Posted on 07/18/2016 6:54:26 PM PDT by WhoisAlanGreenspan?
Looking for some comments and any advice.
I lost my only son to this horrible addiction to heroin just a few months ago. 4/2/16 Now I've been contacted by a nephew (in-law) who shares the same problems.
I want to help him if I can.
The thought I had was in addition to gathering his papers from another location, driving him with those papers to the Secretary of State office and paying for the new ID, that he needs to get a (for sure) new job. I would also give him a five dollar bill. And tell him he is to hold that same bill if he ever wants me to help him again.
The thinking is that an addict spends everything he has on getting high, but if he can maintain some self control by saving the five bucks in his pocket I loaned him, I'll talk with him and continue trying to help.
It's ridiculously hard to deal with people on this level. I have heard success stories, but the recidivism rate in them is great. It just strikes me that there will ALWAYS be a percentage of people who just don't buy, at all, the "normal" life we take for granted, and use their (sometimes very advanced) wits and wiles to "raise" themselves "above" it. It's a mystery to me. They just never seem to get "in gear" to live the life that has been granted them.
He needs to get into a good treatment program. If he refuses, he is not ready to quit. Do not give him any money. Forget finding him a job. An addict with a job is still an addict.
Addiction is not a choice,
it is a dependency.
You abducted and tortured that man. Great he was cured but alternative methods were available. Ones where he could be monitored and kept comfortable. The agony he went through is unimaginable to me. Of course he agreed to treatment. Torture makes people very compliant. He is a success in spite of what you did not because of it. Such “treatment” could very well have sent him right back to drugs.
No doubt your intention was good and you felt desperate measures were called for but it was wrong to do this to another human being.
Yer close. But yer not quite ‘on target’.
There’s no hard-wiring not to succeed and be ‘normal’ here. It’s an alteration of brain chemistry. That chemistry can be altered back.
Let me tell you about my sponsor. He is a brilliant man who was the chief anesthesiologist of a major hospital in Georgia. He speaks seven languages fluently. In his spare time, he plays violin in an orchestra.
He asked me how much of my brain is conscious at any given moment. I happened to know that answer: 5%.
He smiled. “That’s right. The remainder, 95%, is active but outside your conscious awareness and control. And that 95% is CERTAIN that unless you get your drug of choice, THAT YOU WILL DIE.”
I looked at him, stunned.
“Your thoughts are not your friend when you are an addict,” he went on, “and you need not pay attention to them.”
That was a helpful component to my turning point, when I finally got clean.
The key here is to understand that in your addict friends and relatives, that they might still BELIEVE their thoughts. They might still BELIEVE their addictions. It is when we learn that this is all nonsensical fantasy, that we get a chance to recover. We trust in God and our fellow addicts in recovery, and we get clean.
There is no hardwiring. It is all software. It is just erroneous programming.
You do need to find out if the local to your nephew emergency responders (police,Paramedics)carry Naloxone. It can save his life in case of an overdose.
Great point. You were smart enough to be reasoned with and, I’m supposing, didn’t have a haywired ego that made you think you were smarter than your sponsor.
Unfortunately for my brother and the others I know who went into the abyss, they ALL thought they were WAY smarter than these counselors trying to help them.
That was sort of the essence of my post. They thought they are above all that. There would always be someone coming along who would provide for them so, why listen to reason?
Like I said, I can’t fathom it. But that’s the nature of the disease.
Over 22 years clean and sober talking here.
If he is ready, get him into professional treatment, preferably serious, old school lock down style.
He needs to be separated from the substance long enough to detox.
He needs good old fashioned 12 steps, if he is willing.
If you can help get him that far, he will be physically free from constant craving, and his mind MIGHT be willing as well.
If he personally isn’t ready, no amount of pushing is likely to influence him.
In AA we say “one alcoholics talking to another alcoholic, can do what nobody else can do.”
In NA they have a similar saying. One addict helping another addict, or something like that.
Find clean addicts, and ask them to help you and your family. They want to do I, and they know about resources you might not easily find, or understand.
