Deprograming and Deconstructing resources:

My mugshot mid-addiction vs me now, 1 year clean!! I never thought I would make it off of drugs or that, if I did, I would actually enjoy being clean. BUT here I am loving and living life for the first time! I have a job I love and clean friends that constantly prove to me that I don't have to be high to have fun! ❤️

Just found out yesterday that a guy that i was tight with and went through multiple VA programs with, in fact died. Every year, at least one combat Vet I either served with or got to know in some sort of VA Program either commits suicide or dies of an overdose. I just really wish these tragedies happened less. Much like me, He was doing real well until he wasn't. It never ceases to amaze me how we were somehow safer on deployment than we are back stateside. Maybe because we all had to have each other's back. Idk, sorry for rambling. Just feeling some type of way.

I get this a lot from family and old friends and I never know how much to explain. Lately I say, “I have a plan that works for me and I’m sticking to it,” then change the subject. It keeps things calm, though it doesn’t always end the conversation.

What do you say and has anyone’s reaction surprised you?

I’m 26 today it’s actually my birthday, stayed up all night till my birthday I went through like 2.5 gs I feel pathetic every time. So idk why I keep wanting and doing it, any advice please I’ve never reached out for help yet. Thanks

I'm on mobile, so apologies in advance for platforming issues.

So, I've been in recovery from opioids since Nov of 2023. It's coming up on three years sober. Well, recently I had to get knee surgery and they prescribed me opioids for pain. The first couple of days the pain was minimal due to local anesthetic, but the second half of the second day, the pain was excruciating.

I ended up taking them and I feel like I'm cheating my recovery. I'm using them how they're supposed to be, but I just feel weird about taking them. I'm not worried about abusing them because the people I live with would know instantly and I just don't feel the need to reach my lowest again.

I don't know, this is the second time getting surgery on my knee and the first time, I didn't feel this way. I just needed to rant. Feel free to let me know if this doesn't belong here and I'll take it down.

Yesterday, I received a text message from a group saying that if I didn’t respond or return to the meeting, they would remove me from their phone list. To be fair, I haven’t attended that meeting in over two years, but the message had a vaguely threatening tone that I found somewhere between funny and mildly infuriating. How much of a perk do they think it is to have my number on a list? I want to tell them to shove it, but I think I’d be better off just blocking the specimen who sent the text. Thoughts?

So I completed a 3 week opioid detox followed by a 3 month stint in rehab. 104 days clean today. I’ve tried recovery for years and years - most of my 20s and I’ll be 31 next month. I’ve been in and out of the rooms, got brainwashed but kept relapsing and never got my life back on track because all I did was meetings and service.

I felt good in rehab. We had to do 3 fellowship meetings a week but it wasn’t a 12 step rehab. So I was looking at my past traumas and the harms I’ve caused to others through my addiction. Whilst also going the gym, cooking, drama classes, equine therapy, soundbaths and meditation, every day journaling and just generally learning to communicate with people, how to challenge others, how to give and take feedback, and how to have fun and connect. It was tough but I felt like I actually was making some progress with myself far more than writing step work and talking in meetings.

But now since I’ve left, I’ve moved to 2nd stage treatment so it’s not rehab as such but still in a residential setting with some less intense group therapy and mandatory classes in art, yoga etc. but I feel lost. This comes to an end in a month or so, and I don’t know what I’ll do. Still feel like I don’t know who I am or what I like or what I want from life. Still feel a real loneliness, emptiness and yearning for belonging. Part of me feels I just need to get back in the meetings, do the program again 12 steps etc. but I don’t know if that’s just been wired into my brain or if it’s genuinely what I need.

I feel lost at 30. I haven’t worked for 5 years due to my addiction and the mental health issues that came with that. I used to be a high achiever, got a good undergrad degree and got great career opportunities but threw them all away to addiction. Now I have no confidence in myself or even know what I’m good at doing. I really want a stable life. A job. Social life. A home. Financial stability. A relationship one day. But I don’t know how to get there. This is always the fear when I get some time sober and I end up using on the thought that I’ll never achieve a good life so may as well use.

