Hey Relapse, good to hear from and good also to hear that you're climbing back on the recovery horse after having gotten bucked. Seems that one thing that happened to you during this last run is that hyphens started appearing between all your words. I guess it's like they say, it just keeps getting worse and worse until we quit using! Anyway, and more seriously, keep us posted on how you're doing and hang in there. It really CAN be done. Hugs, David

CONGRATS on changing your signature to NOTRELAPSER!!!

i truly believe that relapse occurs mostly between our ears, that it's tied into faulty thinking.  and that changing the way we think about dope and about recovery can carry a lot of weight in changing our patterns.

i had to quit viewing getting clean as if i was losing something valuable.  at one time dope had been my lover my friend my reward my goddess etc... but the reality of my last years of active addiction was hopelessness and despair and only an unrealistic hope that somehow i could return to the days when drugs made me happy. i was chasing something i couldn't really obtain no matter the quantity or quality of the dope i was using.

i also had told myself for years that recovery didn't work for me-- like somehow i thought i was so uniquely fucked up that while other people could get clean i was too hopeless. but for real i had been unwilling to do the things other people who were staying clean were doing.  still looking for an easy way out.  and then griping cause it didn't work. I WASN"T WORKING IT!!!

i do hope and pray for you that you find what it is you truly want.  and if that is recovery, that you take a stance not to pick up NO MATTER WHAT, and if so you find that the cravings and desperate thoughts about having to use do recede and eventually subside.  none of us can do this by ourselves. i truly believe we need people in our lives who've been where we've been who will love us enuff to call us on our own bullshit if we start to con ourselves into giving in. and who will encourage us to hang in

and who will hold us accountable and who will help us to get out of ourselves when we start getting too caught up in our own drama!

GOOD LUCK--HELL FORGET ABOUT LUCK!!!! just hang in there!  you matter and this is worth it!!!!                  peace and love, freeespiritt

A big supportive ditto to everything Shannon just said; especially the part about just not picking up again once you detox. It's really just that simple (and just that fucking hard!). Again, lots of luck and even more determination. Hugs, David

Gosh-golly! It can seem like a revolving door sometimes can't it?  I kicked the end of 2001, a fairly serious habit. The withdrawls were most certainly unbearable, but the painfulness somehow helped me to focus on my task.  But 2-3 weeks after the initial kick, the depression and fatigue still hadn't left, I'd lost my momentum, and nothing could give me even a remote sense of pleasure. I relapsed--I couldn't imagine continuing to live feeling like I was--like my neurochem system had been permanently damaged. I spent the better part of the next year either relapsing or kicking, couldn't imagine being straight. Strangely, I think I've broken this cycle, using an unlikely tool--Codeine. I never liked codeine, never bought it, never abused it--quite a lousy opiate, in my opinion. But I noticed that small amounts, though I wouldn't feel at all "high", kept me from falling into the terrible malaise/depression which kept pulling me back into active addiction. Tapering down was easy, and kicking T-3's is really pretty much a walk in the park for anyone familiar with withdrawl from heavier drugs. Best of all, I learned to live without needing to be "high", when before it seemed I was either high or sick. I continue to take 1/2 of a T-3, 3-5 times a day, and supplement with herbal "mood elevators".  I still don't have the motivation I used to have, the passion for opiates which drove me to do so many things, perhaps it will return, perhaps not, but I beleive I can learn to live without the need for constant stimulation, which seems to me to be the key to long-term opiate recovery.