Former Drug Users: What Made You Stop Using?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a teenage cousin who, we discovered recently, is abusing marijuana frequently, along with occasional “recreational” use of ecstasy, ketamine, LSD, mushrooms and, of course, alcohol. From what he has revealed–and he seems to be telling the truth–it is evident that he does this stuff occasionally, not every day.

This is heartbreaking news to the whole family and we don’t know what to do about it. Part of me believes that if I had a heart to heart with him, maybe he would stop. Someone else suggested enrolling him in a drug education program to tell him how dangerous these drugs are–to scare him straight. Last, a good friend, who once went through this himself, said that there is nothing a person can do, that my cousin must hit rock bottom and then WANT to change before he will. This sounds so passive and fatalistic to me.

Please give me your advice, based on your own experiences. Surely we can do better than just letting a kid learn the hard way. What makes kids stop abusing drugs?

2

I quit once and for all in late summer of 1999. I had hit rock bottom. I had lost my finace, my job, my apartment, etc. I was living with my parents and didn’t dare try to smuggle drugs into that house, knowing how strongly my father is against them. After a while, the cravings got to be too much for me and I called up some of my old friends and got wasted.
I don’t remember most of the night, but my “friends” had left me on the street in front of my house and drove off. I was passed out on the lawn when my parents found me. My options were to clean up or get out.

I cleaned up. Since then I’ve pretty much gotten my act together. I have a job I’m happy with (although I do bitch occasionally, but on the whole it’s a great job), my debt (I was incredibly over my head) should be paid off by October, I recently bought my first brand new car ever, and my self-respect and self-esteem are higher now than at any other point of my life.

If someone asks me what I’m most proud of myself for, my answer is kicking drugs and alcohol. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do (emotionally anyway, physically re-hab after my car accident was hardest) but I think it was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. In my mind, the day I made the decision to clean up is the day I became an adult.

Some of your OP has me worried though:

Yeah, that’s how I started out, too.

I’d say he’s half right. The person has to WANT to change before any real progress will be made. But don’t wait for him to hit rock bottom. He may never be able to get back up. And what if rock bottom happens to be death from him buying some bad shit? Don’t wait. Intervene. ASAP.

3

(Sounds like glurge but isn’t?)

Yay you!

I’ve been sober now for almost two and a half years. (Yay, me!) As Crunchy Frog said, it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Once I got sober, it turned out there was a whole lot of other stuff I needed to deal with. I don’t want to spew psychobabble, but being high distracted me from a lot of pain.

Why am I sober now? Because I realized that I wanted to do certain things with my life and I wouldn’t be able to unless I cleaned up. Because I got scared real bad a few times. Basically, I wanted things to be different, and with a lot of hard work and support, they changed.

It seems to me that the experience of hitting bottom varies a lot from person to person–without going into too much personal detail, I basically went THUD THUD THUD for a while, but I didn’t have the archetypal living on the street, selling my plasma experience. It’s wanting to sober up that counts, not how low you’ve been. Unfortunately, some people need to go as low as possible before they want to change.

Obviously, I don’t know anything about your cousin, but he’s probably going to need to figure out why he’s doing drugs. Psychologically, I don’t know why some people can handle recreational use and others become addicts. You don’t need to be an addict to die, either. I’d worry about teenagers using extremely poor judgment while high and getting into trouble that way, too.

I feel like an Afterschool Special, but:
One thing that helped for me was realizing that my family wasn’t mad at me, they were scared for me. And why were they scared? Because they loved me. I know things wouldn’t be going as well as they are for me right now without their support. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

So maybe explaining to your cousin why everybody’s so upset will help get past some of the anger he probably feels right now.

4

But, unfortunately, it’s probably the realistic outlook. Scare tactics, the “we know better” approach, etc, all of this will fall on deaf ears. Teenagers are naturally resistant to authoritarian approaches, the harder a person pushes the more they will resist.

I did drugs (mainly smoking pot) quite regularly for a number of years when I was in my twenties or so. Wasn’t raelly much of a drinker, or into hard stuff, but definitely enjoyed relaxing after a hard day with a smoke and some music. Hell, if someone offered me a joint today, I’d take it gladly. I eventually stopped as the price rose, and as I slowly morphed from being a cool single guy with money to burn into a regular (read square) married guy with kids and bills.

Sorry to sound so pessimistic. Raising kids is a tough job, the toughest that there is. For what its worth, they are also tough, and have a way of surviving the teenage years and even eventually turning out allright in the end.