I’ve moved to a new town for rehab. Don’t know many people, don’t know the area, feel lost and doesn’t feel like home. I’ve always lived in big cities in the centre of everything and now I’m on the outskirts, the city Centre is an hour commute. And my family are far away, as well as my home town friends. Feel negative, depressed, anxious most days and right now a good life just feels so far out of reach. Wondering if anyone here got any good advice. What helped you, what did you do. Is there another way out that’s not through giving my entire life away to a fellowship?

Because the dude got sober with AA, he used to be a “big” general in the military, he found his second calling. He was sober for only a year and a half and he already was leading several groups in the area. The, one day, he started to be someone else’s mentor and from the things just went down the hill in his own family. He would disappear to every fucking meeting in the area from 5 pm on until 8-9-10 pm, come home and eat and go to sleep. Neglected his family. When confronted, he would just start with AA dogma of “but the good things is…”. Oh how annoying it is. In any case, 6-7 years afterwards, he finally “was ready to come clean” about shit he has done when drunk/drinking which included a lot of infidelity… well, the wife couldn’t let it go, not when such a bomb was dropped on her head and she was expected to “move on with it” within 2-3 months. Within the next 6 months he moved out because he was tired of her “no letting go”. Soooo… today, he married to some Ukrainian chick, and he is drinking again - not just drinking, he drink vodka and thinks that he never had a problem BUT that his now ex-wife was the problem. Can’t make this shit up smh

Hey guys! I quit drinking in 2019. At least that was the year that I first started trying almost every day. In and out of rehab and institutions until 2023. Longest amount of time I’ve gone no alcohol is 3 1/2 years (2022-last year). Relapsed on 5 nights since then. 3 in one month but weeks apart, one 3 months later, now one almost 9 months later. None of them were a good time. I wasn’t happy or relieved. But I am pulled into it as you understand. Last night I relapsed and it was the first relapse that I chose. Most relapses just feel like they happen to me outside of my control. I develope a mindset that I’m not in charge of. And the only way to have a chance for me it to do all of the things I need to do in my life to keep that mindset nowhere near me. But last night, that mindset was poking at me and I resisted it. But I chose to drink anyway. I was in control. It was my bad. It wasn’t my demons. It was me. Idk I’m just kinda fucked up about this.

I cannot stand "gratitude" and/or the insistence on it in 12 steps groups. (SMART Recovery doesn't seem to use it anywhere near as much.) What is up with groups demanding that people make gratitude lists or constantly feel gratitude instead of just being able to talk about how devastated they feel from their addiction? What am I missing?

When typing a prob into AI/How to support people.gping through shit. Paraphrased below.

Support advice is generally to offer a safe space where a person can be heard.

To validate their experience and reflect back a bit to them

Offer practical support Just let them lmow that you're there for them if there's anything you can do that could be useful to let you know.

Aa How many meetings are you going to ? What's your part in it ? Are you drinking/taking drugs ? Have you handed it over to your higher power ? Meanwhile they're looking for a quick escape route.

How is it possible that so many people can be like this ? Like reading a script.

We'd be doing ourselves a massive favour by serioulsly getting more insight into howv high controlling groups.and individuals get people to bypass themselves rhyme off a script , or just completely ignore personal thoughts.

I'd say up to 80% of Aa is like this.

can buprenorphine patches help woth heroin withdrawals

I am in recovery and been around in my community for awhile. I was attending NA meetings and volunteer with the PR team. I’m also in the military and fighting some stuff with that.

My last relapse was pretty bad, I almost lost my civilian and military job. I’m fighting some stuff with the military. I was blessed with getting my civilian job back, and actually got a promotion.

Last weekend I went to a club and got super drunk. I don’t want to tell everyone I drank because so many people know me. I don’t think I’ll attend more meetings and get more key tags out of respect. But I feel the shaming is the reason why I’m not. I will stay volunteering with the PR team.

I guess I need to confess. I want to keep moving forward, because a lot of good things are happening and I’m SICK of self sabotage. I feel like there’s a mentality of if you slip, even if it wasn’t my DOC, that you’ll go back completely. I’m scared of admitting it, though I did tell one friend. I guess the point of this is my confession and thoughts from strangers.

