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Avatar universal

Spiritual

I feel that my addiction has seperated me from God, family and friends. I feel very empty and lonely. I just can't understand why i keep using when I know that my life is not happy and peaceful. Why am I so willing to exchange the opiate rush for the beautiful gifts of life? Am I so afraid of who I really am? could I really be that insecure? Has my self worth given up? What makes up the complexities of my addiction? I look forward to learning and being Clean.....
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590280 tn?1310087366
when you find the answers please let me know...as i am someone in the very same shoes as you. my life $ucks right now...its worse and worse everyday. i have the power to change it, only i do...yet i still lie and cheat my way through life just to count pills on a daily basis. these pills got a hold on me...and i have to rise above and be stronger, as do you...but how???  why???
Helpful - 0
306455 tn?1288862071
"Worried" posted a good article over on the social side, that you should read:
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/show/719814
Paste and copy this to your browser.
It really explains what happens to our brains on these drugs and why it so hard to quit.
Also you should go to the Health Pages (upper, right side of this page) and read a lot of the articles there. The more you educate yourselves on our addiction the better armed you'll be to fight it.
The drugs have taken over our brains and our brains think they are fighting for survival.
Please read the article.
And visit our social side, when your up to it.
Helpful - 0
306455 tn?1288862071
I guess you don't have to copy and paste....just click on the site in blue.
Nice change MedHelp.
Helpful - 0
518798 tn?1295212279
Same here.  I have always been a devoted church member and worked diligently in my church.  All during my addiction I continued to work and the other members loved me.  When I admitted I had a problem, I have since been treated like I have the plague.  People who once thought I was wonderful now want absolutely nothing to do with me.  It is a fight I am going to have to go through and get over.  It is a struggle, but I am determined I am going to make it.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
WOW!  That was me a week ago.  I did not have the courage and I was to ashamed to tell my husband.  That all changed because of a mixed up test and my pain doctor telling me to see another doctor.  That mix up was God.  It had to be.  I never took the pill that she said I was taking on the side.  Never even heard of it.  It was God.  He answered my prayer in a wierd way but he got my attention.  I have been praying to him for months to give me the strength to quit.  With my husband by my side I am getting my life back.  I am only on day four and I am weaning off but I feel a change in me already.  The old me wants to come out.  I would rather be in pain then go through this again.  

My husband has my pills and gives me my dose every 6 hours.  With him in charge and his help I am doing it.  I feel liberated.  Don't wait until you are ready.  If you look in the mirror and you don't like what you see go to your doctor and tell him/her you need help.  It can save your life.  

I am down to 4 pills a day.  Five days ago I was on a 25mg patch and 10 vicodin a day.  The WD are bad but not as bad as losing my family to pills.  Think about it.  

Good luck.  I am praying for you.  
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
I used to feel the same.
For me I think it was because I disliked everything about where the life of drugs had taken me.
You hate it yet still can not stop as you lose your inner strength.
I'll never forget the day something suddenly clicked inside of me.
It had been building up, pure hate for myself, deppression at its lowest.
I just woke up one day and said to myself I can't carry on like this, I'll end up in the gutter.
Its not easy by any means but I have found my hidden strength that is now louder then the voice of evil,
I've had slip ups along the way but the difference is I can now sit and look at it logically and move on from it instead of it dragging me back.
I'm by no means at the end of my jorney but I have the faith and strength to believe  I can get there.

Everyone has there own time to move on from the life of drugs and you will know when you reach there.

Good luck hun, I wish you all the very best and hope you over come this soon.  
Helpful - 0
52704 tn?1387020797
it sounds to me like you're in a really good place from which to get and stay clean.

i have been taught, and came to believe from my own experience, that alcoholism or addiction is primarily a spiritual disease that requires a spiritual solution.  

for a long time i didn't believe that at all.  in fact, i rejected it with intense hostility.  it seemed to me that my addiction was just a bad habit.  i could see that i needed to change that, but i didn't want to hear anything about any kind of "Higher Power" or "God-of-my-understanding" or anything that was anything other than ME FIXING MY PROBLEM MY WAY.

i certainly didn't want to hear that i was suffering from a type of spiritual death, that i needed to be "restored" to sanity, or that the solution to my problem was in learning to live according to spiritual principals.

i remember hearing with great interest that i "only needed to change one thing" to make it into sustained recovery.  now THAT sounded like somethng i could grab ahold of!!  what is it?  what is it?  i really wanted to know!  if it wasn't too bad of a thing i thought i might be willing to give it a go.  but then i found out that the person who had semed so wise just moments before was just another nut . . . another nut that didn't understand my unique problem . . . because she said the one thing i would need to change was "EVERYTHING."  OMG, how stupid was that?

i came to find out, however, that she was right.  i did have to change EVERYTHING.

that seemed like a very scary thing for a long time.  it felt like THEY were telling me that i had to give up my very SELF in order to recover.  if i changed EVERYTHING it seemed that i would just be NOTHING, that i would be GONE.  

i ended up discovering, to my surprise, that the opposite was true.  instead of becoming some kind of no-me, or even less-me, i somehow became more-me.  "changing everything" was a simple as letting go of all the things that weren't me, which i had layered on over the years (especially during my active addiction), and learning to live according to just a few spiritual principals. the essentials of these were found in becoming HONEST, OPEN-MINDED and WILLING.

bringing these three things to EVERY aspect of my life indeed changed EVERYTHING and it made all the difference.  in june of 2005 i honestly thought i was doomed.  i knew that it was just a matter of WHEN, not IF, my addiction would result in prison or death.  instead, i had to completely give up and declare total surrender because i was just too tired and beat up mentally, physically and emotionally to fight any longer.  i didn't know it at the time, but that forced giving up that seemed like the end is what saved my life and today i hit 1,300 days of being clean and sober.

a very good book that helped me make the necessary shift (which i'm now re-reading for the 4th or 5th time) is "The Spirituality of Imperfection: Story Telling and the Search for Meaning," by Ernest Kurtz. also, AA's "Big Book" (read the 1st 164 pages) and NA's "Basic Text" (1st 103 pages).

good books for the brain chemistry aspect of recovery are:  End Your Addiction Now, by Gant; The Mood Cure, by Ross; and Seven Weeks to Sobriety, by Larsen.  these focus on the supplement/diet side of giving your brain and body what it needs to live comfortably without using.

a very good general recovery book is Staying Clean and Sober, by Miller and Miller.  in the book Staying Sober, by Gorski and Miller, there's a GREAT section on Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS), whic takes many of us "back out" 30, 60, 90 days down the road, when we were oh-so-sure we'd made it "this time."  That piece on PAWS is available on-line at http://www.tlctx.com/ar_pages/paw_part1.htm

speaking of taking care of the body and mind, i need to go feed mine.

CATUF
1300
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
You cannot believe what role your entry us going to play this week...we are intervening on our daughter and everything u said will help us to help her see.  Thank u so much for taking that time to put into words just what we need to help her. And I am so greatful that you have 1300 clean days under your belt...CONGRATS!!!  Hope 2009 is your best year ever.
Gayle
Helpful - 0
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