addiction
The realities of addition; the truth about living under, above and beyond the influence of drugs and alcohol.
How Can I Make It Through This Craving?
Of course, the most uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms can be cravings - the intense pull, the overwhelming desire to take the substance or conduct the activity. Cravings are downright cruel. It seems when you commit to cease your substance or activity, these demons dance around you, tease you and taunt you back into self-harm. These cravings can be heartbreaking, especially when you begin to see your mind scheming ways to get out of the detox to return to your addiction. This is where you see the very depth of your soul, the yearning for something more, the longing to relieve the pain. You also realise just how resourceful and persistent your mind is. Just imagine if you could apply this same time, energy and passion to a noble pursuit!
By Belinda Tobin5 years ago in Psyche
Pregnant and on methadone.
This is my story of being pregnant and on methadone. I have seen a lot and I have been through even more. My goal by sharing these videos and telling my stories is to change the way societies view addicts, addiction, and mental illness. We need real change in the sense of giving more sympathy and having more empathy for addicts and people who suffer from mental illness. By telling my story of being a heroin addict and pregnant, I can give insight to the true story of an addict. The story of a young girl who was taken advantage of and turned to drugs as a crutch to see the light at the end of a very dark and cold tunnel. The story of a woman who was given drugs without any idea of what will happen in the future. There is more to an addict then stealing and thieving. There is more to an addict than pawning stolen boomboxes, radios, and t.v’s. There is more to an addict than driving for hours, 5 times a day, to pick up a sack of white or brown powder. There is more to addiction than puking in a bag in the front seat while waiting on your dealer to show up, for the sixth hour in a row. There is more an addict than years of depending on a substance to be happy and for a good laugh. There is more to addiction than picking up a substance and choosing to get high in that moment. There is so much more. I am here to tell everything there is. The raw, dirty, immoral, disappointing nights of crawling in the streets so you are not sick in the morning. Hiding your kids in the back seat so hopefully they do not see what you are doing in the front seat. The choosing between food and a syringe. The choice you make everyday between where to steal from because you have been in this store too much lately, or that store too much last week.
By TheAddictMom5 years ago in Psyche
Lucid Daydreams
StartPrologue A fierce pull off a cigarette fills my lungs, as well as the yearning void that dwells within me. Noxious toxins do their job, numbing any feelings of the hollow existence others refer to as life. Once my lungs are near capacity, I pull the cigarette away but continue to inhale, letting cool air chase the warm down into the black abyss. The automatic valve is released, pouring the billowy fumes out into the air. This drawn-out version of suicide is one of many weapons in my arsenal to combat the everlasting struggle against myself.
By J A Allison5 years ago in Psyche
WardLord
After my first psychotic episode, I chalked it up to being drunk as fuck and getting no sleep. It made sense at the time, I mean it is what happened but unfortunately it became the new normal for me. I had my own barracks room to myself because the roomate I was assigned lived with his girlfriend out in town and only kept some of his gear in the room. So I did whatever the hell I wanted without bothering anybody. I would stay up and drink until the early morning watching episodes of Dexter. I didnt think I was causing much harm to my body. I was only twenty years old and I would bounce back with two or three hours of sleep and perform fairly well at work for the most part. I was a rifleman by trade but I had been sent to an office job because they needed a warm body who could do computer shit and field shit. I am still terrible with technology but learned a bunch on the fly to keep from being screamed at. So I am learning a completely new job while getting two hours of sleep during the week all while very quickly becoming a bonifide boozer. My sweat smelled like PBR or vodka depending but not too many people noticed unless I had a rough night. In the military people try really hard to cover for their friends and subordinates because it keeps everybody out of trouble. Most safety briefs comprised of the Sergeant Major telling us that if he didn't have good friends around him he would have been arrested many times, that is the reality for almost everybody in the Marines. We take care of each other, and the way almost all of us grew up, we don't talk about what happened. The next psychotic rampage I went on involved LSD and tequila and my friends took as good of care of me as they could. I went to a rave in Balboa Park in San Diego at the World Beat Center. It was a blast and I had taken some acid for the first time. I did not really tell anybody I did it I just took it and had a wonderful time while I was there. I did not really know what to expect of the trip except that I would see some cool shit. I really enjoyed it while the lights and the music were hitting my system. We got back to the hotel and I started drinking, nobody knew that I had taken the acid until I started getting pretty drunk and wobbly while peaking from the gel tab I had ingested. Everyone looked like a goblin to me, their eyes were droopy and skin cracked and I felt like I was in danger so I kept drinking thinking some how that it would fix it. I ended up blacking out and starting several fights at the party and throwing plates in the hotel and smashing glasses and dancing in the glass with my bare feet. It cut me up pretty good and my friends threw me in the shower while I was screaming at them that I was going to kill