The best way to avoid a heroin relapse

[willowwater]

I hear so much of people coming off heroin with the use of methadone, subutex etc. and then ending back up as an addict again!!!
The best way to stop this from happening is to go cold turkey. I was smoking it for over 2 years to the point where it took a starter dose of 100ml to ease the cluck, and I relapsed again not long after.
The reason I find cold turkey the most effective method for quitting is because once I did it,( no valiums or ganga, nothing,) I felt every pain and emotion, and it stays in your mind. It's the best deterrent I've come across, it definately taught me a lesson.

I must stress that this is only true if you don't take any other drugs, as you'll forget the most important lessons a cluck can teach you if your on valium or cannabis.

You need to feel every bit of your cluck to learn!

Reputation Comments on this post:

	some extremely valid points. i happen to agree with all of it.
	i happen to agree there, cold turkey is one way, but only if one is strong enough to cope.

[dyingtomorrow]

SWIM has been in horrible withdrawals at least a hundred times and has not learned anything from them. Maybe if you liked your life before becoming a heroin addict, or don't mind "normal society and living" then such a thing could be a learning lesson. Otherwise, with no desire to return to normal, let alone have to start off worse than before, there's no way to avoid relapse really. SWIM is only alive when he is on heroin, and his life is just a blurry coma of manifold pain in between each shot. There's no point in feeling any more pain then you have to when in withdrawal.

[willowwater]

From my pesonal experience I've found that if you really want to teach yourself a lesson that you'll remember, you need to experience it with a sober mind so the experience isn't forgotten.

[rokman nash]

SWIM is only alive when he is on heroin, and his life is just a blurry coma of manifold pain in between each shot. There's no point in feeling any more pain then you have to when in withdrawal.

I don't know what to say to that.I guess since my friend Dave avoided the needle(with the exception of coke in the 80's)all I can say is try to stay alive and one day something will change for you.It hurts my heart to see this pain on my screen(i'm no homo, not that theres anything wrong with that).All I can offer is the hope that swim will find something else to live for before you lose your life. Daves an old man of 43 who's been doing one thing or another since before you were born. It took a lot of shit for him to see the light.Only you can find your light before its to late.Peace and safety

ROC
do the day or the day will do you

[dyingtomorrow]

Originally Posted by willowwater

From my pesonal experience I've found that if you really want to teach yourself a lesson that you'll remember, you need to experience it with a sober mind so the experience isn't forgotten.

I would wager that the vast vast majority of people who go through heroin withdrawals without the aid of anything to alleviate them do not learn a lesson and revert to usage within a relatively short amount of time. The decision to quit heroin is entirely philosophical and cognitive, or subject to life circumstances (e.g. you won't get this million dollar inheritance if you do heroin), for the overwhelming number of heroin addicts in SWIM's opinion, from his personal experience and from viewing the lives of many addicts.

Some kind of poisons you can grow immune to, some, like arsenic, build up and destroy you. SWIM would put heroin withdrawals in the category of the latter - being in a state of such unbelievably intense pain for such a long time, for so many times - something you get weaker and weaker from and that slowly and irrevocably warps and darkens your soul. Unnecessary pain is foolish except for the rare occasion of someone who "accidentally" got addicted to heroin and had a fulfilling life before drug abuse.

[Dickon]

Bit of a rant, so read at your peril....

Willow,

I think Dying Tomorrow is closer to the mark here than you are. I think the number of people who have done cold turkeys without drugs and then gone on to relapse militates against this kind of argument alongside the number of people who have quit by reduction. I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who is nearly 5 years off opiates, and he took 18 months to reduce his methadone down to 5mg a day, and then he used lofexidine (which is not a mood altering drug, although it does aleviate withdrawal symptoms) and said the withdrawal was painless. Go figure!

The moral is simple: making generalisations about addiction is difficult at best. I was actually talking about this to "Aftercare Mark" and he was saying how he hates it how people in the addiction "industry" (the treatment side that is) often fall into this trap. What works for me may well not work for you.

Your initial implicit premise is also contentious. Not wishing to get into the "Great Methadone Debate", but just to notice that it exists: some say that using methadone or buprenorphine (subutex, suboxone) is no more clean than using heroin. Methadone in particular is a full opiate agonist, as is heroin. OK, I can't resist, I am going to say something on this in the form of the following question: if one went to a doctor for heroin addiction and was prescribed pharmaceutical diamorphine (that's heroin, but it's fancy name) would one then be clean? Simplistically this comes down to lifestyle or drug-use defining being clean.

I certainly think people using are methadone or bupe are still addicts, even if they wish to describe themselves as clean. So in some sense you are comparing apples with oranges. For many maintenance therapy is an absolute life saver, for other such as my-cat's-self it was as bad if not a worse addiction as the ones it was designed to replace, and the cat had just as much problem controling it. For example his initial script was for 30mg a day orally, and the most he used was 700mg i.v. in one day. There have been periods of stable methadone using in my cat's history, periods of stable morphine using, periods of reasonably stable heroin using (always harder to tell with street drugs), periods of unstable using of morphine and periods of unstable heroin use. My cat liked methadone because it stopped him from being sick, but hated it because it greyed out his life, made him totally unable to genuinely connect with other cats and humans and because of the delightfully long withdrawal that it affords to those who finally want to quit it.

