Recovery Stories

[mambios]

I was just wondering if anyone here has a recovery story that they would like to share?

It may be able to give hope to those still trying to get clean as well as porviding inspiration for others.

I would suggest that you have at least a year's worth of sobriety, recovery or abstinence but apart from that just post up your tale!

[jade]

I've been clean now for about 4 years, and it's awesome. I started using heroin when I was 17, among a plethora of other drugs. I just wanted to be high, all the time, basically. But my choice of drugs were always downers; dope, benzo's, muscle relaxers, whatever.
Anyhow, I'd been clean for 3 years, and my now husband and I seperated. I ended up relapsing worse than I ever had before, which I hear is common. Anyhow, the biggest thing I learned from that experience is this:
I'd never thought about what I would do if I were in a situation where I could get high, so I never prepared myself for it. I don't think I really thought it would ever happen.
Well it did happen, and it took a year to get myself back together. My husband came back and we moved to a place where I could get treatment, and I finally got clean. That first week I was so happy I wanted to cry. I had seriously never been so ecstatic about anything before. No more sick, no more waking up with this feeling of impending doom. I finally had (have) my life back.

[exjunky]

My story is long but I'll give you the Reader's Digest version.

FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH HEROIN

In 1987 I tried heroin for the first time and fell in love with it. Three years later I had a huge habit. When I woke up in the morning I was always in pain, and would rush to fix up a hit in my spoon just to be able to cope with the day ahead. It's a never ending rollercoaster: the orgasmic highs followed by crushing withdrawals. I was shoplifting, dealing drugs, anything for cash so I could keep feeding my greedy greedy arms.

A few years later I hit rock bottom, living out of my car, and I had burned a lot of bridges. So I crawled into a methadone clinic on my hands and knees (not literally, but almost) and begged them to help me. They sized up my habit and started me on 90mg of methadone daily with a 'rapid detox plan' where I would go down 5mg each week.

RECOVERY WITH METHADONE

While on methadone, I stayed away from heroin, but the only problem was, I still was dealing drugs, because it was my only way to make money. When I was around 20mg/daily I got set-up by a confidential informant and landed in jail where I detoxed quite painfully, but once I got over the withdrawals I started to feel human again.

Ironically, I felt more free in jail than I did on the outside, because I no longer was a slave to opiates. I value freedom more than anything, so once I got clean I had no interest in getting back into the dope lifestyle.

In 1992 a clever public defender got me to pleabargain my case down to possession and I ended up with a five years of probation. So in 1997 I was a free man in every sense of the word, free of opiates, free from the law, making reasonable money in Miami, and had everything to live for.

MY FIRST RELAPSE

Then I did the stupidest thing I've ever done. I got back into heroin after meeting a junky in Miami. I forgive myself for originally getting hooked, because let's face it, NOBODY knows what they are getting into when they first try heroin. But since I had already been there, I had no excuse. I celebrated the end of my probation in 1997 with a nice fat shot of dope, soon it was becoming a daily habit again. Then I got some dope which was cut with fentanyl (a VERY powerful opiate sometimes used to cut heroin), and I took a shot of two bags that hit me so hard I overdosed.

My buddy tossed my body in my car (he had no wheels) and drove me to Mercy Hospital in Miami, dumped my body on the curb, and sped off. I respect him for that so much, he did the perfect thing. He didn't want to get in trouble with the law, but he couldn't let somebody die, so he did everything I would expect a righteous person to do. The doctors said I was technically dead on arrival but through some miracle they brought me back. That incident "scared me straight" and I swore off heroin, for the second time.

MY SECOND RELAPSE

Fast forward five years to 2002. A friend of mine named Eric started messing with heroin in NYC, and I asked him to mail me some. How could I be so stupid, AGAIN, after all I've been through? I can't answer that. When a junky relapses, it's like an avalanche: one second everything is serene and quiet, then suddenly all hell breaks loose.

Like an ass, I decided to do two bags at once. I hit me so hard that I knew I was going to fall out. It's funny, I used to shoot 6 or 7 bags at once, but after being off the dope for so long, your tolerance goes away. I rushed to the phone and called a friend, all I could get out was "I f***ed up...." and then the blackness enveloped me.

My friend called 911 on my behalf, and the next thing I knew I was surrounded by paramedics. I praised God for seeing me through this, and I promised Him "Never again!" A few months later I get a phone call: Eric had died of a heroin overdose in NYC. A dear, dear friend. I still grieve after all these years.

MY THIRD RELAPSE

Fast forward five more years to 2007, now I have finally settled down, I have a loving woman, making good money, and have no desire to use heroin ever again. I dearly love this woman and I told her my history, how I was a recovering heroin addict, but I guess she didn't think that it was possible for me to relapse--just a dark hour in my past which could not possibly have any meaning on the present.

However, when a friend of mine started to get percocet pills, I figured "why not?" Soon percocets were having no effect on me, so I moved up to these little blue pills we call "roxies" that contain 30mg of oxycodone (basically like eating 6 percocets at once). It didn't take long before I was popping these like candy. Then I found some Dilaudid, and I drove to a pharmacy and pulled the old "diabetic emergency" routine that I learned back in the 1980's to get my hands on some needles. One shot of that sweet Dilaudid in my veins and once again Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr. Hyde.

It wasn't long before I got my hands on heroin again. Between Dilaudid, oxycodone, and heroin, I was shooting up as many as 8 times a day. All the while I am living a double life, keeping this a secret from my woman. She would literally turn her back for a minute and I'd jam a needle in my arm and wipe the blood away before she noticed.

One day she's going through my drawers to look for candy that I keep stashed there, and instead of candy, she finds pills, needles, burned spoons, and bags of dope. She felt lied to, cheated, and she was right.

She was amazingly supportive and wanted to help me get clean at any cost. Any other woman would have left me, and if she did I couldn't have blamed her. I told her about suboxone and how I was looking into doctors who prescribe it. We found one and I started taking it under doctor's supervision.

RECOVERY WITH SUBOXONE

Suboxone truly is like a miracle drug. If you want to quit, suboxone will work, as long as you give it a chance to work. It's so much better than methadone, because it's not just a replacement opiate--it actually makes your physical cravings for heroin go away. Also, unlike methadone, it leaves you stone-cold sober. There is no "high" to suboxone, it just returns normalcy.

Now it's been over 100 days since I've had a shot or taken any opiate and I look at the last year of my life in horror. I truly don't want to go back. Sometimes I have "bad thoughts" but I know what life is like on both sides of the fence, and the sober side is the side I want to stay on.

THE FUTURE

Will I relapse again? I can't answer that--and if I can't, nobody can. I know I won't relapse anytime soon, because the horrors of addiction are still so firmly implanted in my mind. But at the same time I know that when the years roll by, there seems to be no limit to how stupid I can be. I forget the bad side and just remember the good times.

All I can say is that I hope I never relapse again, and I'll keep taking it one day at a time. I am 40 now and I have a lot of living left to do. Life is too important to waste on heroin. There are so many great things life has to offer: the pleasure of food, the ectasy of sex, the satisfaction of creativity, the joy of helping others. When you're hooked on heroin your entire life focuses down into a single thing, where all your hopes and dreams are measured out by an eyedropper.

I praise God to this day for putting up with me, all my lies, all my broken promises. The way I'm talking you may think I'm very religious, but I'm really not--but I know that somebody upstairs must be looking out for me. It's a miracle that I'm here to tell this story, and I hope somebody else can benefit from hearing it.

God bless!
exjunky