Wanting a (more) sober life?

I have a drug addiction, many BPD and paranoid traits, bipolar and a very chronic depression. I'm trying to cut back on the weed and the alcohol, turns out drinking and smoking every day for years is a bad idea. However, yesterday I had a disencouraging thought.

Why should I want to stop? I know I have to, at least make a real effort and a maybe a white lie or two, because they won't treat me for my real issues if I don't (they'll send be to rehab, and that won't help any more this time around), but why should I actually want to stop numbing all the **** down and release myself from this hazy, forgetful existence? There's nothing to look forward to. Is there? My depression and my diagnonsense do not stem from my addiction. Won't it just get worse, really, when I start to remember all the crap again and actually care about it? Anyone else with long term or recurrent depression who have experiences to share with me?

I'm sorry no one answered you sooner on this. Drugs feed depression--and by the time you're a drug addict, you are sending your depression into a tailspin with your drug dependency. There is no way the depression can be satisfactorily treated until the addiction is take care of--removed.

Aside from the fact that your drug habit may have caused extensive physical damage to you, it's certain isn't clouded the issues involved in diagnosing and treat mental health problems such as BPD, paranoia, chronic depression, and bipolar disorder. Your addiction has to be separated out from all the rest before the others can even be diagnosed with certainty.

I'm an alcoholic, and I didn't want to stop drinking--but nobody could even begin lifting my staggering depression or recognizing the bipolarity that masked it until I was functioning as a sober person again. Kicking the addiction ... that's Step One. I guess it's always Step One.

Hi AndreC, I can remember thinking I didn't want to get sober for fear of reality. For me, it was the best thing I every did, and it wasn't until I was crying uncontrollably all the time that I quit. I did go to a outpatient center and did get help with my thinking. The truth is there are a lot of fears about getting sober, but most of these were all in my mind. And a lot of depression talking. It took me many years to get sick of feeling horrible until I stopped my addictions. It gets better, if you stop.

hi andre. there is a better life for you if you stop drinking. did you know alcohol is a depressant? i drank to self medicate too so i could numb my feelings and depression. i saw no way out but to keep drinking. but i learned the skills to cope with my pain after i stopped drinking. i'm bipolar too. when it got bad enough i began seeing a therapist who specialized in addictions. i also went to AA. the combo really helped me learn to stop. both gave me hope that my life could be better not drinking. you can do this too. you may not be an alcoholic yet. you can break the chains that control you right now. you wouldn't have posted imho unless you were concerned. we are here to support you. you'll not forfeit anything if you try to get sober with help. i encourage you to consider that option. the drinking will only get worse otherwise.

Thank you so much for the replies!

I'm now down to just less than once every other day, and still pushing on. I'm noticing it gets easier and easier to not smoke or drink as the dependency lessens, and I am a bit more hopeful. My boyfriend just smoked a joint, I abstained - for now. I'm not noticing any decline in the depression department, though. Actually quite the opposite.

I hear you, reality terrifies me. Can a drug-free life be fun too? I think I know you're going to say yes, but I don't see how a drug-free life can be fun. All the drug-free things normal people do seem so pointless. Like visiting drug-free friends for coffee and talking about their drug-free problems and drug-free happiness, or going to cafés and paying a small fortune for an even smaller meal when you can just buy food at the store. Going to concerts without doing drugs, when you can just sit at home and listen to music. Working to make money when you can't spend them on drugs. The list goes on and on.

Hi! I hope you're right. I'm not an alcoholic, I could replace alcohol entirely with cannabis if I wanted to (or the other way around), but I think it's similar. I have been to a treatment centre for addictions, but that actually made me want to do more drugs. Still, I think it somehow helped me recognize my problem. I am concerned about my memory, and that I will never get it back to the way it used to be. I hope that I will.

Thank you all again, for caring

AndreC, you're in a bit of a dilemma, in my view. You need to stop all drugs just to
get clean. Then, you need psychotherapy.

Problems of your type go far back into your childhood, I feel. You need to ask yourself some pertinent questions (no need to answer here, though): were you reared in a home where the father loved the mother and both loved their children?
Was one of your parents (or both) an addict of any type? Were you verbally abused as a child or made to feel that you could never be really worthy of a happy, successful career and life?

