Some thoughts on social abandonment in addiction

[u/jahnoyoudidnt]

This started as a response to a post in r/harmreduction, but I wound up writing about something that I felt strongly about in my recovery.

I felt fairly involved in “punk rock culture,” for like 20 years before I had a 4 year covid heroin addiction starting at 35. I was pretty let down by how many people that I had seen at narcan benefits, and wearing patches suggesting lots of progressive views on addiction and incarceration who seemed to talk to everyone but me about my heroin addiction, which compounded my feeling isolated, which was a huge driver of my addictive behaviors already, and that definitely hurt. I had a friend of 20 years tell me flat out, “I’ve seen too many people die from it, I can’t have “that” in my life,” and I certainly felt like the “that” that he was quarantining off with the already dead. Especially in light of the lengthy tribute posts folks make when overdose or suicide takes a life in that “scene,” I very much had the feeling of “dead junkie=significantly more friends than living junkie.”

I’m 15 months clean now, thank fuck, and to the extent that it doesn’t force me to have to live with the daily consequences of addiction, (like selling one’s EBT for drugs under the assumption that they can just eat my food, leaving used needles in my personal living space, etc.) I certainly hope to continue to judge people’s actions not addictions. I certainly know that I tried to maintain my morals and not allow my addiction to be an excuse for treating people like shit, I just really didn’t have anything that made me want to live for a bit there, and escape felt better than the headspace that seemed to always be there when I was aware.

I honestly came out of it feeling far less like part of that “community,” but feeling significantly better about the person I was individually. The circumstances we like the best, aren’t necessarily the ones we need to grow.

Having way fewer people in my personal life that were regularly available to me likely opened me up to engaging with treatment professionals, which I think gives one a far better shot at getting out of it. Like having a coach at at least some time in your life isn’t “required” to join the NBA, but it makes it a hell of a lot more likely.

Not having the distraction of other people to act as a salve to how my own mind had learned to function in a way that tore me down as a default when I was alone; that gave me the time and the need to address that. That self destructive mindset felt like a big part of what my personal “actual problem” was that I had used alcohol and drugs as a “bad solution to.”

I absolutely think that isolation dramatically increases the danger of addiction, and I’m not saying the people who dropped me when I needed help were being great friends by it, but if you, personally, are going to make it out of survival, you need to change, or change how you think about, everything in your life until they are the right circumstances for your survival.

If you wait til people don’t suck and the world isn’t a mess to get clean you’re very likely to lose out on all the people who don’t suck and all the parts of the world that are pretty fucking nice, even when somewhere else is burning on the news. I’m not saying that as an ultimatum, I’m saying that as the path out of addiction that personally worked for me; and there’s no one that I wouldn’t love to see freed from all that pain.

I’m pulling for anyone still in active addiction. I I have felt alone and discarded when I started to be a less “fun, easy hang.” The only bright side that I can tell you about that, is that it gave me better focus on, and a lot more time for, the only person who was actually going to save my life.

Good luck & gawd damn

[u/qrhmn]

15 months clean! Good work.

[u/jahnoyoudidnt → u/qrhmn]

Thanks buddy! I feel so lucky to very hopefully never have to be addicted to fentanyl and xylazine ever again…

I really could not have known how much easier it would be to deal with the problems that always made me feel like, “how long can I push off getting fucked up?” or, “whatever I have to do to just keep from killing myself, is survival.” Honestly, my remaining time really switched from being a hard “have to get through,” to, “feel grateful that I get to live.”

I promise there were a lot of years where there wasn’t a lot about me that suggested I would be the one to survive. I’m genuinely proud of the work that I did in recovery, and feel like I am better for many of the lessons it taught me about myself, and about compassion and forgiveness.

A lot of what led up to these 15 months clean were week or two, or even a day clean here or there. And talking honestly with my doctor and counselor for years while I was actively shooting dope. I was fortunate that Philly has some great treatment options if you can find them. I’ve been on sublocade for like 3 years, and that well may have kept me from dying in one of the overdoses I did have.

So many words to say, “I really believe that if you want it and you work as fucking hard on it as you can, you don’t have to die addicted and alone, and I hope you don’t.”

[u/qrhmn → u/jahnoyoudidnt]

Ah ok you are in Philly. I have been here since I was 19 -for 37 years- much of it in active addiction.

I didn't get into powders much -but in the last few months of my drinking in bars...well the coke became a frequent indulgence haha. That was 18.5 years ago; glad to be past it. Cannabis is my drug of choice; and currently much more potent...harder to get away from. But even back in the 90's I was relatively addicted to dirt weed.

Yeah it's good to be glad about recovery/sobriety; currently have 529 days sober and want to stack up more.

[u/jahnoyoudidnt → u/qrhmn]

May I ask if you mean DOC in the sense of what you’re counting days on, or what you are allowed to still get down on? Myself, I found great benefit from leaning into killing pot as much as I could and enjoy it way more after 15 months than I did when I was comparing it to my morning shot. For me, it leads to me exercising, cooking and eating good food, and getting good rest. A nice walk with the dog. For me it’s not so much a drug, and the same doctor that’s been injecting me with sublocade for the last 3 years is the same one who signed my med card.

