Dear Long-Term (10+ year) Followers: My Abridged Recovery Story
Well it’s no secret that I’ve had this account a long time, and that it took me a very very long time to both disidentify with the drug culture in “drug tumblr” and to actively seek recovery. I was willing to try anything else first honestly. At first my goal was to stay off of opiates, so when I got clean my first time (at 14 after a year and a half of continuous heroin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone use) it was my bright idea to buy some Xanax to make the withdrawal ease up. Well, then I ended up stuck on them physically as well, which takes months to even happen. If I ran out of benzos or other GABA-ergic tranquilizers, I would have withdrawal symptoms that were no less than five times worse and ten times longer lasting than getting off of heroin. Up until I was like 21 or 22 I was even sometimes using dissociative anesthetics like PCP, nitrous oxide, ketamine, MXE, and DXM (the latter two were particularly easy to access as teens, and we just kept graduating to the next thing).
By the time I decided to give up living for chemicals, I was a shell of a human being. For just one day’s worth of drugs it could sometimes cost over two hundred fucking dollars including the bus money to Kensington. At my worst I needed eight dimes ($80) of heroin/ fentanyl, at least four or five Xanny bars to keep me feeling just normal enough to function, sometimes I’d even buy stuff like X, dissociatives, or coke even though I didn’t really have a habit with those, more just wasted money on them a lot. And that doesn’t even include the legal stuff lol.
I was on so much shit the doctor at the methadone clinic really didn’t know what to say. He started me on like 180 mg and titrated up to 250, where I’ve been at for like two years. A dose of methadone like that in someone without tolerance would murder them, it’s a quarter gram of something exponentially stronger than morphine. However it’s also the only way I avoid jail, poverty, homelessness, and an endless amount of dummy missions. He took me off my strong sleeping pill (temazepam, which is a benzo) and instead gave me two of the lowest dose 0.5 mg clonazepam per day for both sleep and for the post-acute withdrawal syndrome and cravings. I have moderate chronic pain from a time I fell on my head pretty good, so I take three 50 mg Lyrica for the nerve pain since I can’t take regular pain meds. Lastly I’m also prescribed twelve Fioricet (butalbital, a barbiturate) in the lowest dose it comes in, and I don’t take it nearly ever day. But the days my head hurts, I end up needing like 3 or 4. That doesn’t even include just my regular psych meds like propranolol and Depakote, which are for my mood disorder.
For the longest time I always felt sick. Even once I got this drug, I still needed a dose of that drug to get straight. It was a nightmare. You don’t know if the sickness is from the opiates, the benzos, the alcohol, or the fact you ran out cigarettes two days ago. I had to go to rehab over thirty times. I’ve been Narcanned even more times than I’ve been to rehabs. I promise you that you have the power to beat your addiction. If you have the power to pretty much bend the world to your will every day for a few hundred bucks, then shit I think you’re in good enough shape to at least VISIT the methadone clinic. It’s almost impossible to get clean using subs these days because the half life of fetty must be something outrageous, bc mfs wait six days to take ONE STRIP and would still go into precipitated withdrawal. And like for the first week at the clinic, depending on how real they are with u, they’ll tell you that you’ll prolly still use for the first few days because the methadone has to build up in your system before it works for the full 24-48 hours. But once that shit kicks in, god damn I don’t even remember what an opiate craving feels like. Sure I might crave my half-milligram of klonopin or a beer or some weed or something, I haven’t found “sobriety” in the way most people do. I take my meds, I smoke weed, and at most I’ll have two beers per day.
I have NO IDEA how I made it this far, it kinda feels like one day I looked up and just noticed that I actually gave a fuck about my life again. Especially seeing tranq enter drug supply in Philly, ESPECIALLY especially medetomidine, which is multiple times as potent as xylazine. It’s bad enough I was forced to do fentanyl, the drug I fell for was heroin; but heroin doesn’t exist anymore really. So, fuck it. All the streets have anymore are fake pills, fake drugs, and fake mfs tryna convince you to cop some.
if my insane ass did this shit, you can too. Even if you’re facing something different than drugs. It’s amazing how much the human spirit can endure without breaking, and I’m one of the luckiest people alive to have found a balance of weed, prescriptions for my neurological issues, nerve pain, and mood disorder, in addition to seeing a weekly therapist. Literally three months before my son was to be born, I was living like shit because I lost three very close people to me in a short time after I got my baby’s mom pregnant. I was clean at the beginning, obviously. But by the time my little man was born, I was able to stay in the hospital the whole time with my son’s mom to look out for her and I never had to worry about being sick.
I guess what it comes down to is I finally met the people who made my life so much happier that i found meaning in it. My son and the woman who gave birth to him are so happy that I’m able to be the loving, present father I always wanted to be. I’m just a little broker than other ppl my age (27) bc I’ve wasted a lot of time. I just found a nice place away from the city that I moved to, but it’s kinda hard to find a job with my record :/ But it’s okay though, even though I’m short on cash right now, I’m present and considerate and a functional human being for pretty much the first time in my life. I started both opiates and benzos one month after I turned 13, so the little storm cloud has been following me for nearly 15 years. Wow I I’m getting old, lol.
Now my son is a little over two years old, me and his mom are on a best friend basis even tho we’re not together rn, I never have to worry about jail or running out of drugs too early. I started getting high so young that I don’t think I ever really learned how to live without the stuff. Maybe that’s why recovery took me so long, I dunno.
I just wanted to let the old heads know I’m as clean as ima ever get with all this brain damage 😂 Since I started going to the clinic 2+ years ago I only relapsed on opiates one time, and it was because I stayed up mad late and didn’t get to the mf clinic before it shut 😭. Weirdly enough, weed and methadone help way more than all the other stuff put together, but I just hate Depakote and literally the whole family can tell if I don’t take it for a few days lol. I had to learn how to just be uncomfortable sometimes, you know? That was a concept I struggled with. Wanting immediate relief and getting frustrated and angry when I can’t get it is so irrational but I do it anyway, tis the nature of addicts.
Pray for me y’all. Im not going thru a particularly hard time or nothin, I just have a heavy ass cross I gotta carry with me everywhere. And I love u all for staying when I deleted all the drug BS and started promoting revolutionary socialism 😂😂😂
TL;DR: Used to do mad drugs and live like shit, have been living a much better quality life for a little over two years now thanks to medication like methadone and low doses of clonazepam to stop regular withdrawal, post acute withdrawal, and cravings for opiates, high doses of benzos, and dissociatives or alcohol. My dr at the clinic is cool with me smoking weed to relieve some of the more persistent withdrawal symptoms I have, namely sweatiness, shakiness, and insomnia. But I’m happy and I have a two year old son and even though my journey is nowhere near over, I made more progress in two years than I ever dreamed possible. DONT GIVE UP. YOU CAN GET OFF THAT SHIT TOO. Even if you don’t wanna take something like methadone or buprenorphine, they’ll give you stuff like clonidine and gabapentin that they call “comfort meds” in institutions. Although in jail they just give you 2-4 Librium and tell you to sleep it off lol.
it’s never felt so good to not be high.
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