them. There is a video of me getting choked unconcious by someone at the party and throwing up all over the place after I had already taken a shower. Everyone was mad as fuck at me and rightfully so, I should have never taken the acid in the state of mind I was in, I should have never drank while tripping and frying my system even further. My friends took care of me instead of throwing me out on the street or calling the cops. They fought the guy that choked me out and stood up for me. I wonder sometimes what would have happened if they had kicked me out of the hotel. They took care of me many other nights but none were that bad until later in 2016 on Labor Day weekend. I felt horrible about the anger I was causing my friends by being such a liability anywhere we went. They set up an intervention of sorts where they told me they were going to have to tell the higher ups to send me to rehab if I didn't chill the fuck out. I hated that I had caused so many problems when I was just trying to have a good time. I hated myself and treated the people around me like garbage. So I decided to turn it down a few pegs and it worked for a few months. Then I got a DUI, everyone was asleep at a bonfire that I had went to and I decided I needed to go get something to eat around 6am. I almost made it to Denny's before I got blue lighted. It was my first time being arrested and it wouldn't be my last. The arresting officer asked me if I wanted to do the field sobriety test and I told him I was going to fail but might as well try it out. I did okay with the test but everybody involved knew I was going to jail because I was still only twenty years old. I am so grateful that I was arrested instead of running somebody over trying to get a breakfast burrito. I had a few years of not driving ahead of me to think about how shitty those kinds of choices were and how I could have hurt many people my whole life. I had always driven drunk. I never thought twice about it at all. Now every time I got in an uber or had to walk a few miles to go get something to eat I was cursing my poor judgement. I have just recently been taking off of probation in the state of California and can now cross the border into Canada without being turned away. Five years later I have a new appreciation for some rules being there for a good reason at the time of this arrest I was made at the world and embarrased that I had gotten caught. I was reduced in rank, pay, and was put on thirty days restriction and thirty days labor by my unit. In the civilian world, I had to get a lawyer, my truck out of impound, and pay over five thousand dolars in fines and court fees that I did not have. I was broke, I was a scared little boy in a big boy world. I tried to play it off like I didn't care, like I was tough and owning up to mistakes. I felt like a fraud and I wanted to go home. While on restriction I started doing a cough and cold medicine called Tripple Cs by those of us who abused the OTC medication. If you take the whole pack of sixteen pills you will trip pretty fucking hard. I didn't know that it could cause liver and kidney failure or I would have taken more. I wanted to die but didn't really have words for it. I would take tripple cs a few times a week and drink budlight until the wee hours. I wasn't supposed to be drinking, I wasn't supposed to be doing anything. It didn't really affect my ability to listen to the people in charge of me that day or to carry out the tasks. So I started doing it more and more often during the day and just giggling to myself because I was high as fuck and functioning okay at work. Our batallion Sergeant Major held a safety brief the Friday that I was going to be let off of restriction with no incident. I was pretty excited to just get out of the barracks and had no plans of getting into trouble, and then he asked if any Marine was aware of a drug called tripple c's. Of course nobody raised their hand because even if you knew you didn't want to be the one to have to explain in front of seven hundred of your peers and superiors. He explained that one of his childhood friend's daughter had overdosed and passed away after taking eight tripple c's one night that week and that he would be making them take the medicine out of the Post Exchange because he noticed the shelf was bare and he didn't want any of us to die from being a dumbass and trying to get high. Little did he or anyone else know that I had taken three packs by myself the night before. I felt disapointed that I wasn't dead. Its a hard feeling to explain, finding out you probably should have crossed over Jordan the night before yet there I was at 5pm the next day getting ready for the weekend feeling fine. I decided I probably shouldn't kill myself on purpose but the riding it til the wheels fell off approach seemed like fun. I didn't want to die in that moment, I just did not want to keep going on, so I decided I would party within the limits of acceptable with my friends and in my own company push those limits to death's doorstep as often as possible. I didn't want people to be mad at me when I was gone. I wanted them to think of me as I wanted to view myself, a normal dude just trying to have fun. The more I stayed up alone in my room, drugs or no drugs, beer or otherwise I was seeing weird things in the corners of the room. My laptop would appear to float in the air as if I was using the force. I would brush my teeth and in my bathroom mirror I would see goblins perched in my shower. I would hear voices that sounded Demonic that would laugh and tell me I was going to meet them soon. I didn't want to tell anybody because they would either laugh it off that I saw gobblins or they would make me go to rehab. I was doing outpatient rehab refferals and getting ready to go to classes and I was ready to either get cleaned up or kill myself. I was starting to see more shit during the day and I wasn't using anything that day, but its a hard thing to explain to anybody. One way or the other I was going to make it stop. and I couldn't decide if death or sober living and getting help was worse.