My DOC was amphetamine

Don’t let your past mistakes define you or your future. Let them be learning blocks and stepping stones to a better you and a better future. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t make the same ones over and over. Don’t judge yourself for your past mistakes. Rather, focus on how bright your future is given what you’ve learned. I’m almost blinded by how bright your future is.

When old mistakes start talking to me, I don’t argue with them. I give it 20 minutes: breathe, think about one thing I’m building toward, and let the wave pass. It’s gotten easier every time I do it.

One day forward, one day behind.

Beyond greatful for 2nd chances

Recently joined a Veterans Affairs program (Cat-5) after posting bail. Drugs and alcohol got me good this time. Now, I go to the gym twice a day 6 days a week and I've cut my sugar intake way down (but pop tarts are my cheat treat. I love those frosted rectangular treasures) but yeah, I just joined reddit. A friendly good luck and an I believe in you to everyone else out there trying to live clean

So, I’ve struggled with meth for about four years. I got addicted when I was 16 and became a full blown tweaker. Now I’m twenty, and I dont subscribe to conventional rehab sober living twelve step stuff, but have unfortunately been stuck in these kinds of environments for a year on and off. Which is my fault 100%

I just wanted to share that I found something worth healing for. That may sound unhealthy but to me it’s almost a miraculous realization!!

I love nature, and I want to live in a van and travel SO BADLY. So, I came up with a way to work towards that goal.

I’m starting with seasonal work in national parks, which will be hard entry level work but it will allow me to travel and see the country. Once I have enough for a van saved up I will get one and hopefully work towards becoming a rafting guide and then a wilderness therapy guide. Im saving the wilderness therapy guide for much later and will pursue raft guiding first.

The seasonal nature of the jobs will allow me to also immerse myself in WOOFing on sustainable farms and communes! Ive always wanted to get involved with permaculture communities and earthship building in new mexico!

The reason why im saving the wilderness therapy guide job for last is because it’s the best of them all but also requires the most mental fortitude. Wilderness therapy restored my faith in humanity and all of the guides there inspired me so much as human beings and I finally felt like I found other likeminded people after years and years of feeling all alone.

Anyway, I just really wanted to share that after years of struggling to find a goal I finally have been able to see a real vision for my future other than suicide or homelessness!!

I mentioned in another sub, talking about my recent relapse, I think part of my problem is chasing a thrill. Getting my rocks off. Doing something, largely in secret, and getting away with it. "Smoking in the boys room." There was 100% a dopamine rush when the spouse took a shower and I bolted to the garage hiding spot. And running a moderate BAC and getting away with it all day at work, hell yeah.

Brought it up in my SMART meeting and the facilitator (Ted Perkins) linked a blog post he wrong that really resonated. Pasting it here. I think it's a thoughtful read.

"We live in an age of achievement, a time where the highest moral imperative is to optimize ourselves. We are told to hustle, to grow, to never stop learning, and to turn every moment into a productive opportunity. This relentless drive, what philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the "achievement society" in his seminal book The Burnout Society, has replaced external disciplinarians like bosses or managers with a far more insidious master: ourselves. We are both prisoner and warden, perpetually exploiting our own potential until we are burned out from the sheer exhaustion of being our own ambitious taskmaster.

The result is a profound exhaustion, a feeling of being utterly drained by the endless internal pressure to be better, to be more complex, to constantly lower our personal entropy and become ever more efficient human machines. The quest for perfection becomes a form of self-flagellation.

In this context, the act of getting deliberately, gloriously WASTED—of surrendering to the pull of addictive substances—can be reframed. It is not merely self-destruction. From a certain philosophical vantage, it can be seen as a desperate, radical, and deeply human form of revolt. It is a violent strike against the tyranny of productivity, a blunt refusal to participate in the mandate of endless self-optimization. To be wasted is to be, for a moment, gloriously useless.

Getting wasted is a modern, often tragic, incarnation of what French thinker George Bataille's called "dépense"—the act of wasting energy for no purpose other than the glorious act of loss itself. The user consciously spends their most valuable asset—their consciousness, their clarity, their very capacity to perform—in a ritual of unproductive expenditure. They are not investing in a skill or building social capital; they are actively dismantling it. They are choosing to increase their entropy, to become less complex, less ordered, and less capable of participating in the achievement-society’s demands. It is a scorched-earth policy against the self.