A suggestion? Talk to the school’s guidance counselor, or some of the other people who are accepted by the kids an are in the “know”. There’s usually a teacher or two who are respected by the group, or perhaps a coach, etc. Get their input on the general situation. Ask for suggestions. If you can figure a way to work it, the single most effective tool to use is peer influence - the teenager’s girlfriend, other freinds, the like. By all maens talk to him yourself, but it has to be done in a non-confrontational, non-judgemental manner. You have to be a buddy, not an adult, or the message will get lost.

Good luck, friend.

5

Whenever I got high, I’d get the munchies and pig bigtime. I got high a lot, so I got kinda chubby. I hated being chubby. They also implemented random drug tests where I worked at that time. Between being porky and wanting to keep my job, I said the heck with it. Now I just smoke lotsa cigarettes and drink very strong coffee.

6

I quit when I grew up enough to realize that as fun and cool as it was to be f’ed up everyday all day, it wasn’t getting me anywhere. When you stop and look around and see that you’re 22, still living at home, working p/t and have no savings, you begin to see that some changes need to be made.

I personally believe that drug experimentation is an integral part of growing up, but unfortunately, some are unable to stop once they get started, and those are the ones that need help.

If your cousin’s habits are recreational still, no heart to heart or drug education or anything contradicting his choices are going to get him to stop doing what he wants. If it’s gone beyond recreational and he’s no longer experimenting but abusing, then for his sake some intervention might be required.

If you can only reach him slightly, get him away from ecstacy and k and shit like that. Sticking with pot and alcohol and LSD, in my experience, leaves less chance to become seriously addicted and less liklihood of moving on to more hardcore drugs like heroin or crack, as well as less chance of buying from a bad batch and od’ing.

Whether to intervene or not varies so much from person to person, and has so many variables like which drug(s) is being abused and the persons addiction level, that it’s a judgement call every time. What it comes down to though, if the person doesn’t want to be helped, there isn’t much you can do. Even those that are forced into a rehab and do actually quit, are right back to it when they get out, if that is what they really want.

7

Everybody who drinks a beer is not an alcoholic. Everybody who smokes a joint is not a drug addict.

Make sure he knows that if things get hairy for him and he wants to quit, you’re there for him, and you’ll do what you can to help. And then, there’s nothing else you can do.

8

I’d been meaning to ask this very same question, so I’m glad it has been brought up anxiously awaits more replies

9

I don’t know if I would be considered a “drug user” during my brief foray into drugs. I was a sophomore in high school. I hung out with a group of friends that would smoke marijuana once in a while. I would always say “no thanks” and pass it on. I decided to give it a try once, and for a few weeks after that I joined them a total of about 5 times for a ‘j’.

Then, one day about that time, a friend of mine tells me that he got two hits of acid and that we should try them together. This was during school, mind you. The day we decided to go for it was a day that the whole school was going on a bus trip to a nearby college. You see we had to use the college for assemblies since we had no auditorium at my school. Anyway, we were gone for about half a day, all the while tripping. I wasn’t really halucinating so much, I just couldn’t get my mind to work right. So when we got back to school an abbreviated schedule for the rest of the day was passed out, and I couldn’t make heads nor tails of that thing. I stared at it for at least ten minutes and I could not understand it. Now, I am an intelligent guy, so this scared the hell out of me. We left school and cut the rest of the day and hung out, all the while I’m praying that I come down so that my brain will work again. Needless to say I did not enjoy my trip.

That was the end of my drug experiences. When I finally came down from my trip and my brain regained normal functionality I decided that I never wanted to take anything that could potentially impede my mental sharpness. I have not touched anything since that day. That was about 8 years ago. So the sum total of my drug experiences was about 5 joints and one hit of acid in the span of about 3 weeks.

10

You know, I don’t believe in scare tactics.

That has been the way of the Swedish ecucational system since the early 60’s, and frankly it doesn’t work. The thing is, telling kids about delerium, flash backs, paranoia, instant addiction and the likes doesn’t do squat to dissuade a young person starting to experiment with drugs, simply because that is not the way they experience it. They still try it and find that it’s fun, not very expensive since they’re usually offered some for free from other friends. There’s no instant addiction, they didn’t die on the dance floor from dehydration, they had no flashbacks, in short, it doesn’t scare them. It’s great, and since none of the scary stuff they’ve been told were true, they’ll make up their own minds about it.

