My Heroin Recovery (Thursday, 27 September 2007)
Day 307 – “Triggers (Part 4)” (PRE-WRITTEN)
Taking heroin isn’t something that happens one day. It is something that is trying to happen every day. When a “Yes” comes through, people tend to completely forget how you said “No!” everyday before that. We do what we can to be strong and make sure that when we fall we don’t fall far – but there are no guarantees. Not for somebody that is clean for one week, one year or even 10 years.
I learned over the past few days that I will never be able to do this alone. I will always need the help of people around me that might never understand the reason for me being in that position or placing them there with me. I learned that triggers like alcohol or other drugs can lead me towards heroin but that there are millions of other things out there and I won’t see them coming.
I know that even though this happened and the friends and family around me are angry and disappointed, I do still have their support. It shows more of their character than it does mine. The only thing I can show is strength. I have no doubt in my mind that I can beat this, infact my previous success is a great motivator. Even so, the truth is that I can only guarantee today.
Perhaps, out of the all the lessons that is the one I should remember the most. Forgetting that is a daily fight and fight only for today is what makes you lose your grip and fall into relapse. So… I guess here is to being clean for today!
Day 307 – “Triggers (Part 4)”
Day 306 – “Triggers (Part 3)”
My Heroin Recovery (Wednesday, 26 September 2007)
Day 306 – “Triggers (Part 3)” (PRE-WRITTEN)
I got the heroin from the dealer, purchased the needles and prepared it. The sequence of events was so familiar and, unfortunate to say, exciting. I know that in that short time millions of warnings went through my head. I knew better, I had months and months of better and I was about to end it all, but I couldn’t stop myself from going through with it.
The needle entered my arm and I threw myself in a hole I wouldn’t be able to get out of. For weeks and weeks after that day I used or tried to stop. It was like I went to bed last night a heroin addict and today I was just the same, nothing had changed. The past months of trying desperately to stay clean lay momentarily forgotten. I was in a vicious cycle of taking. I couldn’t stop… and the worst thing was that part of me didn’t want to stop!
I was really nervous when I saw my parents the night because they’ve become experts on seeing when I was high on heroin. They had to become experts to try and help me. They probably noticed something different about me but the changes were so subtle that they didn’t question it. I was trying my utmost best to try and hide it from them, if they noticed anything perhaps none of it would have happened.
Looking back at that day I remember the two previous times I had lapses. They noticed it almost immediately and because of their guard being up I didn’t continue taking. It dawns on me now, that the seemingly strong recovery from those lapses where I miraculously only used once – were only because I was stopped from taking a second time!
This time nobody was there to stop me. It still frightens me thinking that if I stayed on my own – this might still have continued at this very moment! Can I ever stay on my own then, I ask myself? Can I ever be responsible enough not to slowly kill myself?
(Triggers concludes tomorrow…)
Day 305 – “Triggers (Part 2)” (PRE-WRITTEN)
My Heroin Recovery (Tuesday, 25 September 2007)
Day 305 – “Triggers (Part 2)” (PRE-WRITTEN)
I stopped my car at a shop close by to get something to drink. It was in the middle of the day and a car pulled up next to me. The face was all too familiar: it was one of the HEROIN DRUG DEALERS.
What you have to understand about drug dealers is that most of them will not sell crack or heroin to their customers. Not only is it incredibly difficult for them to find good quality, but heroin addicts soon get to point where they have to phone the dealer a few times a day EVERY DAY. It takes a lot more work from them and they know sooner or later their “customers” will end up in rehab, prison or dead. So most just stick to the seemingly harmless stuff like ecstasy or cocaine.
The face I was looking into was one of those dealers that DID sell heroin. He started talking to me and before the conversation ended I was on my way to getting heroin again. Now, perhaps he was the trigger just by showing up or maybe something in the conversation we had. Perhaps he was only a solution to a trigger long before that day.
What you probably don’t understand about addiction in general, is that once you start the sequence of events there is no turning back. You don’t go from wanting heroin, to getting it and then deciding it is a bad idea and turning back. From the very first moment you get that thought to the time the needle enters your arm it is almost automatic.
