Secretly addicted to heroin for six months.

Perhaps this is more suited to one one the other forums, but I post it here in the spirit of the confessional, those who read this will be the only ones(save one) who know the story, and I really need to unload the whole thing just once. I suppose it is a bit of a cautionary tale too, but it is not my business to dissuade anyone from anything, so I will avoid pretending I now have some great perspective you lack. I will also talk in first person about my actions, even though this contravenes some good, sensible, ideas about avoiding self incrimination.

I have always been very up front about my drug use with family and friends, I enjoy drugs, always have, and make no secret of this. Those close to me even know of my flirtations with hard drugs like cocaine, and most would not be particularly surprised to see me pick up a pill off the sidewalk, or some mushrooms off a lawn, to be saved for identification and possible consumption, although some sighing, and eye rolling, and the word "Really?", sometimes ensues. I am a chef, I am respected at work, and I have little time for those who cannot set aside their opinions of drug use and judge me by my actions. So why was I been secretly addicted to heroin for the last six months?

Truth is, it was mostly because I was embarrassed, this time the drug won. People in my life that I confide my personal affairs to know me as a person who can keep his appetites, ravenous as they are, in their place. I gave up a lot of stuff when my current relationship got serious, beer and weed, and the occasional bit of E or mushrooms are all I indulged in for the better part of a year, I was happy to slow things down too, my Carlsberg years perhaps?

Then I met a local guy who sold heroin, not a big dealer, just a very well connected dude that sold down to finance his habit. I got to know him fairly well because we shared a wavelength regarding drugs, he was deep into heroin culture the same way I had been into psychedelia for several years. Unlike me though, he really dug the "double life" thing, mild mannered desk jockey by day, junk hipster by night. He never offered, but of course I eventually asked, and the couple of times I tried a bump and a foil hit, he resisted giving me more. I was a little miffed, but couldn't fault the dude for caring. Besides, from what I had tried, it was no more impressive than a codeine or oxycontin, it did mix marvelously with 2-CB though, possibly the best combination to work in a kitchen on, a ten hour shift cooking a 150 person buffet flew by in a haze of loud Deep Purple and Queen.

I don't know why he decided to sell to me in quantity, maybe he needed new people, but after making me swear not to "get wired", he opened the door to the pool, and I dove in. The first time I did a significant quantity I was massively ill the next day, but that buzz was sooo nice, and after using a couple three times a week I was soon used to it. This is when I fell in love.

It was not so much the rush, or the relaxed nodding time that I really dug, in fact I didn't like the way it made me feel thin skinned and bitchy, I had to work not to snap at my girlfriend for chewing with her mouth open or something silly like that. What I loved was the way it made me feel energetic, happy, and motivated the next day. I love my job, but it sure as shit ain't easy, and something that made me feel relaxed after work, and good at work the next day, was worth the money. The money, in fact, wasn't really an issue, I was used to spending 100-150 bucks a week on after work drinks and weekend booze ups, now I was buying junk a few times a week, for the same amount of dough. My liver was thanking me, I felt great, everything was peachy.

About two months in, the tolerance curve started to steepen. I didn't want to use too much so I asked my buddy how long I would have to quit to lose my tolerance. He told me to "rest up" for a week, and sold me some methadone, to help me sleep the first couple of nights. I actually really liked the methadone, another very "functional" buzz. Around two days after I took the methadone the shit hit the fan.

I had the most amazing insomnia, an utter inability to be comfortable regardless of consuming massive amounts of weed, valerian, hops extract, skullcap, kava, l-tryptophan, melatonin, 5-htp, naproxin sodium. Yep, I'm a medicine cabinet boy scout, I even have an epi pen.

The next day I was wretched, I yawned constantly as my eyes and nose ran like faucets. A tickle would start in my throat and build into a coughing fit that sounded like I was trying to grawf up a hairball. That next night I went to my buddy and asked him if it was the smack. He said he didn't think I should be wired that bad off the amount I was buying, and he gave me another two doses of methadone, and told me the party was over.

When the methadone wore off a few days later and I was sleeping in a tent in the yard because I knew I would drive my girlfriend nuts if I tossed and turned in bed, I realized I was fucked. The balance scales in my head were coming out heavily in favor of finding another connection. There was no way I could hide a four or five day withdrawl from my girlfriend. I didn't want to either, I liked being a junkie, and I told myself it wouldn't be a problem as long as I kept it down to as much as I needed to get by most of the time, and only got loaded once in a while. I decided to be a secret junkie until I figured out a plan to get off the shit, I should have just toughed it out, bright as I am, wisdom is not my strong suit.

It took some doing, coke is easy to buy, ten minutes in the right bar and I can usually produce a gram of respectable blow, but junk is a different animal,
it took a month of spending twice as much on middlers and low level shnooks to meet a man who still appears in my dreams as "the bad guy", a smile so cold it could crack iron, he radiated a capability for violence that scared me shitless. He also sold very good china white heroin, by the gram. I had to buy in quantity and piece it out myself instead of going back and forth every couple of days. Three .05g lines a day, wake up, lunch and dinner, a junkies one item menu.

