Author: chinagirl
Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 6:47 am
Hi and congratulations on 2 years….
You know I’ve talked to so many people…addicts/alcoholics…some with a year or two sobriety, some with 15+ years…and everyone says the same….we/they see someone drinking out of a frosty, beautifullly shaped martini glass, see a bottle of pills (no matter what they are) and our heads turn…we are drawn to thinking…"what are they drinking? What is in that bottle?" It’s just the way it is…nonaddicts don’t think this way, but no matter how much time we have in recovery we can be tempted or at least curious.
Get rid of that bottle of pills! ASAP. Or, give them to someone to hide them from you, out of your house. They will become bigger than the house itself if you allow your brain to keep thinking about them. Why make things more difficult for yourself? You are doing well on Sub….maybe you will be someone who needs it for life…why throw away all this work for a pill that will NOT do you any good in any way…you won’t get high, you won’t feel them….but what you will do is beat yourself up if you take them….then your addict brain wins and starts thinking…well fuck it…i’ve blown it now might as well go for it…. that is how our brains work and when I talk about shutting all the doors to our addiction I’m including all of that thinking that can push into a relapse or relapse mode.
I had oral surgery a couple of months ago and I posted about it…it might have seem weird to post so much about a tooth exraction but I know how my brain works. I know I need to tell people what I’m thinking, be accountable, talk things through and not just think about them…its awesome you posted about this because that means you really don’t want those pills at all. You are being accountable by talking about it…you know the saying ‘we’re as sick as our secrets’ ? It’s true. If you hadn’t posted about it that would have given your addict brain another little in. Opening the door a crack to allow that secret to fester and grow.
So don’t torture yourself with having those pills in close proximity. If you don’t want to flush them give them to someone who can lock them up, someone you can trust. Tell them to NOT give them to you under any circumstances and then you can let go and move on from thinking about them.
I remember my 2nd treatment, I’d just finished detox and was attending outpatient and we had to do an intervention on my ex (dentist) father-in-law. He was addicted to vicodin, valium, etoh. My now exhusband didn’t want to do a formal intervention, he wanted to do it himself…and he wanted me to come along to support him and to talk to his father about addiction and recovery….(they knew I was in recovery and knew I had relapsed). So I gathered all my NA and AA literature and books and headed out. I called my sponsor every 30 minutes I think…I was pretty scared to do this for many reasons, the biggest being my OWN sanity and recovery. We got to their house at about 11pm on a Friday night and they were both passed out. She is an alcoholic and addicted to xanax…Well, the point is we got to their house, they were passed out so my ex searched the house for pills and we found a bottle of 1000 vicodin in his dresser. I couldn’t stop thinking about them and I literally ran out of their room…and told my ex to get rid of them, throw them out because I was only 2 weeks out of detox at that point. And not on Sub or Naloxone or anything. But to see that many pills was conflicting. I didn’t want them, I did want them. Being a dentist, at that time, he could get that may for "patient"’ use.
My ex father-in-law admitted to using. We ended up having to take him to detox because he had been on etoh and benzos and was looking pretty bad….I was fearful he would seize…but he did admit it….but soon relapsed on etoh about 3 months later. I think it was impossible to live with his wife and not drink as everything they did revolved around a party atmosphere. It was a very challenging place to visit for me…and I finally quit going. Talk about Monster-in-law…geesh.
I just know how finding a bottle of pills might feel…and how quickly we can have them in our pocket. It doesn’t matter if we think about them, it just is. What is more important is NOT taking them…having a solid recovery program so when these things happen it doesn’t sabotoge us.
Thanks for posting about it. It helps to realize, too, that its not just you who thinks that way. I used to think I was the only one who craved opiates like I did…I didn’t really understand how powerful and how baffling this disease is.
