Recovery from the disease of addiction

ATS members,

Do you believe addiction is a disease?

Do you believe addiction can be cured?

Is addiction just a chemical dependency, or is there more to it?

Is alcoholism separate from drug addiction?

Is addiction hereditary?

Could an alcoholic ever drink like a normal person?

Could an addict ever use recreationally?

Is cannabis a drug? A gateway drug? Is it possible for a recovering addict to use only cannabis and not eventually relapse?

Is recovery possible without God, or a higher power?

What role does willpower play in recovery from addiction?

Alcohol withdrawal is a son of a bitch.
Have fun watching cartoons on the ceiling.
Shaking so bad you have to crawl to the #ter.
Been there.
Here's a few tunes to let you know you are not alone.
I quit quitting.

a reply to: skunkape23

Alcohol withdrawal truly is a b!tch. It can kill you. The most severe opiate withdrawal still won't kill you.

I think there are two kinds of alcoholics.

There's the alcoholic who has to drink everyday just to stop the shakes and get through another day and not die from detox.

Then there is the alcoholic who doesn't have to drink every day, but when they do drink they cannot stop and they cause more wreckage with each binge.

originally posted by: GoShredAK
a reply to: skunkape23

Alcohol withdrawal truly is a b!tch. It can kill you. The most severe opiate withdrawal still won't kill you.

I think there are two kinds of alcoholics.

There's the alcoholic who has to drink everyday just to stop the shakes and get through another day and not die from detox.

Then there is the alcoholic who doesn't have to drink every day, but when they do drink they cannot stop and they cause more wreckage with each binge.

I drink everyday to avoid the shakes.
I do keep my cool.
I have little patience for drunk assholes.
They make us all look bad.

a reply to: GoShredAK

I'm a recovering opiate addict. Cannabis helps. I'm also part of a Methadone Maintenance Treatment facility. A lot of people use the methadone clinic as a safety net, while they still use opiates and other drugs, but for people like me who want to get better, it has been a godsend.

I don't really have any answers to any of your questions, because it's really tiring to try talking about it. I don't need there to be any special disease I can blame my problem on. I messed up, and it was due to many factors, rather than blame a gene, I think it would be more useful to address the other factors.

It's basically the same thing all around...
Why do people become junkies?
Why do fat people keep eating Doritos and drinking Soda?
Why are kids shooting up schools?
Why are people so depressed? Why did these new terms depression and stress come into our society recently?
Why are teens cutting themselves when they're alone in their room at night (check your child's thighs, they hide it well and most know better than to cut arms. A pencil sharpener the size of a key on your keyboard can be disassembled to use the blade then put back together again after. So no razors or knifes are needed. Just an innocent pencil sharpener for homework. I know these things because I listen, not because I've done them myself. I'm talking about things that just happened this week. )
Why do people drink?
etc

It's because deep down we all know things are not as they should be. The advent of the age of information has only confirmed that point and brought it right in front of our faces.

This...awareness...of imbalance, of corruption, of a straying of the natural path... A disturbance in the Force... A glitch in the matrix... It manifests itself in various ways. Obesity, addiction, suicide, depression, self harm, anxiety, and etc, etc, etc...


I might return for more. Are you going through something personally? Or someone close?

a reply to: GoShredAK

Addiction is part of us. It's not just drugs, thrills, spicy foods, speeding, tattoos etc...

It's an imbalance or re networked neurons to give pleasure or indicate pleasure.

Dolphins scare puffer fish so they release toxins and the dolphins get high on it, similarly bees get drunk off nectar and become addicted just like humans and alcohol. (Other bees kill the nectar addict though, unlike humans)


There are a lot of literature on the subject, scientific papers and studies, controlled experiments ( famous mice experiments where scientists zapped the pleasure center of the mouse, and the mouse would skip the food next to the electrode and go to the electrodes and get zapped until it was famished and fed in a different enclosure)
.....
Recovery from dependency, drug or other, can be through a simply a change in context. That was enough to make the mouse forget about the electrodes.

This is indeed an interesting and very deep and fascinating subject.

Good luck. Get professional help if you need it.

a reply to: GoShredAK

Opiate withdrawal....I have experienced my share of that hell.

Being hot and cold at the same time. "I need more and less blankets at the same time"
Used to tell my wife I had "The cold bones"
Then the restless leg syndrome every night for a month straight.
Thrashing your legs around and flopping like a fish out of water.
Or being in the bathroom as your stomach wrings itself out.

I can feel the cold bones coming on just thinking about it.

I'm an ex alcoholic. Yes I do it socially now. You are only addicted until you take control back. Addiction is a frame of mind. Detox sucks, feels better than the morning after a 5th or 40 beers though. I know someone else who got off 100 bags of dope a day. That was hell, he powered through it though. It's all in your mind.

a reply to: GoShredAK



Addiction to drugs and alcohol is a symptom of the 'disease'. The dis -ease (unease) is behind what you take the drugs for.

