Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There is a huge difference between being a drug user and being a drug addict. Someone who smokes cigarettes is a drug user, or they could be a tobacco addict. Tobacco is one of the most powerfully addictive drugs. Someone who sips a beer or has a mixed drink is using a drug, while being addicted is in a whole different category. Each individual would probably have a different answer for your question because people can't be lumped together so easily. Life doesn't work that way.
I remember seeing singer Chaka Khan in an interview. She talked about her period of drug use. She said that she used drugs as a way to help her avoid feeling things that she didn't want to feel. I'm assuming that's the situation for many drug addicts. They are using drugs
for the same reason. To avoid feelings they don't want to feel.
So my question is what's a better alternative to drugs? How are drug addicts taught to better deal with those feelings that they are trying to avoid?
Yes, good observation. Self medicating to "be gone" and not have to deal with the horrors of addiction. They need counseling first to get to the root of the problem (most addicts have very serious, painful issues that they want to get away from). I know all of this from personal experience with my EX husband and two of my kids.
The better alternative is to change your life. First to realize what the problems are. Get into a sober program. Work the program and believe in yourself and God (or a higher power). The AA twelve step program is designed to take you from where you are now to a new, sober life. All of this requires self love, rid yourself of guilt, shame and remorse by making amends to those you've hurt. Get away from old friends that still use drugs, and make new friends. Go to AA and do the book studies, read, pray and surround yourself with sober people. That and allowing God to help you is the only alternative. Changing your life. Statistics now show that meth is just as addictive as heroine, and fentanyl is fast becoming more dangerous and killing more and more kids than ever before. It is lethal. It now comes in 'gummies' so sort of hard to keep away from kids if you leave them lying around.
If you have not listened to the music of "Jelly Roll" you should. He and his wife are Ex addicts and he describes all of this in several of his songs. Lainy Wilson joins him on some of them. Need a favor is a great song too.
I remember seeing singer Chaka Khan in an interview. She talked about her period of drug use. She said that she used drugs as a way to help her avoid feeling things that she didn't want to feel. I'm assuming that's the situation for many drug addicts. They are using drugs
for the same reason. To avoid feelings they don't want to feel.
So my question is what's a better alternative to drugs? How are drug addicts taught to better deal with those feelings that they are trying to avoid?
The federal government has a program that pays for massage as a de-stressing strategy for recovering addicts. Massage is promoted as a healthy coping mechanism. Massage has been proven to boost endorphins and turn off stress hormone production, to promote calm.
Working out, running, swimming, or cycling seems helps some people who need a little boost of something to make themselves feel normal.
If that doesn’t help, see your doctor. They can recommend a course of action to help with your problem. 12 step programs are free. Brain meds can also address depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder. Therapy can root out some of the causes of drug use and teach healthier approaches to life.
I'm reminded of a woman I met running on a track one time. She said she ran to quit smoking. She would collapse on the track is she kept smoking while running!
There is no helping drug addicts or alternatives. They're doing what they're not supposed to be doing which is, asking to not be human and feel. That's a dangerous path. People are not supposed to be happy all the time. You're supposed to feel depression and sadness and anger and all the negatives because that's life.
I don't think that this is quite right. I have known a lot of people who were addicted to one thing or another and they generally are not happy people, nor under any illusion that partaking in their addiction will make them that way.
The usual path is more that they don't believe that there will be serious consequences for the first few times they do the drug. That they can stop any time. That the ugliness of real addiction happens to some people but won't happen to them. Since most addicts probably get their first steps into this world in their teens or early 20s, I believe a lot of it is that thing where the frontal cortex isn't fully developed yet...it can be hard to get your head around the gravity of consequences. Obviously not every person growing through this stage of life will experiment with dangerous substances, but I think that an individual is more vulnerable to the possibility because the part of the mind that can mount a greater defense to unwise choices just is not yet at full capacity.
