My Heroin Recovery (Saturday, 20 October 2007)
Day 330/1 – “Under ‘S’”
It is Day 1. Everybody is out in town getting together to watch the rugby and I am lying alone in bed. Even with the medicine, it feels like millions of creatures all over my body are pulling the meat from my bones. There is no way to lie or stand or sit or sleep to sooth the discomfort. My bed and body are both sweaty and the stench of heroin leaving my skin hangs in the room. The smell is as familiar to me as the feeling of heroin itself. I’ve spent as much time trying to get rid of it as I have spent high on it and even so I know given half a chance I would be at the dealer trying to score again!
The logic or the lack thereof makes me sick more than any of the withdrawals can try and do! How can something be so easy and so complicated at the same time? All I have to do is stay clean. All I have to do is not pick up the phone and phone the dealer. All I have to do is stop – and right now it is the most difficult thing in the world to do!
I find myself climbing out of the trenches again. One minute I am overwhelmed with emotion and I cry at all the damage I have yet again left around me. Damage caused in an instant when the damage from last year isn’t even fixed yet. The next minute I am full of strength. I try and remember where I got the strength from last time hoping that I will be able to get that strength again. Perhaps it is one of my strongest weapons this time… the knowledge that it is not impossible. I did this all before. Sure, I stumbled in the end… but I got up and I am trying again. Day by day… one day at a time I am trying again!
Day 330/1 – “Under ‘S’”
Day 329/0 – “All over again”
My Heroin Recovery (Friday, 19 October 2007)
Day 329/0 – “All over again”
The wind is squeezing through the slightly opened window in my humid room. I can’t close it because inside I am boiling up. I don’t want to leave it open because I’m shivering from the cold and covered in goose bumps. Every single bump hurts while the wind blows its cold air onto my skin. I get nauseous at the mere thought of food. Even though I am hungry I can’t eat right now, at least not food. I’m devouring chocolates like it is going out of fashion because it is all I can manage to keep down and it at least helps with the cravings.
I’m lying on the bed watching TV. I don’t care what I watch and even if I did I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Changing the channels takes an effort out of me that right now feels equivalent to climbing mountains. I just want to lie here and be forgotten or maybe it is just the opposite.
Emotions of happy and sad, strength and weakness, bravery, hopelessness and misery are all ping-ponging in my busy mind. It is a mind scared right now! It has chosen the easy path for too long and now it has to face reality again. It is a mind ashamed at the things it has though up and done and even the lengths it still would have gone to. It is a mind humiliated at the insults of what it has become and at the words it’s most important friends and family scratch on its clammy skin.
It must be a nightmare because I would never do this to myself again. I would never put my family or my friends through that torture again, would I? It must be a gimmick or a lie – some attention seeking plot for a lonely mind. Oh please, please… please… today I would be that lonely pathetic attention seeker rather than have this be true again!
Regrettably, it isn’t a dream that I will wake up from tomorrow morning. It isn’t a gimmick that I could stop when the suspicious start seeing through it. It is the cold hard truth of how I took heroin again and again and again. It is, how in true addictive style, I couldn’t stop until I lost almost everything again. This time there is no safety ‘pre-written’ net conveniently placed at the top of this page. This time I have to face the truth in the honesty I have always somehow managed to achieve on this blog.
I am an addict, addicted AGAIN to heroin for more weeks than I have fingers to count it on. I took my last hit earlier today and already my world and my body is crashing down. Tomorrow I begin what I vowed never to be at ever again - I begin Day 1 again. I begin My Heroin Recovery - all over again!
Day 307 – “Triggers (Part 4)”
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 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…)