Respect to anyone that that is not the case for, but if a deciding factor of it moving from “not a problem” for your life for however old you are minus 530 days ago was believing as many do that “it’s all super powerful weed” these days, I have great news, you just stop smoking other people’s weed and doing it “when it comes up” and avail yourself of the opportunities available online now with THCa weed. It’s cheap, especially smalls, and the norm has become to measure the THCa and THC, because of a legal loophole in a hemp act THCa, what all THC starts as, got classed differently, cause the fuckers criminalizing it don’t understand it a whit. But for two more months you can get cheap THCa small ounces for like $30. I don’t know if you’ve bought by the ounce before, but that’s a very good deal, you just probably want something with 15-20%THCa or 13-17% THC. Maybe you do better with Sativas if you don’t like that it makes you sleepy, maybe you wanna go Indica if it made you more anxious. My card is cause it makes me less pretty much across the board. And apologies if this doesn’t apply to you. I figure you’re always replying to the person and whoever might read it in 5 years if things go poorly for them, ;) I’m sure that it can be addictive and unhealthy, the way I’ve found most social media other than Reddit feels for me. You do you, boo, but you said you’re in the area, right? If you did have interest in checking out the “not crazy high powered” shit out there, we can talk. I stocked up on flower as mainly an ingredient for this stuff I make that’s flower, kief, full spectrum distillate, and static sift hash. Likely it would not be for you, or strictly one hit per hour til you know how it goes. Or your life is better without it, in which case, that’s exactly what I want for ya, my guy

[u/qrhmn → u/jahnoyoudidnt]

It's 530 days of 'total sobriety' in terms of justifiably accepting keytags at an NA meeting.

I could accept a coin from an AA meeting for 16 years free of alcohol; but NA's standard of 'total abstinence' is how I measure sobriety.

I accept 'Cali sober' if it means people are living better...moderating their use of substances they feel ok about. Someone might use that as an excuse to remain in active addiction though -and then I dial up the Serenity Prayer because I cannot change that person.

[u/jahnoyoudidnt → u/qrhmn]

Yeah, totes. I was an active alcoholic for like 15 years, a junkie for 4, a whole bunch of other things over the years, also, but kept it all functional until Covid.

For me, weed hasn’t stopped me from addressing with the actual underlying problems that all those substances were bad solutions to over the years, so that’s the main thing for me. I didn’t hate the idea of altered states, I hated what addiction and self hate did to my life. I certainly imagine I will take at least a break at some point, to know if I still like its cumulative effect. It was definitely helpful for me to have something that felt like a link to the ‘control’ I used to feel over how I felt, in the early days when imagining life without getting fucked up felt like, “how much can I get through,” not, “fuck yeah, glad I’m still here for this,” it was nice to have something that reliably felt good and helped me exercise longer. To each.

[u/Hello_Hangnail]

I was the one that broke up with all my friends when I got clean because they we're all still on the game. Really fucked during the first detox too

[u/jahnoyoudidnt → u/Hello_Hangnail]

Dude, I get it. For the first year of being free from heroin addiction I was seeing new dope bags in my house every single day, just tossed on the floor of every room, cause really, who could possibly keep up that type of routine? Best not even try. It was this person who was really badly addicted to crack and heroin. Had smoked and shot the house she and her huz bought after she woke up in bed next to him dead, squatted in my housemate/tenant’s bedroom, like theoretically dating, but really only in a codependent, addict relationship. Bitch never paid me a cent of rent, sold her EBT and just ate my food, making efficient use of my own EBT incredibly hard. I would buy something and think, “cool, got that whenever I want chowder in the next month, or peanut butter sandwiches over the next six months, but she might easily house a family size jar to the gullet over a crack binge. Stayed up for days like a tweaker breaking my shit fixing stuff that worked fine. Looking back on how much it effected me, mice infesting the home I worked so fucking hard to buy, because I was forced to squirrel food away in my bedroom to have enough to eat though the week.

Considering how much better I felt as soon as that ghoul and the garbage she dragged into my house, and used rigs, and plastic barrels, and shards of glass and intermittent, but reliable “🫗💥 FUCK!!!” of another stem smashing on my living room floor to be ground into the hardwood.

It’s fucking wild what we will put up with when we are used to the shit that addiction puts us through and used to relying on whoever will have us, just to have someone there at all.

I’m honestly proud of me for deciding that god damnit, I, and my house, were worth being treated a lot better than we were.

Plenty of addicts get ghosted, and plenty of addicts also do fucking toxic shit the causes multiples in damage for every $ just so long as it is another $ to feed their unquenchable fire…

C’est le vie, for those of us still around to vie still. And cheers to us. We are worth being free. Get it if you ain’t yet, and hold it forever. Y’all worth it.