I believe we need to tell them that yeah, it’s fun to begin with. If it wasn’t no one would do drugs more than once. But we (in Sweden) are so anti-drug that we’re scared shitless to actually tell it like it is, that drugs can be fun.

So there you have it. Any kid I come in contact with (and that’s quite a few since I study to be a teacher) I tell it like it is. I would only be doing them a great disservice if I started spouting the scary propaganda.

I smoked pot occasionally between ages 16 and 21. I enjoyed it, but eventually decided that it wasn’t for me. I think part of it is that I’m basically a cheap-skate and I didn’t want to spend what little money I had on pot. Also, seeing a friend go from recreational pot smoking to six or seven joints a day made me realize that that was not the kind of pathetic existance I wanted for myself.

I suppose this doesn’t help you much in dealing with your cousin. Maybe if you could hook him up with someone who has done it all, started recreational and fun, and ended up at rock bottom, that would be a start. I don’t think trying to scare him straight is going to work, at least not coming from you. I’ve often heard that rehab of any kind is always more effective coming from someone with first hand experience.

That’s just my two cents. I wish you good luck.

11

I began smoking pot when I was 12, and by the time I was 16 was smoking pretty much on a daily basis (usually hash or hash oil), and getting pissed every Friday and Saturday night. First did acid and 'shrooms when I was 15, and continued with those on an occasional basis. Funny thing, I didn’t start smoking tobacco until I was 30 (but that’s a whole nuther story, involving Tibet, a Chinese trucker, and unrequited love ;)).
Most people would consider what I was doing at 18 to be ‘abusing’ drugs rather than recreational use. Haven’t done either for a while now, easily 10 years for acid, somewhat less for pot, and not because I hit bottom or anything: I just lost interest after a while. I never came to any firm decision, but rather gradually tailed off usage, until I noticed that it’d been a couple of years since I’d smoked.
I still drink, mostly beer, and probably more than is good for me, but I’ve refused the last several times I was offered a joint. Been there, done that, lost the brain cells (but hey, ten trillion or so more where they came from)
You can’t make any blanket statements about drug usage; it depends entirely on the person. I’d venture to say the vast majority don’t suffer any major ill effects; certainly of the many many drug users I’ve known, there’s only one I can say that it screwed up his life. This is anecdotal evidence, to be sure, and more than most things, though, YMMV.
Talk to him, sure, give him your story, but know that scare tactics are almost certainly not going to work. They would not have worked on me. In the end, he’s gonna have to decide for himself.

12

Being from the Netherlands might give me a somewhat unusual viewpoint on this matter, but I believe that recreational drugs aren’t bad at all, as long as they remain recreational.

As long as your cousin is smoking pot three / four times per week, I doubt that there’s anything wrong with that. Hell, some of my friends smoke almost daily and they have excellent carreers. I once went out with the Vice President of a previous company and offered me some XTC. As long as you know what you are taking and know the effects, benefits and drawbacks and can make a educated decision on what to take and what not to, your cousin will probably be fine.

I used to smoke marijuana quite frequently when in high school (who hasn’t?) and some time thereafter. After a few years it lost appeal to me and now a days I don’t touch it anymore. Pot and weed usually is just a phase here in Holland, although lots of people smoke occasionally on later ages. Your friend will probably grow out of it, but if he doesn’t, I don’t think there is any harm (unless he is stoned 24/7, but in that case it’s not recreational anymore, but I doubt he would go that far. Being stoned for so long just isn’t fun).

For the more serious stuff, I recommed education. Buy an unbiased book of what drugs do, what the side effects are, etc. I had a book when I was younger, so I knew that doing mushrooms was much less dangerous than doing LSD. Knowing the risks that some drugs bring from a source that can be trusted is much more effective than the commercials I’ve seen from Reagan’s era (the egg-in-frying-pan-incident), which are just untruths and such obvious ones at that. The things is, why believe someone who is telling the dangers of hard drugs if they lie about the dangers of soft drugs?

Anyway, I regret that I don’t have any titles of useful books, but they are definately around. Or else ask a friend in the Netherlands (if you have one) to tape a show on TV here that is exactly like the books I decribe above. Ofcourse, to understand those, you need to learn Dutch :wink:

13

I had been a Cannabis smoker for 8 years. Had tried several times to quit but always soon went back to it. What got me to make a definitive break and stop forever? It was a religious conversion.

