re: Honest obituary of 20 year old dying from heroin

We have to sugarcoat everything. Being an addict sounds to bad so we have to soften it by claiming its a disease.

Claiming it as a disease is nothing more than a feel good move to try and lessen guilt.

It is what it is....Addiction.

Accept it and make the choices needed to break away from it.

getting back to the topic specifically about heroin, man that is the scariest drug i've ever seen. i'll be honest i tried it once. shot it up. i shot up on a tuedsay and i don't have a fricking clue that happened until Thursday afternoon and i was awake the whole time.

with my old addiction, even when i was in the middle of it, i could always proritize. if i needed to pay a bill i made sure the bill got paid, then if i had anything left over i'd use but i never didn't pay bills or anything or if i can tell i had been up for too long i could shut it down for a week or 2 if i had to or if work started to suffer i could shut down long enough to get back on track

not with H. nope. that motherfricker is your wife, your best friend and your mistress all in one. There is a girl in my past i probably would have married if i had caught her 6 months earlier than i did it broke my ehart that i had to cut her lose and i'm scared to see how she is doign now because i know the answer in the back of my head. she was a nurse and had unfettered access to opiates had built up a 10 pill a day habit then got fired so she went from free pills and making 50k a year to not having any income with a 300 dollar a day habit overnight. she was at her most sane when she had about 2-3 pills a day to just ward off withdrawls and the stuff she used to do i knew wasn't her but she just had no regard for anyone and would do anything to get a fix and that shite broke my heart.

i really do not understand how people get started with opiates as a recrational drug. i mean i'm sure people are saying the same about crack lol so i see the point but that is something i just could not do. i have to get some tooth work done that i keep putting off for the sole purpose i'm afraid they are going to give me an opiate for the pain and i dont' want it. i'm petrified of opiates

The sad thing is, it never goes away. People clean for years still get urges to use once in awhile.

It's a constant battle.

Because of how your brain Responds. It's basically rewired

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It's not a disease...

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Agreed.

Just want to chime in on my own vices and struggles over the last few years, which were mostly started from both of my parents openly giving me opioids when they felt they were needed (basically self medicating me with shite that should have been dealt with by Advil or tough love). I was smart enough to overcome my issues when I decided to move away from my home state to go to college at LSU. These were the best years of my life. I was no longer surrounded by a terrible environment that I had been raised around. In the last few years I have been back in the area I was raised in and nothing has changed. It takes an immense amount of resolve to keep my demons from resurfacing again, and I'm not perfect, so there were times where I struggled. But for the most part, I have come to this most important conclusion:

Addiction is not a disease unless you convince yourself it is. You are in control of yourself and with enough resolve and help from others, you can overcome. Also, this problem is one rooted in our environment. The six years I lived in Louisiana, I had zero issue with any of my impulses from back at home. I was truly happy and surrounded by some of the best people a man could ever appreciate.

It's an environmental issue, the one that surrounds our life at the moment, and that is what that I truly believe.

Downvote me if you like, as you see my small post count, because I don't care of votes either way. My post history shows I only ever chime in on threads that I feel I can contribute, and I have been on TD since my sophomore year at LSU in 2007. I just try to have meaning in the time I do decide to "chime in".

you know, honestly, that i don't agree with.

i've been clean off crack for 4 years 9 months. and i haven't had a legit urge to smoke crack in well over 4 years. the cloest i came was 6 months in and i was having a shite tastic day and that's how i used to cope with bad days so i had a strong urge but i don't just walk around thinking about smoking crack anymore it doesn't work like that i'm far enough from the drug to understand i don't want it anymore and i can see the entire path i took while i was one it and i'm not going back there nope not happening.


in MY experience, as someone who was in NA/AA for 7 years, who sponsored a bunch of people, who have watched people release time and time again something like that happens all the same.. you think you are clean enough to where one taste won't hurt you and you are back to the races. you haven't fully accepted you can't do this shite anymore.

Did you not read the rest of that? There's no logical conclusion to draw from it being a disease or not, it changes nothing.

The efficacy of treatment and the impact of addiction is the same. Who cares? Why does it mean so much to you that people agree on such a trivial thing?

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Physiological changes do occur in addiction. That's why you get addicted

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I guess it depends on how one defines the term. I should have used the word mechanical. Your brain has a chemical/electrical function that is far more complex than say, your rotator cuff. Changes in the neurological function of your brain occur all the time. Addiction is certainly a change in the brain. My points still stand. Its a "disorder" not a "disease". Changes in brain function that result in personality changes, pain tolerances, behaviors, perceptions, etc are usually called "disorders".

It's a bitch my man, but it's part of my character now and I have to live with it. It's actually made me a better person, I have a stronger appreciation for life today. Don't ever try that shite, and I'm glad you realize that it's not something to mess with!