I am being medicated and treated for those now correctly and that is my saving grace!
Heroin is a terrible drug, but opiate users are not sociopathic junkies like the stereotype says. We are human beings with a disease, and with the proper support we can recover.
It's a forever thing. The cravings, the relapses... it's forever. I've been clean for 6 years. My husband of 12 years, on the other hand, has not. He relapses all the time. He's overdosed 8 times that I have had to save his life. This last time, my kids were right there when I found him overdosed. It's traumatic for my kids and me, and he thinks it's a joke. That's how powerful this drug is. I'm scared to death everyday. I know my husband will die. It's not an 'if' anymore it's a 'when.' I've lost myself watching him like [he's] a 2-year-old.
You don't have to be "an addict" (behaviorally) in order for your body to become GROSSLY dependent on opiates (for me it was specifically OxyContin) that I was prescribed for pain associated with cancer and treatment. The dependency/addiction happens even when taking it exactly as prescribed. Your body itself becomes addicted. Eventually, the dose that used to work doesn't, so it gets increased, and so on. I never understood how people became "addicts" until my experience with Oxy. It's a horribly addicting drug that's prescribed daily that people become addicted to and it's not necessarily because they're some "freak" or drug addict piece of trash.
Opioid abuse sneaks into a person's life on kitten's paws. It does not discriminate. I was a senior manager at a huge aerospace company, making more than $130,000 a year. I was amazed how quickly getting pills became my obsession. Needing more and more, I was always terrified I would run out. Money was not the problem, finding the pills was the problem.
Anyone can become an addict. It doesn't matter how or where you were raised, race, wealth, religion etc. addiction can happen to anybody, so be kind and don't judge.
[Addiction] isn't a result of a moral failing. Also quitting isn't as easy as choosing not to use. Upon cessation of use, the sickness from withdrawal is so unbearably painful with convulsions, inability to sleep for 5-7 days, consistent puking and diarrhea that the only thing that will stop the pain is an opiate. The pain has been described by women to be more harsh than childbirth. A pain of which lasts for five days, and up to a month for those who chose treatment with methadone, exacerbating the condition.
… We do not want to be addicts. When I was a child I wanted to be a veterinarian, not a homeless addict. We are humans, we have jobs, children, hopes, and dreams. I grew up with both of my parents, in a nice house, in a good town. I never tried drugs or alcohol in high school. I was an honor student and was selected to study abroad in Brazil for a year after high school, and that is when my life changed. I was raped, and thousands of miles from anyone I knew. I felt emotions I had never felt before, and was offered a beer and accepted. My life changed forever. Alcohol made it all OK for awhile. Years later, after coming home and keeping my secret, after a four-year abusive relationship, another abusive relationship, and a daily drinking habit, I found out I was pregnant. I quit drinking, but I was miserable until after I had my beautiful daughter, and got a prescription for opiates. I was hooked after the first one, because I was able to function, I had energy, I was "OK." I was a single mother in college, and I saw nothing wrong with taking my prescription to make me "happy" and pain-free. Before long I was buying higher doses off the street, taking more everyday, and abandoned school and all of my other responsibilities, including my daughter who I eventually left at my parents' house. I then became pregnant again, and once again got clean until after she was born. Over the next two years I sold drugs, lived in terrible places, did terrible things, got in trouble, and started using heroin. The day I decided enough was enough, I was in treatment court but was still using and I had a warrant out. I was hiding under insulation while the police searched the house for me. The next day I turned myself in, went to treatment, and even though it has not been easy, I never looked back. We are not losers who should be left to die and judged. We are people in the grips of a disease who need support and compassion. I also wish people understood that recovery is possible. I am living proof, and the programs and treatment facilities are worth the money as they save lives. Incarceration is not the answer, people become addicted because they lack other coping skills to deal with stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, anger, etc., and the drugs take away physical and emotional pain. Throwing someone in a jail cell is not going to get to the root of the problem, it will only increase those feelings and lead right back to drug use. Three years ago when I got in trouble, if I was thrown in jail instead of being able to do treatment court, I would not have a job working with recovering addicts, I would not have an apartment or car, I would not have graduated college last semester, and I certainly would not have my two beautiful children. These programs allowed me, and many others, to become productive members of society. Addiction is not a moral failing, it is a disease and the only way to stop this epidemic is for people to show compassion and understanding and stop judging and condemning addicts, because they will not come forward for help for fear of being judged and rejected. We already feel bad enough about ourselves, we don't need to hear what "scumbags" and "losers" we are. If communities come together to help build each other back up, work together on prevention, and get to the root of the problem and begin working on the solution, together we can fight this disease. I work at a peer-support recovery center and see recovery in action everyday. I also see many go back out, and I lost my best friend to heroin last year. Combating addiction has become the focus of my life, and helps me maintain my own recovery, but it takes the whole community.
I have struggled with opioid addiction on and off for 30 years with the most clean time being 7 years consecutive. The thing that I think that people are quickly understanding is that opiate addiction does not discriminate and is not a moral failing.
Many of us that have become addicted are intelligent, valuable people who lost control after experimentation, curiosity or having the opiates prescribed. I didn't ever intend to be a heroin addict; it quickly got out of control and led me to places I never dreamed of.
How easy it is to become addicted and how painful it is to quit.
It can totally encompass your life. It leaves you unable and unwilling to exist in the "real" world. Heroin make you do things that go against your entire moral values.
We really can't see what's obvious to you and to everyone else and to me, just not when I look in the mirror. It seems unbelievable but it's true. It really does make you blind to your own addiction and in that respect I truly believe it is a disease. Heroin addiction is a disease.
While it may have been a choice to start using opiates, nobody chooses to become an addict.
Heroin addiction is almost always a financial medical decision as the least expensive way to maintain an opiate level that keeps withdrawals at bay. After a few weeks of use, the "high" is almost always negligible to the ability to keep from becoming "dope sick."
I wish people understood that once the addict becomes addicted to heroin or opioids, it’s no longer a choice. It does and will consume every part of your life. The drive to get the next is no longer about the actual high, but more about not being sick. The drive turns into needing the drug to just feel normal. The body needs the heroin just to function.
When a heroin addict finally has the desire, desperation, or willingness to put the drug down and get help, the psychological battle will begin … the mind will literally go into panic mode for the next high. Without the right guidance and support it is almost impossible to get clean from this drug. It is a complete lifestyle change, not as simple as just don’t get high. The shame guilt and embarrassment will consume the addict without counseling or therapy.
Recovery is possible. This is not a death sentence. We do overcome the disease of addiction. I am a recovering heroin addict. I have 20 months clean from heroin and any other mind- or mood-altering substance. I now work as a recovery specialist in one of the city’s detox facilities. Also one of the four organizers of my town’s Overcoming Addiction, which holds candlelight vigils but also helps families understand addition and offers support. With that I am also a panelist with the district attorney’s opioid task force, where I can give my experience to lawmakers and city officials — a perspective on the life of an addict, and hopefully give hope to the families that have lost it. Most importantly I am a daughter again a sister, a fiance, and a friend….. no longer a hopeless junkie!
The best advice I can give to people that do not understand this disease is every person in the throes of addiction is someone’s child, mother, brother, sister, father. They were not always the drug addict you see before you. They are lost and need to be found. So before casting any judgement try encouragement. You never know what someone is battling.
Kicking the habit is very hard and painful. Then, to relearn how to live can be just as taxing. Find support wherever you can get it, as well as taking a lot of ownership for your own success and failure during recovery, and be sure to pat yourself on the back each day for successful days. Staying clean is an every day/life-long challenge but worth it.