An old man I highly respected, a scientist named Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Vitamin C, became a peace activist in the 1960s. When asked what advice he would give to youth, he said, “Take drugs! Take drugs and fornicate against the terrible mass of idiots who run this world.” I think he was upset about the nuclear arms race and the Vietnam war. Quite rightly.

So for me smoking pot was a way to oppose the violent evil all around me with gentle peace and goodness. It was a necessary form of relief. When I had my religious conversion at the age of 25, I found that daily prayer, connection with God, provided the same relief in a purely spiritual mystical way. That and that alone gave me the inner strength and support to make it possible to lay off reefer. I also quit LSD and alcohol at the same time, and I’ve been 100% drug-free ever since (except for caffeine, which habit I kicked a year and a half ago). Fellow Dopers, you may have noticed my complete absence of religious preaching here. Yeah, I keep my faith to myself instead of making a nuisance of myself preaching. I keep it all interior. I’ve mellowed out a lot over the years. But since the question was asked “How did you quit dope?” that is the answer.

14

Spooje, recovering addcit, checking in.

I got loaded everyday for 12 years. I’ve been clean for 13.

Getting high. It started out as a lot of fun. It was a blast for about 6 years. Then it was so much fun anymore. It became serious business. At the end, I was committing violent felonies, had isolated myself from those who loved me, could not hold a job, had been evicted from several apartments and was in very poor health(complications from Diatbetes). Took a long time before I was able to ask for help.

I don’t know that this is true. It may be, anything is possible. Many people had tried to intervene in my addiction, and there efforts were met with strenuous resistence. I didn’t quit till my life had turned to shit. Actually, about a year and half after it turned to shit(addicts are very stubborn).

My advice: Tell the kid what you see. Let him know you’ll be there to help if he wants to get clean. Then back away. Don’t enable him(meaning do not shield him from any of the consequences of using). Don’t give him any money, don’t pay his rent, don’t make any excuses for him, don’t provide any alibis.

Just an opinion, do with it as you wish.

15

I usually quit because I ran out.

16

It just gets boring and lame after awhile. It’s probably just a phaze. Lecturing or talks will do nothing and more than likely will make him loose respect for you. Hallucinogen use is hard to sustain and gets old fast. If it moves to heroin, coke, crack or alcohol abuse, then it’s time to really get worried. I do believe (based on experience) that pot permanently effects mental abilities in a negative way but if you challenge his will on his choices (whose brain is it anyway?) he will resist.

17

Actually, I agree with this. More and more lately I consider giving up the old whacky tabaccy because it’s getting old - hell, I’ve been doing it for 17 years now, that’s more than half my life. Occasionally I will go without for a while and everything is fine until I smell somebody else smoking it or I see it on TV, and then I start craving it.

18

My story is quite typical: boy meets drugs, boy takes drugs constantly, boy moves to totalitarian communist country and stops taking drugs for fear of being executed in a crowded football stadium.

OK, so it’s not typical, but it worked for me :smiley:

— G. Raven

19

It ends up being a question of priorities. If someone has more important things to do and drugs get in the way then the drugs will go - usually.

Typically addicts/users start off maybe as young as 11, though we have a few younger than that in secure specialist units, and the treatment consists of the usual support but also exploring the subjects interests.

As addicts age, other things come into focus, such as watching contemporaries marrying and settling down, perhaps one of the strongest motivators I have seen is when the addict has children of their own, even serious addicts suddenly discover a sense of responsibility.

In your position, and at the risk of seeming cliched, I would try to fire the persons imagination with maybe a participatory sport, outdoor persuit like backpacking, or some kind of hobby.
Many parents hardly know their teenage children, what do they like, what music they prefer, who do they think is cool and why, what are their opinions on things.

Everyone needs a good obsession to get through life with, some might go fishing, whatever.

The previous may not completely stop someone using drugs but it may moderate it and would give them a greater sense of perspective.

20

With marijuana, I just sort of gradually lost interest. Went through a long phase where if someone handed me a lit joint I’d take a few hits, but hadn’t sought out or purchased any for years.

With LSD, I did not lose interest, but when you are 42 you don’t tend to run into people who have a couple of hits to sell. I used to trip at least twice a year but it has been a really long time at this point. I keep thinking I’ll do some serious looking around, but at some point I’ll be 50, & later on 60, and while I have no difficulty imagining myself tripping then, I do have some problems visualizing myself wandering through parks trying to score…

::looks around for old comic book about the 90 year old hippie::