If the answers are "yes" to parental love and care, maybe you don't have problems from early childhood. (Everyone does, though, to some degree, and it's a lifetime process to overcome them for many.) If you answered "yes" to abuse, physical
or verbal or to demeaning of your being, you need therapy big time to regain your
self-respect and the health of your child within.

Please make an effort to stop the drugs so that you might get into therapy and find out what happened in your early life that led you to believe the things you do that are really not healthy for your psyche.

You do deserve a content life and happiness along the way.

Take care of yourself first now, please.

By the way, are you able to say to your boyfriend, "please don't use drugs in my
presence; I'm trying to remove them from my life permanently"?

My opinion is that you are too young to have so much weighing on your heart. You need to remove yourself from whatever it is in your life that is making it comfy for you to need addiction. Love yourself first, easy to say, I know.

Hi, about the having fun part. I know it can sound mundane but its not. I can do anything I did drunk or high and do it much better it now. No hangovers, no regrets, no fear, no anger. I'm not saying I'm this way all the time, but you regain a self respect and see thing differently. Good point Kittykay, about loving yourself.
When you see things as not being fun without the affects of drugs or alcohol then theres a problem.

Hi,

I have about 60 days sober and pot was my main addiction. Now that I've sobered up all my meds work SO MUCH BETTER! The fog is lifting and I'm starting to enjoy exercise, healthy eating, and have less anxiety around ppl.

One word of warning. My pdoc told me I was self-medicating so much I could experience insomnia for 6 mo to 1 yr. So, if you quit and can't sleep or clench your jaw at night & wake up at 4 am see your pdoc. I got a script for trazadone and now I sleep 8 hrs and don't clench my jaw.

Peace & Hugs,

TnT

I'm sure that everyone is aware that alcoholism is considered by many physicians now to be a severe allergy. (We are often addicted to things that we are allergic to. For me it is sugar, and I'm fighting it now and the consequences of having used it for comfort food for so long.)

If you can ever accept, AndreC, that you may have an addictive personality--that is, no matter what you use as a substance, you're likley to become addicted to it, you might finally find the freedom to free your mind from the fog, irritation, and depression.

It's a sensitivity that we have, I've believed for many years. It is probably related to a gene inheritance for allergies. More than likely, you have an intolerance to many chemicals.

If you can't stop it, please get help. Go to a group therapy session that is noted for being effective. If you won't do that, then read two books by Dr. Kathleen DesMaissons called Potatoes, Not Prozac and Radiant Recovery. She is the first woman to be awarded a PhD in addictive nutrition, and she really has the answers in writing. Her success with treating alcoholics has been noted as being about 95+% effective, and it all starts with diet changes.

My own thought is that there is a severe grain allergy in alcoholism which is the basis for the addiction. It is being brought to light now in one work called Wheat Belly by Dr. David Williams, and it's related to exorphins in gluten in wheat, barley, and rye that act on the opiate centers of the brain, creating an addiction and causing cravings at 2 to 3-hour intervals.

The books are worth your reading, at least, if you're not willing to go into rehabilitation for recovery, and I can understand the desire not to be in
a rehabilitation center. It's up to you, however, to protect your life and
your well-being. I'd do it if I were you; you really don't know what your life is capable of being without addictions.
You may understand our efforts as poking at you
to make the changes you need to recover. It's all an effort to help
you, however, and everyone does care and wants to help.

Take care of yourself.

That could have been due to their zero tolerance approach.

Try a harm reduction center. I am sure Norway has harm reduction - based clinics and programs. Harm reduction approach is better than zero tolerance (abstinence) anyway, based on the available evidence.

In other words, the word "more" in the title of your thread is the right keyword. Not totally abstinent, but more sober. It is doable.

Can you substantiate? I did not realize that a progressive Nordic country would impose such draconian conditions on mental health treatment. Even we do not have that in the States.

I've read all the new posts a few times now and thought it was time to reply.

Thank you! Yes, my problems do go back to my childhood, but it is a problem for me that I don't remember much of them. I can't have an argument with my parents about this (they're very fond of arguing) because I just can't remember what it was, how I felt, what happened, what they did or how things were. I know that I wasn't physically abused and that I shouldn't trust them, but apart from a few things that happened recently that's about it. Every now and again I remember something else, and then I forget it.