I was still keeping it together, but just barely. $600 a month is a lot of dough for a working guy, and my girlfriend was getting suspicious. I hated lying to her, and I would go to the beach for two hours and get high after work and then drink a beer and tell her I had been at the bar. I invented a minor internet gambling problem. I sold some weed, and just barely managed to account for all the money I was spending on dope. Things reached an equilibrium of sorts, I got by most of the time, and got loaded once in a while.
The fun was gone though, the feel good vibe felt as artificial as it was, and I really felt something very important was slowly leaving me

I decided to quit pretty much out of frustration, and anger at some stupid alkaloid getting the better of me. I wanted that money for other things. I wanted to sleep well again, and make plans that didn't include junk. I went to my buddy and fessed up. When we stopped the bleeding from my nose and established it wasn't broken we worked on the method, and the attendant lies involved in my kicking dope.

I kicked junk in a small hotel in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Yahk B.C., to be precise. No fucking way I will ever do that again, never. The biggest, longest secret I have ever had (aside from what I like to do at petting zoos), is now over. I don't know if I will ever tell anyone else, not for a few years at least. The next person that tells me quitting smoking is just as hard as quitting heroin is going to eat his teeth

Cheers
C/O

 

Wow. I could not read this and not post. You have been very strong! Keep it up!

Peace

 

thank you, if I some junk comes my way; I'll think of you and say no WAY!

I'm happy that you kept it from ruining your life and relationships

 

Well done, dude!

 

I'm eagerly awaiting the petting zoo thread.

 

Congrats. man!! Keep it up!! Your very strong person glad you could share your story. Thank You

 

^this

And congrats for kicking the junk. Not an easy venture.

 

I don't know if any of you guys are fans of Anthony Bourdain, but in his book Kitchen Confidential he describes a scene in which he had just went with 3 other buddies to get heroin, and on the car ride back he started thinking of the statistic that only 1 in 4 people who are hooked ever get off it alive...and he vowed to be the 1 person in the car that did. Years later every other person in that car is dead except Anthony Bourdain.

So congrats man. I'm sure that has to be a damn hard habit to kick.

 

I can see where you're coming from man. I'm an alcoholic and a former chronic I.V opiate and I.V cocaine user. I recently completed a rehab program as a condition of my parole. This program encourages total abstinence. Yet I have been drinking quite regularily and still showing for up aftercare proclaiming my sobriety and giving advice to those both in the aftercare program and those still in the residential phase. Hell, I finished the meeting tonight at 10:00 and I'm already halfway through a bottle of whiskey. That's bad enough, but I know when I can finally get back to work I'll be back using opiates and/or cocaine occasionally and still get away with it. It's a hell of a guilty feeling, claiming I'm a recovering alcoholic/addict while still using.

 

I could never try dogfood man.

It's been offered to me a few times, but I'll always say no thanks to stories like yours.

 

Hey man, I can so relate to your struggle. Since the beginning of this year I had been on heroin secretly as well. It was all I thought about and the detox scared me into keeping up the habit for far too long. I stopped paying my bills, stopped talking to my family because I was ashamed, I lost a few jobs, and I did it all with my boyfriend... so in the end we had to move back to our respective hometowns to get away from the stuff and the enabling. I wonder if we can even have a relationship without drugs being involved. we both genuinely LIKE to get high. love it, even. I got a few 8mg suboxones to help me get thru the worst of the withdrawls, and i'll be done with those in 2 days. the cravings are intense, and my emotions are a fucking rollercoaster ride. my fears are that i havent actually kicked it yet even though i havent done any in 6 days.... jesus its only been six days. i havent even given myself a chance to be actually CLEAN yet and i'm constantly ignoring the idea of going downtown and trying to score with the last of my money til i find a job. i've never scored off the street, i'm a pretty girl and it scares the shit out of me to think of what could happen if i go to the wrong place. anyway this reply is all over the place.... but really congratulations on getting off the stuff, and hopefully everything came back to the way it was before your secret affair.

 

you obviously won't be using occasionally.

Hopefully you're the type who dies fast.... rather than drag your friends and family through that bullshit.

 

Bullshit. All of it.

 

There is no such thing as recovering addicts, only struggling addicts. I've been on methadone, I've tried cold-turkey, but nothing works. The smallest thing can send me into cravings - just hearing about the tv show Intervention (which I used to watch religiously while fucked up) or anything... Any sort of reference to opiates or seeing poppies (I'm a landscaper, so I see them quite often) will send me spiraling into an abyss of depression and need for it.

I've been on methadone for 3 years this October 19th (with a few relapses of course), but I hate being at baseline. I can't say that opiates aren't worth the trouble, honestly. It's caused myself and the people around me a lot of grief and even though I want to hate it on the surface, deep down I can't say I don't love it.

I think once you get the taste of opiates, nothing is ever the same. That's the way I feel, at least... All we can do is try though.

Edit : To the OP, I congratulate you brother... I've quit many things in my short life, but opiates are definitely something different. I can't compare it to quitting cocaine (which really is nothing compared to quitting oxycontin and hydromorphone) smoking was kind of a laugh, quitting booze was pretty simple other than not going out with your friends to the bar (at a young age it's really hard - especially with the drinker lifestyle as strong as ever with young people these days) and weed really is nothing.

Just keep up with your cravings by speaking with someone who cares and can keep secrets. If you're still with the same girlfriend, she might appreciate your honesty, even after the fact (I don't know what your girlfriend is like, maybe its not a good idea) but the forums are always here and they've helped me more than anything. Just gotta stay away from the opiates subforum. Good luck with the future!

 

He says he has only detoxed once. Hahahahahhahahahha. Opiate addicts each live in detox and only come out of detox when the shit is happening.

 

Well, I'd much rather be a hopeless drug addict than a person who supports that traitor Bradley Manning.