Wanna find that? Quit self medicating, quit hiding from you.

Once you get rid of the symptoms, you can begin to work on you. Until you quit, you are just along for the ride. You will wind up wherever your 'Habit' takes you: to Jail, Hospitals or the Morgue.

You sound like you have begun to go to meetings, keep going.

Ask the people that been there a while, you are asking good questions, they know the answers.

.

a reply to: GoShredAK

Addic-TION is an Afflic-TION...

This revolutionized the way I viewed addiction:




I think we all suffer from addictive patterns. I’m married to an addict, the daughter of an addict, and my default place I go when I need a “fix” is worry. Can anxiety be an addiction? I don’t really know. I just know that going through recovery with my husband has forced me to look at MY dark corners that I run to. (To be clear, I don’t get any kind of high from anxiety- but it’s a familiar place to me, one I have known for a long time.)

Once an addict, always an addict? I was taught that. I am not sure how I feel about a blanket statement like that anymore. I don’t believe in black and white- everything is shades of gray. My husband's form of addiction is not chemical. And it’s not something he can remove himself from. It’s in his mind. He has to keep his demons at bay at all times, so to speak. It’s a volatile thing (all addiction is), never knowing if or when it will show its face again. We actually have a daily accounting of his sobriety (and mine-anxiety- as well). FANOS is the exercise, and it’s so simple and seemingly silly, but makes a world of difference.

I absolutely think that cannabis can be utilized by a recovering chemical addict. Some may be better to steer clear of it, but not all.

a reply to: GoShredAK

First, what do you believe?

Does a baby, toddler, child, kid, have an addiction or disease before or after they become addicted? Addiction isn't a disease, it's a series of bad decisions.

a reply to: skunkape23

I have little patience for drunk assholes. 
They make us all look bad.

Yeah I was, still am one of those......I turn into such a crazy idiot...

Duplicate post

a reply to: 3n19m470

Me too, I am an addict an alcoholic and a codependant. I've been that way for 17 years.

I was part of a Suboxone program for nearly a year and only recently kicked the subs. The withdrawals were insanely bad.

I made it 109 days before my relapse. I'm fighting as hard as I can to get back on the wagon.

What treating addiction as a disease did for me was helped me to forgive myself. I don't blame anyone or anything but I also don't have to beat myself up over the past.

I used to hate myself and have terrible anxiety. Inpatient rehab helped turn that around for me.

Are you going through something personally? Or someone close?

Yep, myself as well as my wife.

a reply to: odzeandennz

It does say somewhere in the big book of AA that only through a spiritual awakening will we know peace.

It goes on to define a spiritual awakening simply as a personality shift sufficient to bring about recovery.

That's how I remember the text anyway.

originally posted by: Macenroe82
a reply to: GoShredAK

Opiate withdrawal....I have experienced my share of that hell.

Being hot and cold at the same time. "I need more and less blankets at the same time"
Used to tell my wife I had "The cold bones"
Then the restless leg syndrome every night for a month straight.
Thrashing your legs around and flopping like a fish out of water.
Or being in the bathroom as your stomach wrings itself out.

I can feel the cold bones coming on just thinking about it.

Ugh.....tell me about it......

There are never enough blankets, nor are there ever too little. Just complete, utter discomfort.

originally posted by: GoShredAK
ATS members,

Do you believe addiction is a disease?

Do you believe addiction can be cured?

Is addiction just a chemical dependency, or is there more to it?

Is alcoholism separate from drug addiction?

This explains addiction:

Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences.

en.wikipedia.org...

Is addiction hereditary?

In a way. It's a learned behavior. If one of your parents is an adict the chances of you becoming one or marrying one are 66%. This book is loaded with info:

Could an alcoholic ever drink like a normal person?

Could an addict ever use recreationally?

Highly unlikely. It'll get you eventually. Your drug of use is very patient. If you can successfully I doubt you're an addict.

Is cannabis a drug? A gateway drug? Is it possible for a recovering addict to use only cannabis and not eventually relapse?

Two different questions. No, it's not a gateway drug per se, for the regular person. For an addict it would be changing one substance to feed that addiction to another.

Is recovery possible without God, or a higher power?

Good lord(pun intended). Yes. Some may rely on a higher power, some don't.

What role does willpower play in recovery from addiction?

In the end it's all about willpower. You can have rehab, medications, interventions, whatever. Willpower is what moves you on the way to recovery. Even at its worst it's willpower that will either let you live or let you die for the lack of it. We see the later everyday. Fortunately we see many in recovery.

a reply to: SatansPride

The trick is not to take control back. It's when we surrender all control to a Higher power that things start working out.

In my experience a hangover does not feel worse than detoxing. It can if we're talking about mild withdrawals I suppose.

There are harder things to kick besides dope these days. Like Suboxone or methodone, or even benzos.

Good job on getting a handle on your alcoholism.