But playing around lightly with drugs, alcohol, nicotine, or other addictive behaviors is of course a dangerous game and I think that a lot of people don't even realize that they are addicted until it's too late and the hook is set deep.
After that, it's not a matter of logical thinking, "I do this drug to try and feel happy all the time"...it's more like when they try to go without it, they experience nasty withdrawal stuff that is really hard to cope with and the mechanisms of addiction kick in, and it is hard to push yourself through that suffering to the other side of breaking your dependence.
And sometimes people who quit something still crave it many years later. They never do go back to a "normal" place of not feeling a draw to it, they have to keep that shield up and ready for the rest of their lives. My Dad as a former smoker tells me that he still craves cigarettes sometimes, and it's been decades since he quit. That is my addiction, presently, too. The only one I've got. I've never been drunk, and I don't miss the pot and acid I did as a teenager, those were relatively easy to leave behind. But smoking... It is definitely not about feeling happy. It's about the fact that when I attempt to quit, I am tense, anxious, have panic attacks, my tongue and teeth feel weird in my mouth, I'm physically and mentally and emotionally uncomfortable and might snap and treat my loved ones badly because I struggle with my self control...and I begin almost instantly to gain weight. I've tried a number of times and will certainly try a number more and hope one day to make it stick, but it's hell.
So it's not that smoking makes me happy, it's that NOT smoking makes me miserable. Which I think is pretty much how it works for most addicts, once the addiction really takes hold.
And I didn't start because I thought it would make me happy, either. I was 15 and a boy had just broke up with me and I was experiencing the kind of teenage melodrama that had me all, "nothing matters, I don't care anymore" and I bummed my first Marlboro Red off the friend who happened to be there at the time. And I "could stop any time I wanted"...until one day I found that in fact, I couldn't, not so much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NORTY FLATZ
Usually, their education is finished via OD. You see, drug addicts fail at 1 thing. And that 1 thing is called "dosing." They don't know how to dose themselves. Their mantra: "More is better." This can be lethal.
The reason they don't know how to dose themselves? Because they are NOT medical professionals. Even pro's get it WRONG sometimes, tho.
I'd love to take pictures of these addicts that come through our ER, but those pesky HIPAA laws get in the way....and it's against our hospital policy...
Well the other thing about dosing is that even if you think you know what you're doing, if you are messing with street drugs you have no idea what you are actually taking in terms of the pills or powders that someone sold you, that they got from somewhere... My son once told me he had some "Molly" and I asked to see it...and I told him, "what you have here is a little baggie of some white powdery crap. I have no idea what this actually is, nor do you, and probably neither does the person who sold it to you. It might do nothing, or make you high, or kill you. I think it's pretty stupid to put some unknown substance into your body like that. I think you should throw it away." I persuaded him to chuck it into a dumpster, which was the best I could think of at the time. I reminded him of a friend of ours who died from taking heroin that, unbeknownst to him, was loaded with fentanyl.
It's not a failure to understand dosing when you don't even know what the hell you're taking.
With regards to alcoholism: Is it a disease, a weak-will, a genetic predisposition, an allergy, a spiritual malaise or is the person just plain f-up? I don't care and will check off all the boxes.
AA and meetings? I remember when I was new in the rooms, hearing about how AA is a microcosm of society, but I find it a very insular society with its own language and culture. Yet, when is all said and done as long as I don’t pick up that first drink (or drug) It’s all good.
Personally, I find nothing wrong with stewing in my own misery for a day or two. But then it's time to get off my ass and do something. Living life on life’s terms is never easy and while meditation works for many people, I prefer suggestions I picked up over the years in AA such as: restraint of pen and tongue. And the serenity prayer. There are often times, I don't have the wisdom to know if I can or can't change a particular situation. And this is where restraint of pen and tongue comes in. First and foremost, I try not to make the situation worse by saying something I may regret later.
And while I may or may not be trudging the road of happy destiny - I do believe soberity has helped me travel in the right direction.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
