addiction
The realities of addition; the truth about living under, above and beyond the influence of drugs and alcohol.
Understanding Addiction
Understanding Addiction Introduction: It’s no secret that addiction is a problem in the world. No one is arguing that, but the thing is, society has an image of what an addict is, and the sad truth is that the image that society has is 100% incorrect. The fact is that today, an addict of any kind is automatically treated as a criminal and hauled off to jail. Yes, doing drugs is against the law, and for very good reason I might add, but is imprisonment really the right answer? I guess that depends on your experience with addiction as well as the people that suffer from it, so in this article, I am going to try to show you why there are better alternatives than prison for people that suffer from addiction as well as what some of those alternatives are, but in order for you to really understand WHY people that suffer from addiction need help that prison doesn’t offer, you must first understand what addiction really is, and what some of the reasons behind it are, as well was what society can do to actually help the problem.
By Crazy-Inker5 years ago in Psyche
How To Drug Detox?
Drug withdrawal occurs when a person who has used a particular substance for long enough and in sufficient quantities to become addicted to the drug, whether it is physically, psychologically, or both, stops using it. Read full article on How to Drug Detox below:
By Mustafa Rangoonwala5 years ago in Psyche
How To Detox Cocaine?
When people stop using addictive drugs like cocaine, they often lead to withdrawal symptoms such as restlessness, fatigue, and trouble sleeping. These types of symptoms are the main reasons people avoid learning how to detox from cocaine. Unfortunately, it is easier to continue using than to undergo uncomfortable physical and mental changes. Read full article on "How To Detox Cocaine" ? below:
By Mustafa Rangoonwala5 years ago in Psyche
The Final Binge
The sun beat down as Lucas opened his eyes to the world, weathered green paint filled his view as he rolled over onto his back. He lay in daze, doing his best to fight waking up fully. A seagull in the distance and the sound of waves shocked his mind back to reality however, quickly sitting up to examine his surroundings, he became aware that he was on the back deck of some cheap beachside motel. He should be panicking considering he lives nearly three hundred miles from the nearest beach, but he was accustomed to waking up in strange places. The last thing he remembered he had gone to the pub for a few drinks after he had been let go from his job for being late or drunk for too many shifts, and he hadn’t driven since his license had been revoked two years prior, so he knew he hadn’t gotten here on his own. He searched around him for his phone so he could try to piece things together knocking over an empty bourbon bottle in the process. He became nervous when he didn’t see it, crawling around on all fours back and forth from one end of the deck to the other picking through the rubbish he had spread then passed out in the night before. He was on the verge of giving up when the glare of the sun bounced off something in the sand nearby, his phone sat half submerged about a foot away on the other side of the deck.
By Jarred S Baker5 years ago in Psyche
An Insane Voice
Sometimes, life has a cunning way of teaching you a lesson. In my expireince, the most prudent lessons that I have learned were dealt by a firm hand. I have been struck down and risen up, only to be beat back again. It was a pernicious cylce of self-reliance which finally came to an abrupt end. I dont know if it was grace, ignorance, or my own ego, but here I am, writing to you a "changed" man. Back then, in a twisted way, I found solace in my own destruction. Outside of instinctual drive, I beleive there to be no true answer as to why people do what they do, espeically when it comes to alcohol and drug addiction.
By Tyler Forte5 years ago in Psyche
Addicts Hurt Themselves and Others 2
Story 3 I am having a rough time..my daughter ran away March 8th, she has untreated mental health issues and a drug addiction, has refused help, refused to go to court to testify against her boyfriend for a protection against abuse order.. On that day she got violent, refused to go to court,..when I got back from court..she was gone. She ran away to be with him. He's been abusing her and giving her drugs but she's in denial there's a problem. His mother enables him. Now she wants to get emancipated and.. during this time she never came home.. I only communicated with her a couple of times but tried so many..but she blocked me. I joined Al-Anon to help with my healing but I do miss her and wish we could heal our relationship. I do understand though that she is responsible for her own recovery and has to accept for herself that she even needs help in the first place. It still hurts and breaks my heart though.
By John Charles Harman5 years ago in Psyche
Addicts Hurt Themselves and Others
Story 1 I’ve recently begun marriage counseling... alone for now. My therapist suggested I research and gain some insight from Al-anon as some of our marital concerns stem from alcohol abuse but after reading through many of your posts I am not sure I am in the right place or if Al-anon is the right fit for my situation. For those of you with experience would you consider someone who may not drink regularly (daily) but when they do drink they tend to binge drink an issue? The binge drinking tends to get excessive, often leads to driving when he probably shouldn’t, he’s verbally abusive if you suggest he’s had enough to drink or if you’ll drive instead of him, he’s defensive and just plain mean. The more he drinks the more he needs to drink over the years. The last few times this has happened he’s blacked out. He’s ruined my kids birthdays , vacations, anniversaries, etc. I’m typically his target so I’ve just learned to move out of his way. I’m grateful after hearing many other stories this typically only occurs monthly and not daily. After 30 years it’s old, tired and heartbreaking. I thought he’d outgrow the binge drinking, I always thought it was young immature behavior as I always thought of alcohol abuse as being someone who drank daily or something totally different than what was going on here. I now realize there are different types of addiction and ways they affect peoples lives. All that I know is that looking back on our memories and a life I had hoped to be a happy one I have vivid regular memories of a lot of drunken horrible tear filled ends to what should have been beautiful days and now my children are grown. A lot of time lost I won’t get back. I’m hurt and I’m angry.
By John Charles Harman5 years ago in Psyche
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
