My view on ’recovery’...

[Nicaine]

... is bound to be controversial, but here it is.



You want to recover, you have to get sick to f*cking death of the hell you're putting yourself through, to the point where you want to quit a lot more than you want to use. Then you have to get away from the stuff for a goodly period of time (varies depending on the drug). Then you have to stay away from it, any way possible. If necessary, PICK UP AND MOVE. If you want to quit enough, move to some frigging isolated location out in the sticks. You'll do whatever it takes if you're really ready.



Using drugs feels damn good, most of the time. People who are 'addicted' love using drugs, but they are also aware that they're destroying themselves and hate using drugs. In other words, they badly want to use and badly want to quit at the same time. This extreme conflicting situation is called ambivalence. To recover, you have to resolve the ambivalence one way or another.



A person can dick around for years in various 12 step programs. Believe me, I did. Since I still wanted to use more than I wanted to quit, they did nothing for me. If you're truly ready to quit, they'll be equally unnecessary because you will be able to quit without them.



Hope this helps someone (or if it just pisses you off, feel free to bitch).

[Alfa]

Are you saying that you need to consume enough drugs to be sick of them to get off drugs?

[Nicaine]

I think a lot of people do, yeah. In the 12 step programs they call it "hitting bottom." You just get sick of the misery to the point where it sucks more than is fun. Either way a person has to resolve the ambivalence.

[Alfa]

But to get more sick of drugs for some may be further away thena lethal overdose. For others this reasoning may be an excuse to dive in even deeper then before.

[exabuser]

Alfa i think your being a little padantic, i'm sure nicaine is just saying that you need to be ready,not to give up but to quit the habbit.

[Nicaine]

<blockquote>Originally posted by Alfa on 18 July 2004<hr>
But to get more sick of drugs for some may be further away thenÂ*a lethal overdose. For others this reasoning may be an excuse to dive in even deeper then before.<hr></blockquote>

I agree. However, I think those people will use *any* reasoning to dive in deeper, if that's what they want to do. Any reasoning can be made into an excuse to use more, it really doesn't matter what it is.



Agreed with what you said about a lethal overdose too. Lethal overdoses happen every day of course, so some people never quit just use until they die. What do you recommend, nannying by folks who believe they know what's better for a person than the person themselves? There's too damn much of that in society. And it just doesn't work. A person can go through 100 drug treatment centers, and "relapse" 100 times. Met someone like that one time, he had literally done about 50 or 60 treatments.



It boils down to this for me: No person addicted to a drug will ever stop using without both wanting to and choosing to (provided access to it is available). It's never happened, and it never will happen. FWIW, the N.A. book agrees with me on that.

[Alfa]

I agree with you on that to.