“Yeah and if he had died you would be in prison.”
We knew that going in. Not that it would have helped, but mom & dad knew what we were going to do and supported it, finacially and otherwise.
My biggest concern was that if it did not work or he escaped, we would be looking a a kidnapping charge. But, we knew if he were high or going through withdrawal he would not go to the police and if he were straight and sober he would not turn us in.
There were moments in there when a few of us were awake for three days and we were thinking we did the wrong thing. In the end, we did the right thing.
The Hazeldon phone number is the best answer.
I’ll just answer the why.
Serious drug addiction victims feel intense emotional pain worse than life itself. The drug stops the pain. Their immediate choice is between suicide and a drug.
The war on drugs, or criminalization, changes the choice to suicide and prison. Now an addict’s choice is between screwed and more screwed. Far better to let them have a cheap drug until they get better. But like alcoholics, some do not.
Imagine your feet are forcibly held over a red hot stove, your privates are getting high voltage electroshock. It is more pain than life itself. Imagine an illegal drug on the nearby counter. If you take the drug, all pain ceases.
You are presented with two choices to halt the pain. You could suicide or take the illegal drug. Or the pain continues with people’s endless hallow advice.
QUESTION
Would you take the drug??
There are a lot of comments here from folks who have either dealt with personal addiction or addiction of someone close. I don't have any experience with that to draw from. But I do wonder about the threshold that people cross to begin the use of the drug.
Were they not were of how dangerous it was? Did they not give any thought to the costs they were transferring onto others (family, friends, the community at large, taxpayers)? Beyond the incredible risk taking that it represents, to me the shocking part is the willingness to transfer costs onto others in the course of a discretionary choice to get high. A lot of those costs are borne by people not even in this country. Think of all the crime in central America that is spun off from drug trade and transportation to the US to feed the habits of folks who just didn't give a $hit about how they impact others.
We are by nature restless, irritable, and discontented. Those who recover are the ones that find a spiritual solution for their moral bankruptcy. Ordinary folks don’t (nay can’t) understand it at all. Truth is it leaves us (the addict or alcoholic) baffled a lot too.
It is heartbreaking for those who love us
The Hazeldon phone number is the best answer.
I’ll just answer the why.
Serious drug addiction victims feel intense emotional pain worse than life itself. The drug stops the pain. Their immediate choice is between suicide and a drug.
The war on drugs, or criminalization, changes the choice to suicide and prison. Now an addict’s choice is between screwed and more screwed. Far better to let them have a cheap drug until they get better. But like alcoholics, some do not.
Imagine your feet are forcibly held over a red hot stove, your privates are getting high voltage electroshock. It is more pain than life itself. Imagine an illegal drug on the nearby counter. If you take the drug, all pain ceases.
You are presented with two choices to halt the pain. You could suicide or take the illegal drug. Or the pain continues with people’s endless hallow advice.
QUESTION
Would you take the drug??
Well said
Addiction is nothing more than liking the way your drug of choice makes you feel. You’re entitled to your opinion, but you can’t change mine.
This, in a sentence, explains addiction perfectly.
It is a brilliant observation.
Drugs are a symptom, only.
The 12 steps go to the root of the problem.
Drugs and alcohol were but a symptom......
We are childish.....grandiose with an inferiority complex.....
His drug intake was increasing rapidly and he was mixing at high dosages, he would have OD’ed.
Partly. It is the relief from the pain we sought.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but you can’t change mine.
Are you still as stubborn, if you hear it from a recovered crack addict? Someone who has lived and operated in the 'trap house'? Someone that has hustled and stolen and conned for his drug of choice? Someone who has beaten others down, who has had a pistol against his head a few times, someone who was in 'the game' in a ghetto, real way? Someone who got to the root of the spiritual sickness, that the drugs were only of symptom of, and who recovered?
That person is me.
Curiously, my smarts hurt my recovery for a long time. You have to check your brain at the door when you come to NA. You have to listen only to your heart.
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