I'm not able to say that to him, because that would be a lie. The truth is I don't want to be drug-free, I don't even want to be more drug-free. I just want to do drugs all the time. I want to call some "friends" and buy heroin and speed. I'm not going to do that, however, because I also want to feel like I'm giving myself the best chance I have, and I don't want to cause pain to the people in my life. It's the same reason I don't attempt suicide. I know this might sound horribly immature, but if you had my thoughts and feelings for a day I think you would understand. I am aware that I will use a lot of these thoughts and feelings to feed my addiction.

The things you said about allergy and nutrition are interesting. I need to try some nutritional changes eventually, it might help with my bipolar too, so I'll look into it.

This is really nice to hear. It gives me hope.

That's my goal right now. I'm going to find some level of use where I can be stable (with meds probably), and then give it some time, a few weeks maybe, and see if I can't push on a little more. I do want to give abstinence a chance some time, but right now I feel that I don't have the coping skills to replace the self-medication with anything less harmful.

I can't afford private care, and the public mental health care system in Norway is very focused on specific diagnoses. It's difficult to get good treatment if you have complex issues, especially if they involve substance abuse. People in Norway do not think highly of substance abusers, as in most other countries too I guess, and this way of thinking seems to affect the public care health system as well. The pervading way of thinking seems to be "you got yourself into this mess, we're not going to waste money on people who don't take responsibility for their lives and who have poor prognoses". The treatment they give for addictions (if you're lucky and get it) is generally quite good I think, but when you need help for other diagnoses they normally don't want to treat you until you stop doing drugs entirely. Which is fine for the people who are able to do that before they solve their other issues, but I haven't managed to do so yet. Last time I checked there was only one treatment centre in Norway (I've been there, they mainly focused on the addiction and everything else was very general) for people who have a dual diagnosis (substance abuse and comorbid mental illness).

That is very sad, especially given poor data to support the abstinence approach in the first place. But I definitely wish you luck!

Calling all levels of consumption "self-medication" is unwarranted. If you reach a point at which you are stable and if the quantities you consume are reasonable, then you have pretty much arrived. If the government healthcare mandates abstinence and withholds treatment from you unless you comply that is another issue. But theoretically, not all consumption is self-medication. If you are stable and suffer no ill effects and whatever you do is reasonable overall, then pretty much things are OK for you.

Hey Mandrec, you are not alone. I am the same. I have needed to quit for so long. I have quit for up to eight months. But the cycle begins again and I'm just as much in bondage as I was before I quit. But I notice that since I take an antidepressant (Celexa) when I am sober, I feel better. Also, withdrawals go away, do something to help ease them. I hate withdrawals. Best of success to you.

I am probably going through Lithium withdrawal and I have been advised to consume more liquids. Not sure that it would help in the case of substance withdrawal, but wanted to pass it along. It does seem to help me. I have low grade headaches, nausea, some stomach upset. Have been having it for over a week. GP said might be withdrawal.

Hello friend!
It's so difficult to not smoke. I think I'm going to smoke today, soon, because I haven't eaten anything in the last 20 hours. Also because I crave. I know it's an excuse, but at least I'll eat. I can't take Celexa because it made me manic and I decided I did not need food at all. I was sure that not eating would enlighten me and put me in a sort of direct contact with God (without dying).

I missed whether you are still drinking alcohol, but if you are -

You should not consume alcohol without food - you know about that, right? The first rule of alcohol consumption is to eat alongside drinking, as this slows the absorption of alcohol by the body -- threefold.

Yes, I know I shouldn't but I have still done it to get drunk quicker. I've decided to stop the alcohol. Family dinners are going to be tougher from now on.

I couldn't really treat any of my mental health issues adequately until I got sober. It's incredibly hard to learn how to cope with reality in a healthy way AND run away from reality at the same time. My meds didn't work as well, my therapy went nowhere. They couldn't even get to a good solid diagnosis as long as I was using drugs and alcohol. I had to quit running and numbing before I could do any real recovery.