By Noah Brownlee5 years ago in Psyche
Let’s break up..PLEASE!!
We are done!! Over!! Never again!!! GOOD FUCKING BYE!!!! We have been together for over 15 years now and I am sorry but it’s not working for me anymore. You have become so selfish and manipulative, and most importantly abusive. I guess I can’t blame you entirely, I allowed it to get this bad. I guess I just held on to the past and thought about the good times we shared. I remember it like yesterday when you came into my life. My neighbor introduced us and although nervous at first and shy I decided to get to know you. We all went out and had a few drinks and enjoyed the downtown night life and for once in my life I was care free and alive. You made me feel so alive!! I wasn’t sure if I would ever see you again after that night but you were very persistent and I enjoyed having you around, I felt like I could be the real me. I loved you for that. You lit a spark inside me that made me believe that I was holding back this whole time and had sooo much more to offer. I remember when I brought you to my job for the first time. “Wow Jenny you have a glow about you tonight” “ Omg table 14 loves you and wants you to take care of them next time, great service tonight!” At that very moment I truly believed it was because of you. You ignited my soul, again, you made me come alive. I remember that very same night laying down and giving thanks that you came into my life. I always thought I was out going and social but NOW I mean NOW I was the REAL me!!!! The saying is 100% true “hindsight is 20/20”. I am not going to lie things were great at first but then you never gave me alone time. Constantly wanting to spend time together WE HAD to be together, cause if not people would know the truth. The truth....the truth that you weren’t my everything, you didn’t really make me feel alive, all you did was help mask the pain and hurt I had pushed down and didn’t want to come up. I mean people always say to take your worries away focus on the positive. Well my positive from the age 22 was Cocaine. Many of you would have believed to this point I was talking about a intimate relationship with another being. Well coke was that partner for me. Little did I know 13 years later I would have been by a lake praying to God asking why? Why do I have to live when all I do is cause pain? Why am I this way? Why can’t people love ME!! The real ME!!! That night I was told to kill myself because I would do everyone a favor. Was I that horrible? Had things gotten that bad? And the answer was YES!!! I had been kicked out of my home living in my car, raped beaten and completely alone. The once amazing partner that had brought me to life was now killing me. That night I checked myself into rehab and never thought in a million years that rehab would help. WRONG!!!! I had never seen life in a better light than I did when I was sober. Sober! Holy shit!! It was amazing!! Absolutely incredible! Until 7 months later I was dealt a similar situation of feeling not wanted shamed and not enough. And BAM....My soft crystalline friend showed up. This time was different though. I did NOT feel alive like I was did, I did feel loved or wanted, I felt like scum. What the hell happened to coke? Do your trick? What’s going on? I never knew til that very moment that I had such a close relationship with this drug because I had a lot of things I suppressed and pushed down and couldn’t deal with. I was diagnosed with Major depression. general anxiety and PTSD. I had been using coke to self medicate because in my mind it worked. And I’m not going to sit here and bullshit you, it did work, at one point. But in the end made my mental illness and past trauma worse. I struggle every day with the urge to use coke, to mask my insecurities to deal with life, to freaking adult for the day. I have slipped numerous times but I at a point in my life I want to breakup for good with my first love. Life is going to be rough and some days I will feel like dying but with right medication the right support and that “hindsight” I choose to LIVE! I choose to live flaws trauma baggage and all! I choose to be Jenny Davis. NOT a side piece to a destructive manipulative and abusive partner. GOODBYE!!!