I really have such a big support system in place. I know that I can contact a number of people in a number of ways and they will help me through it. The problem is that you just aren’t thinking rationally. So, you won’t be stopping yourself, thinking about what this does to you or your family. You won’t be calling your friends or your family to try and talk you out of it. You just sent a rolling ball down a cliff and until it completes its run at the bottom, no force will stop it!
(Triggers Part 3 continues tomorrow…)
Day 304 – “Triggers (Part 1)” (PRE-WRITTEN)
My Heroin Recovery (Monday, 24 September 2007)
Day 304 – “Triggers (Part 1)” (PRE-WRITTEN)
I got a ‘Medic Alert’ bracelet last year to state that I was allergic to ‘Morphine or Coedine or any Opiods’. I did this because not only can an intake of this be fatal to me, but codeine products will make me crave (even though I won’t know why) and all those items will cause withdrawal symptoms – regardless of how much or how long I take them.
It is Day 2 and I am using medicine to help with those withdrawal symptoms. They are doing their job and physically I am feeling the minimum of pain. Sometimes I can’t sleep (even with a prescribed sleeping pills) and my actions still haunts me when I’m awake, trying to sleep and even in my dreams. I’m very uncomfortable in my own skin at the moment but no medicine can help with that. No medicine can help with the effects heroin has caused in my life yet again.
My parents are obviously disappointed and feel like they want to lock me in my room again. I went through, what felt like, hours of painful speeches, warnings and begging to not walk the same road again. Each time it looks like it hits them lower, like the news hangs on them heavier and the disappointment and more then anything hopelessness shows on their faces more clearly.
I won’t lie to you, I am craving heroin right now. I did yesterday and I will tomorrow. The insanity of it all makes me nauseous more than the withdrawal symptoms can ever try and do. Why would somebody that went through the hell of heroin recovery EVER take heroin again? And then, even if it was a “mistake”, why would he continue after the first lapse and again and again…
(Triggers Part 2 continues tomorrow…)
Day 303 – “The not so pre-written blog”
My Heroin Recovery (Sunday, 23 September 2007)
Day 303 – “The not so pre-written blog”
It is Sunday morning and as promised here is my ‘not pre-written’ blog for the week. Or, after some criticism this past week, let me re-phrase… here is my less pre-written blog than the rest. As I mentioned many times before my blogs are not just a spur of the moment bunch of words written directly on 24.com and posted seconds afterwards. My pixilated words and sentences refreshes at 60 hertz on 17” 96DPI screen (the geek in me had to do that) until I feel ready to post them.
Some days I would have liked to wait a bit longer delaying truths that would again upset so many people, but they still made it on here. Other days, of course, I was all to happy to press the ‘Submit Post’ button that would reveal the good things to the world. And as ThisIsMe (my good friend) pointed out in one of the comments, this is the way I’ve always written.
The pre-written blogs at the time I wrote them couldn’t be posted, for many reasons, yes reasons… reasons as simple as I wasn’t ready yet and reasons as difficult as to still tell my family about it. I was asked how anybody could trust me now and ‘when did I start lying to the public’. While I apologize for not being able to post this sooner the intention was never to hide it from anybody and I would hope that every blog post you’ve read up to now would prove my commitment to honesty on the blog.
Perhaps we live in a world where people fake addiction or suicide to get attention. Perhaps you know somebody like that, I don’t! My best friends (who responded to some comments during the week) and who has been with me through every step of this recovery, knows that I am not one of those people. My family scattered across the country who comfort my parents when it is going bad, knows I am not one of those people. Even the people that read this blog know through my experiences that I am not one of those people.
Of course, not everything that was said in the comments about the entries on the three sites they are posted, was criticism. Same actually gave some helpful suggestions and comforting words. There are still loads more to tell about a story which is still continuing every day. Yes, they’ve already been written but it doesn’t make it lies or for that matter any less true. It doesn’t even make it easier to post them, but I believe they still have a purpose to me and to somebody, anybody out there – so I will continue to post them!
