Addicts use drugs compulsively because they have the medical disease of addiction. Unpacking things psychiatrically and psychosocially, throwing in come CBT, etc may help them maintain their sober/clean status once they achieve it, but we addicts will never be able to use/drink normally just because we’ve addressed our issues.
The really intelligent addicts tend to have the roughest time getting/staying clean, IME. They are used to using their wits to get them out of trouble, but it doesn’t work to get clean.
There’s a lot about addiction that makes little to no sense.
Sometimes addicts just want to feel different.
A different feeling may be better than what one is presently feeling, and dysphoria can be better than no phoria at all.
It takes a good addictionist to help some folks wade through that morass.
Disclaimer: I am not an addictionist. Less than 5% of my practice involves actively detoxing addicts or managing their recovery. But I do have hundreds of hours in addiction medicine training, and over 60% of my patients are addicts.
I use addiction as an unhealthy way to deal with my mental illness and stress at home. I tried an OTC DXM product the second time and has a glowing experience. That’s why I became addicted. Also, its much more addictive than people realize.
I realize all people are different, but I was on Gabapentin for a short while due to a pinched nerve and I didn’t experience any of those effects. It did , however, make me as emotional as a 9 year old girl.
Having said that, gabapentin is pretty abusable. It’s becoming more than just a nuisance in prisons, where it gained popularity as a ‘safe and effective’ alternative to opioids. It’s not horribly unsafe, but it’s not horribly effective either. And some folks just really get off on it, in the mood-altering sense. It’s another failed “nonaddictive substitute for morphine”. Just like heroin, demerol, talwin, stadol, and buprenorphine before it were originally proclaimed.
I believe that night I came down with a potentially life-threatening condition caused by too much serotonin in the brain and body known as serotonin syndrome.
I took it once. As a child I always used codeine cough syrup, which I find mildly pleasant and moderately effective as a cough suppressant, and not so sedating that I can’t work or play bridge. (I don’t drive, since the risks are so high, but I probably could.) I was a young adult, and used up my childhood supply, and developed a horrible cold, and contacted my doctor to get some more. He prescribed DXM.
I think I must have taken an overdose. It was horrible. I had moderate dissociation and intense dysphoria. I felt like my brain was bouncing around in my skull. I couldn’t concentrate, but I also couldn’t sleep. It was extremely effective as a cough suppressant, moreso than codeine. I had taken it at work, and when it wore off, co-workers commented that they could tell it was wearing off because I looked/sounded much worse than I had. But it was a blessed relief to be free of it, cough and all.
I haven’t taken it since. I begged my doctor for codeine, and I have kept a bottle of codeine cough syrup around ever since, through 4 different prescribing doctors. I hope the new rules about opioids don’t prevent me from re-filling it, because it’s nice to have a working cough suppressant that doesn’t make me miserable.
It’s like trying to explain why some people are thrill seekers. “Dude, that shark almost took your leg off!” “Yeah - wasn’t that cool? Let’s go diving there next week!”
Or how about self-abusers? “Sally, why did you burn your arm?” “I passed my exams and thought I had earned it.” WTF? (I once had a roommate who was a cutter/abuser and we really did have that exchange once.)
We’re not an engineered species, we’re a collection of just-barely-good-enough cobbled together responses to inputs with systems generated by random glitches and trial and error. Is it any wonder sometimes things don’t work right? Input A that normally generates response B in some individuals give a result of K or Q or U.
The really intelligent are also experts at rationalizing/making excuses and using their wits to get their way and what they want.
And some personal experience, if I recall, which gives a different perspective than us non-addicts. You understand the irrationality on a visceral level I simply do not.
To change the subject a little I’m a long back-slidden Christian and am starting to slowly come out of it. I’m seeking God and Jesus Christ again through prayer and Bible reading and studying and I am trying to wean off substance abuse completely. Right now I’m in the process of giving up Cannabis. I do believe certain substances really do open you up to the spirit world and I don’t care if people judge me for this because I’m not giving up my faith because of a 14 year old trolls opinions, no offense to anybody.
I’m going to put this out there: even mean people should open themselves up to eternal life because even the least evil demon is far more intelligent than the most intelligent human, far more cunning than the most crafty criminal, and more evil than Adolf Hitler and the agenda of Satan is the systematic destruction and eternal suffering of as many people as he can pull down. God knows everything, every thought and action of every human being that ever lived, and also, he cares enough to offer you something no one else can, eternal life through Christ. If you have a hard time believing, look around you, look at the complexity of everything around you, the plants, the animals, the people and the fact that everyone is unique and different from one another. Even the inventions of man kind. It points to a creator. How can all this come from some random space explosion. That’s what I think is dumb…
I’m being serious. Leaving aside your scientific ignorance, you made a statement as if there was only one obvious religion out there to choose from, and there really isn’t. You want people to pick “God”-Which one?
Actually I’ve found quite a few enlightened agnostics & atheists happily clean and sober in many different 12 step fellowships. A higher power need not be supernatural. “I can’t stay sober. We can stay sober” has been my experience.
I understand how the big bang theory and the theory of evolution work Czarcasm. I’ve probably been around longer than you myself. I challenge you to read the book of Romans. You may be smart yourself but I guarantee neither of us are as smart as the author of that bible book Paul the Apostle. And certainly you’d be a fool to think you could intellectually challenge a being who has always been there and knows everything that’s ever going to happen and knows everything you’ve ever thought, said, or done because he created you and he knows everything. Look at it this way: Do you want to stand there and explain to Yahweh and Jesus someday during the Great White Throne Judgement why you believed whatever it is you believe?
Christianity is the true religion because its the only religion that truly promotes peace and love towards others. Sure Christ came to bring Division but he will give his true disciples peace and joy and cause them to live in peace with everyone else. Don’t call me a liar and point out my flaws because Catholicism and Christianity are two separate religions. Catholicism is not biblically accurate and a true Christian would not support the Inquisition era church, True Christians are few, so don’t fault me for calling these celebrities and their churches as Christian either. Alot of their liturgy is scripturally inaccurate as wel
