I’m dealing with an IRL situation where a certain person is insisting, and has convinced many people, that he can control his drug problem and doesn’t require intervention. It’s a sensitive matter so I can’t provide further details, or even solicit advice, except to say that (slow) forward progress is being made and that fresh chocolate chip cookies would be appreciated.
So…with the disclaimer that all drugs are evil, kids…has anyone here else ever kicked the habit w/o requiring any aid except pure willpower? I know it’s possible since I have tales of my own to tell, but maybe I really am unique…
It really depends on how profound the addiction is and the attitude of the user. There are a surprising number of people that are maintenance alcohol and drug abusers who keep their use just within the lines of social tolerance, at least in terms of being employed and being able to earn a living.
People saying they can beat the habit on their own is extraordinarily common and 99% of the time is not going to happen. It’s just “back off and leave me alone” BS by the drug user.
There is the rare circumstance where someone goes cold turkey and it sticks but this is unusual and there are three contexts I have seen this happen
1: They were not truly physically addicted to the drug in the first place, but it was more a socializing and lifestyle choice.
2: It can also happen if they have had some life shattering shock or life changing epiphany which made them view things in different way.
3: They age out. If you survive long enough there is the phenomenon of older drug addicts tapering off to only occasional use. Whether this is due to enfeeblement or other factors related to aging is not known.
I started smoking at 12. Quickly moved up to a pack a day (back when a pack was fifty cents). I quit at 28. No gum or hypnosis, I can’t recall if there were patches in the 80’s. Obviously I enjoyed it for the flavor, the ritual and the drug sensation; and smoking had social benefits back in those days, but I guess my nicotine receptors aren’t that strong.
Back when I worked at a clinic that treated drug abusers we had the very rare, occasional person who would, one day, wake up, decide they were done with drugs and actually make it stick. We had a crapton more who’d make that claim and would relapse within days.
As astro said - 99% of the time it ain’t gonna happen. Except I’d say 99.99% of the time.
It is possible but extremely unlikely. I’d say it falls under the category of an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence to confirm. I mean, there have been a few people who survived falling from extreme heights without a parachute, too, but it’s incredibly goddamn rare.
An ex swore he was addicted to heroin while he was in Viet Nam and was not addicted when he came home.
Some people say it can’t happen but I have read of ‘situational’ addiction where if the environment changes the addiction can end.
When we were dating he got pretty heavy into coke and quit cold. He may not have been addicted, but it was certainly getting out of control. I told him he could have coke or he could have me but he couldn’t have both. I didn’t hear from him for almost a week, his mother told me he had holed himself up in his room and wasn’t talking to anybody. He finally came out, called me, we picked up where we left off and he never did coke again.
Not that it was drugs but he had a friend who was a hard core alcoholic. He easily drank two cases of beer a day. His wife drank a case a day. She got sick, liver damage from the drinking. She spent some time in the hospital and she was told if she ever drank again she would die. She was good for a while and one day she gave in and had a few beers and died that night. Her husband swore off beer and never drank again. I don’t know how he did it, he had been drinking for well over 30 years, quit just like that.
Poor man, he never did get over his wife’s death.
I was completely strung out on Cocaine in my late teens. The girlfriend and I were snorting and smoking day in and out and spending thousands every week, glad the statutes of limitations have run out on all the bad things I did for the money. I got up one day and said no more. It worked except for relapses into my twenties and a final one at thirty. Now someone can line up a massive rail and I am not even tempted, no way no how.
YMMV and I wish I had the good sense to go to treatment at some point. I would have been so much better off had I gotten some help. I am very lucky to have made it out alive and in decent health. When it owns you it owns you, guess I got lucky and Drugs lost the receipt on my soul. I know my experience is atypical, the OP’s friend needs treatment not luck. IMEO
I need to add, I have been to more funerals than I have am years old. ODs, Suicides, Accidents, Heart Attacks, Liver Failure, Strokes and more. The common theme, Dope. There is no such thing as an old Doper.
You learn things, terrible things about the people you run with and yourself. My youngest sister was strung out on heroin and shooting. When she went to treatment(first time) I searched her room after my parents had scoured it 3x. My Mother made fun of me, she said there was no way I would find anything after all my Mother is nothing but thorough. I found almost three grams of H, two complete kits, half a dozen crack pipes, how my sister had been paying for it, and syringes galore. I threw away all the associated clothing, hand bags, tins etc, it came out to 2 or 3 yard bags of stuff. You can’t hide Dope from me but now my Mother knows what I am, she always knew but now she KNOWS. Great
Wasted years and years of my life, have exes that would cross the street to avoid me, I am luck to be alive but how well have I lived?
I quit smoking cigarettes one morning in basic training and never looked back. I have also stopped smoking pot several times for work or relationships but never have claimed to have quit because I don’t want to. I am not currently smoking pot because I’m looking to upgrade my job. If any new job has regular piss test I’ll stay stopped. If not I’ll start back up.
As others pointed out - part of it comes out to is he really addicted. Non drug users often assume everyone abusing drugs is addicted - this isn’t the case.
Also - if his friends are drug users - or he is going to be surrounded by it - chances are much lower.
I’d say there are definitely people who are declared by professions to be addicts and can easily quit on their own. I have a friend who got two DUIs just out of stupidity and she definitely isn’t an addict, but they made her go through a bunch of treatment anyway.
And I worked in community corrections and a huge number of those people were forced to go through treatment too, I know more than a few were addicts but I really doubt it was that many. But anyway, definitely there are people who many people consider addicts that can quit on their own. But I don’t believe there’s a clear line between “addict” and “non-addict” anyway.
A super, no-doubt-about-it, addict? I don’t know. Never heard of it happening. Even my dad went to AA and he doesn’t seem like the type to be helped by such a thing.
A person very close to me was using, had started recently but was getting out of control very rapidly. Whether or not he was “truly chemically dependent” is anyone’s guess, but he definitely wasn’t in control any longer.
With his collaboration and consent, we did sort of a half-intervention, which mostly involved close monitoring so that he was always with someone who knew that he was having problems, and his partner was tracking his money closely. Obviously, he could have walked out at any point, but always having someone nearby that he didn’t want to disappoint was enough for him. One minor relapse a year later, he’s been clean for many years now.
I know two people who went cold turkey off cocaine. One was my mother. The other is my friend S, who flushed all his coke down the toilet as soon as he got home from having heart surgery. He’s told me that, after all these years, he doesn’t miss the cocaine; he only misses smoking pot. It’s not worth it to him to chance his heart, though.
That’s what I keep telling this person. He claims to have quit smoking and even kicked heroin without anyone knowing, and my point is that sure, if nobody knows you have a problem you can attempt to kick it solo – but once you get to the point where other people know about your problem and you have to TELL THEM you can quit, it’s too late. Especially when you’re up to the point of stealing things and telling lies and taking advantage of specific people who would be most able to help you, if you had only come clean to them a long time ago.
That’s how it happened with me. Especially when I finally decided to stop drinking a half bottle of whisky per night, just because I was bored of it – and to my horror I could NOT stop. Took about a year to finally kick the urges completely, and another five or six years before I could safely drink socially again. Never again did I make fun of alcoholics after that ever again.
Actually the truth appears to be that rehab is no more successful at keeping people off drugs totally than addicts just getting sick of their habits and quitting without help, somewhere around 2%. The studies seem to point to rehab being totally useless for absolute abstinence.
I’ve never seen any numbers for rehab turning out of control users into functional addicts but it is something I wonder about.