I've been through a bad withdrawal or two (from what you'll have to guess!), and stayed clean for periods of time, the longest being just shy of 2 years. Well here I am again 2 months into another phase of non-drinking self-righteosness (kidding, about the self-righteousness, but I've not touched a drink or drugs in 2 months) and guess what, the cat's non-drug assisted withdrawal from methadone is all but forgotten. It was some kind of awful thing, but I can't viscerally place myself back there. It's a good job I've written it all out on the "Screaming in the night air" thread, so I can look at it if I need reminding. Seriously I feel nostalgic for the withdrawal. It was kind of fun. No, don't get me wrong, I'm saying "never again", don't doubt me. Nevertheless it's like a kind of horrific adventure, a vision quest. The worse a withdrawal, the better a story it makes and the funnier it is to remember. Am I weird like that, or do others see it that way once the symptoms have gone?

So, in conclusion, a good (by which I mean bad) withdrawal is fun to have gone through, but not fun at the time. It may make one say "never again", although this is far from inevitable. Others reach a point of wanting to quit, and as painless a withdrawal as possible is most humane and might be the only way they will succeed. Cliche of the day: horses for courses.

Dickon

[AvidFan]

Yes, it all depends in some ways on why you started in the first place. For DT (I feel your pain, some days Patient X feels like that, but not always thankfully) it seems, right now, that heroin is the only way to live. That is a personal choice, in a way Patient X admires it, for it is not an easy decision to make either.

Getting clean and staying clean, X thinks, comes down to that philosophical and cognitive bit as DT states. As Nietzche would say, "He who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how" If you do not get your reasons straight in your mind for why you want to quit, it will be nigh on impossible to stay clean, no matter the thought of horrible wd's to come...

Patient X has had to rely on the life coaching he received from a friend when he was quitting smoking. He has referred back to his notes, the NLP and other exercises they did. His two prime values in life? His health, and his freedom. Being ensnared by a chain of vile smoking things was an insult to those values. As was being enslaved by a constant chain of OXY pills (Ok, maybe they're not as long term deadly as smoking, but they were certainly not doing his mental health any good, and had started to interfere with various aspects of his physical and mental functioning).

If you can get the why sorted out, getting through the wd's is step one. Patient X did it relatively cold turkey, used a few things here and there, but he got through them. Next thing is never to go back there.

Like Dickon's cat he does feel a bizarre nostalgia for the intensity of it all, but doesn't want to revisit it again. He hopes his why will keep his how going.

[witchychick]

for swim the best way of avoiding relapse was to get other things in life to take its place. swim went cold turkey, and focused on what they wanted in life and it wasn't to be a slave to junk anymore. the money , the people swim was mixing with, the desperate acts to get it etc... swim focussed on the career they had always wanted and got a job quite fast ( luckily ).. ended up working with fellow addicts in harm reduction rather than abstinance and judgement. that helped hugely. plus swim felt useful. also remembering the agony of withdrawal and swim now having long term health probs due to drug use years ago. all these things helped.

[MorganUK9]

Methadone is the worst thing to go on imp.
In swims opinion if you are ready to get clean then a quick detox is the only real way.
Swim will never again go on such a long (over 2 yrs) reduction programme.

[johnnyyen]

Originally Posted by willowwater

I hear so much of people coming off heroin with the use of methadone, subutex etc. and then ending back up as an addict again!!!
The best way to stop this from happening is to go cold turkey. I was smoking it for over 2 years to the point where it took a starter dose of 100ml to ease the cluck, and I relapsed again not long after.
The reason I find cold turkey the most effective method for quitting is because once I did it,( no valiums or ganga, nothing,) I felt every pain and emotion, and it stays in your mind. It's the best deterrent I've come across, it definately taught me a lesson.

I must stress that this is only true if you don't take any other drugs, as you'll forget the most important lessons a cluck can teach you if your on valium or cannabis.

You need to feel every bit of your cluck to learn!

SWIM believes the points made in this post are valid,SWIM has had three distinct habits in his life,the second of which was ended shortly after the death of a friend through overdose..
SWIM was in bits because of this and,determined to get himself straight walked to the shops,bought a weeks supply of cigarettes,soft drinks,milk,food basics,came home locked the door unplugged his phone and got on with his rattle,by the end of day two he was upside down with all of the classic symptoms but carried on determined not to break down and score or seek help for the pains..
after day 5 was done SWIM could keep some food down and walk around his block,he thought he would never forget the effort and willpower he had got through that time with,and for ten years he didnt....if he was tempted to get in those ten years he remembered just how fucked he was when cleaning up..
the memories of this time did fade tho' and SWIM started chipping again until he became full blown once more..
SWIM did it the easy way this time with subbies,but SWIM wants to say he will ensure his memory does not fade again..SWIM is too old for this shit now..he wishes his good friend was still here to agree..S.P.(1970-1997) rip old chap..