...a geezers tale....

[phoenix]

I used for 6 years,and just passed the 4 years clean mark in January. All the media coverage of the paraphenalia and users is strange to watch...that was my life for years! It seems a long ago nightmare now; I have far to go in setting and obtaining goals, but I have my life back and my future to look forward to.

I just got a message from the universe that it was time to stop. I would fight with myself about going to my "Death Merchant"as I called him, to get a quantity so I would be stocked up for a month, or two weeks at least, at a time. I had alienated my real friends, and family. I could no longer continue the facade of functioning- lost my job, my neighbors were trying to have me evicted, I was malnourished, smoking it and packs of cigs around the clock. I was at home, with piles of shard and no friends, facing eviction, paranoid, depressed and I had a final harassment that made me move to get away, start over.

Unlike most on this site and in the media, I was in my 30s when I started, and so were a lot of my friends. Yes, I know : we are supposed to know better.

I have yet to go to any NA groups, or otherwise seek help or therapy for this addiction. I quit cold turkey when I moved. I had tried to do the same one year before, and it was the worst abysmal pit of hell I could imagine. Part of my desire to use in the beginning was that I cut off the feelings of deep personal loss I had at a point in my life. All this and more came back; it wasn't gone, I had just suppressed it with cold hard shard.
I rendered myself psychotic in the end- I know the symptoms of schizophrenia, and I had them. Delusions, paranoia, hallucinations.
After I moved, my good friend and drug buddy died with a brain infection- I couldn't go back to see him in the hospital, or even to the memorial, because I knew it was too tempting to go up the street and score more. I was only a month clean when he died. I have never gotten the proper diagnosis of his illness.

My own personal bottom had to be reached before I could conceive of quitting. Everybody has theirs, and some of my long time friends and aquaintances fell much further than I did. I was involved with dealing it, but on a larger scale, and I kept to myself a lot. The street level user is what people associate this drug with- but it hits all levels. Believe me, I have delivered drugs to very upscale neighborhoods of seemingly straight people with good jobs.