By Jenny Davis 5 years ago in Psyche
Drugs to stop other Drugs
I grew up in South Mississippi, the view of psychedelics in my area have been taboo for as long as they have been in the public eye. My first experiences with psychedelics were effected by the perception I naturally had from growing up here. My first handful of trips were horrible at the time but taught me many character flaws that I was refusing to address or even aware of. I was no longer afraid to do soul searching and look into the way I treated my body, mind and the people around me. During this phase of my life I was doing high doses of MDMA as well as drinking absurd amounts of beer and vodka. I was pushing myself towards death and I could not have cared less. I smoked two packs a day, I used a can of dip a day, and washed it all down with Monster and Hot Pockets. I was not taking care of any aspect of my life. I worked hard and partied hard, it worked for about six months before my mind completely snapped. I was in psychosis for months. I was in and out of inpatient psych care and substance abuse rehab centers. I was mostly sober, except for the LSD I could sneak. So not sober at all, but it was slowly changing the way I viewed myself and the habits that I had stacked up that had nearly killed me. I kept this use a secret for as long as possible and I was never actually caught, somehow it helped me more than the therapy sessions and the classes. I have not done any of the hard drugs that I was involved with since 2016 because of this. It seems like it would not work and that I was just fucking off but it helped me heal from the damage that my abuse of speed, coke and ketamine had done. I finally moved home from San Diego to Mississippi and refused to go to any 12 Step meetings for a while. I eventually got depressed and lonely enough to go to a local meeting and I dove head first into the whole AA thing. It helped me very much and gave me the break from my own thoughts that I needed. I made it one year completely sober which I had not done since I was fourteen years old. Everybody was proud of me again and it felt good to be recongized for some positive change instead of wrecking my life and forcing people to help me. I lasted about six more months before I decided I wanted to eat shrooms again for the first time since 2016. So I ordred a grow kit and grew about 8 grams in my first try. At the time, I was not doing any drugs besides smoking Marlboro Smooths and taking CBD gummies to help with knee pain and for sleep. I had smoked since I was fourteen and I felt horrible pain in my chest from when I woke up until I went to sleep. I was still attending local meetings and keeping up appearences while growing mushrooms next to my bed. I felt like a total piece of shit, and I wish that I had owned up to it sooner but I wanted to change my state of mind more than I wanted to be truthful. I ate the shrooms after drying them out for a few days and it was off to the races. I did not really have a goal other than trying to stop smoking because I had saw an article about how it might work. So I lit up a square and tried to take a drag and almost threw up from the awful taste in my mouth. It felt as if I was trying to swallow bleach with my lungs. I threw it in my coffee can ash tray on my porch and went inside to lay on my bed. It took a while to get comfortable but once I did I closed my eyes and I saw visions of cancer growing in lungs and myself in a casket. I saw my friends and family looking down on me crying, I tried to open my eyes to make it go away but my room when I looked around was still a funeral proceeding. After a few minutes the visions subsided and I had a warm feeling in my stomach, it was pleasurable while also being extremely painful. When that pleasure/pain went away, I started thinking about how my past choices were going to be the death of me if I did not start taking care of myself. That trip started a few months of me trying to smoke weed and dabbling again with LSD. During these trips I was able to look from a different angle at why I needed to be high to be okay. It was never about what drug it was, anything was better than my own mind to me at the time. Since then, I have taken a few more trips and changed my relationship with booze. I am able to have a single beer and enjoy a football game without completely going off the rails. This has been going on for over two years, I can be inside my mind without smoking, without destroying my brain or my body with the many substances that almost killed me. I learned to be okay with being single and not be a codependent asshole. Now I am married with kids and have a peaceful self employed life. I found my groove. It took me twenty three years but I sure as hell am where I am supposed to be, with who I am suppossed to be with. I know myself and have learned to love me for me. I still have my bad days, some come in frequent waves but I am still here and Im okay. Magic shroomies and LSD helped me fix myself, it gave me a chance to really look at how I was fucking up and I am a far better human being because of these experiences. This isn't a promotion of doing drugs that can land you in prison, but if you are stuck in a rut and are very desperate for some positive changes, do some research and make your own choice.
By Noah Brownlee5 years ago in Psyche
My Trauma's Got A Trigger Finger
My trauma has a very active trigger finger. It fires when I least expect it, and long after I thought I'd dealt with the pain and repercussions of my past relationship. I know my experience isn't unique, but the old adage of 'a problem shared...' might prove to be somewhat true if I get my thoughts out into the ether of the internet. Or so my thinking goes.
By Nati Saednejad5 years ago in Psyche
When Sexting Becomes an Addiction
For many, sexting or delivering sexually explicit material via electronic devices can turn into an addiction. While sexting addiction isn't a diagnosable mental state condition; many specialists state it could be an element of sexual addiction and an important effect on day-to-day functioning.
By Fahim Chughtai5 years ago in Psyche
