u/rypelli

It’s been on and off battle with opioids for the past 17 years. Just turned 40 and I have the most clean time I’ve ever had which is just shy of 15 months. On paper, my life is in a place I could have only dreamed of before - I have my own apartment, a car, food on my plate and a few people around me who love me. Outside of that, I am in total mid-life crisis mode - unemployed with no fucking clue where to go with my career, completely lost in the dating world, and overall just super lonely and shut down. Most days I don’t even want to be around people which is so unlike me.

These days I have been wondering why I fought so hard to get clean so many times. I remember being shit out of hope as early as 2015 and somehow battled another 9+ years, the last 5 of which was primarily high-grade fent analogues and a good half-dozen cold turkey detoxes which are a level of pain and suffering the human mind cannot even conceptualize. But right now it’s at the absolute top it’s ever been and I am still just as lost and empty as all the other times I’ve tried to get clean over the years. Get clean, rebuild it on paper, realize I’m still empty, burn it down, rebuild. Consumed by shame and guilt at how I can be so dissatisfied with a life someone down the street dying in the hospital would love to have. How could I have a roof over my head, food on my plate, people who care about me, in relative good health with a badass sports car in the garage be this fuckin miserable. I feel like at any given moment I could lose someone close to me and would have spent the last x months of their life consumed in my own selfish withdrawal from humanity instead of enjoying my time with them. Lately it’s been in my shell, into my temple of fear, shame, guilt, and self-hatred.

Dope has been on my mind constantly lately. It sucks that opioids will always be the little white rabbit I will chase. It’s the only place I could ever get any fucking peace and quiet. Peace and quiet from myself, and that toxic internal dialogue that I seem to never be able to shake.

When I play the tape through on using again, it ends up well in my mind 0% of the time. Those thoughts always buy time but I don’t know how much longer I can sustain this before I just say fuck it.

Caught in the middle.

We both have struggled with OUD for years, and both got clean, but sometimes he’ll go use for a few weeks then shake it out for a few days and dose it a few times a year, which I think is absolutely remarkable, because once I start using it’s hard for me not to do it every day, especially since dope for me has this dark energy to start making me believe I have a bad life even when things are relatively good. It’s been about 18 months for me from a back and forth 17 year battle, my most, but I don’t think anything at this point will not have me romanticizing/fantasizing about a afghan brown powder or OG 80s.

Has anyone else been able to do this after a long career, experienced run with opiates? To me it is remarkable.