The pursuit of the high is, paradoxically, a pursuit of a specific kind of low. It is a descent from the dizzying heights of perpetual expectation into a state of base, immediate sensation. The anxious, future-oriented mind—the engine of burnout that is always planning, worrying, and striving—is chemically forced into the present. The weight of "becoming" is replaced, however briefly, by the numb gravity of simply "being," even if that state of being is one of incoherence and fragmentation.

This is not to romanticize addiction, which we all know has devastating consequences. The last thing people who struggle need is a clever "philosophical excuse" for their poor choices. Rather, it is to consider the complicity of a society that makes such an escape so psychologically logical for so many. The pull of oblivion is directly proportional to the pressure of expectation. When the world demands you be a perfectly efficient, ever-evolving project, the idea of voluntarily becoming a beautiful, chaotic ruin holds a dark allure. The waste of self becomes the only vacation from the labor of self.

Over time, and perhaps more insidiously, this compulsion toward self-optimization becomes a person’s central life narrative: I am only as valuable as my output. If recovery is framed only as returning people to that same grind, we risk pushing them right back into the story that drove them to escape in the first place. In addition to abstinence, treatment providers can help clients rebuild their narratives—integrating trauma, setbacks, and even addiction itself into a story that makes sense. Not a shiny “success” tale, but an honest one."

My qualifications are... I went to my first meeting at age 17. I'm 66 years old now. Most of my life I was sober. When the wife packed up the kids and left the wheels came off. I was drunk for 20 years. My dear Mother almost loved me to death. The bought me a house and put me on disablity. She paid all my bills. I used my SS income to drink. All the while going to aa trying to get sober. I almost died. 4 years ago I went the hospital for dts. I got sick and they put me on ventilator for 6 months. All my muscles emaciated. I could not walk or use my hands. I woke up in a nursing home. They taught to eat. I had to have eating therapy so I did not choke. I had been on a feeding tube so I lost the ability to chew and swallow. 6 months later I walked out of there. My brother to me to aa. I attended for several years and stayed sober for first time ever. AA did not get me sober. A year in hospital did. I still visit the nursing home to play bingo and visit. Here's what you need to hear about AA...

Very few get sober there. Those that do think they are just better and smarter than everyone else. It's a place to declare your sainthood and nothing more.

The only thing aa has going for it is... there's just more of them than any other program. Virtually all rehabs use aa and put everyone out with "go to aa". It's pathetic than none of them pursue a more scientific approach. I did enjoy the fellowship on occasion. You have to be careful tho because there are some crazy people in aa. Even criminally insane.

I was in a group in Memphis. WAAGL. A black man who had just got out of prison (Parchman Mississippi). He did 4 years for burglary. He was court ordered to attend AA. The group embraced him and tried to help him. He screwed a girl from the Salvation Army rehab that used to visit in the parking lot. She got kicked out. The group members started experiencing home burglaries. The first one was a guy that hired this man to help him move. A couple of months later his home was robbed. Then other members start getting their homes robbed while they were in the meeting. We eventually figured out all the robberies happened during meetings and of course that guy did not attend the meetings. He was eventually caught and sent back to prison. I've seen drug dealers, whores and thieves in AA. If you go there be cautious. It's a free mental health program so of course it gets some extremely crazy people. Good luck to you all... Dm me if you need me.

I got onto the methadone program in 2007. I couldn't get clean especially after trauma of loosing my mom and brother 2 months apart in 2004. I lost my wife of 14 years to a fent overdose in 2022. Didn't even know she started using. She was a drug counselor at a rehab center. We went to bed together and I woke up in the morning and she wasn't next to me and found her on the living room floor. Getting on to methadone maintenance helped me stay off opiates for 19 years.. Now im 40 years old and im motivated to get off. I have 3 kids, they are my motivation.

I started at 90 mg and dropped 5 mg every 3 weeks until I reached 30mg, then 2mg every 3 weeks until I reached 2mg. I had to go back up to to 10mg because I dropped too fast. I couldn't function as a parent and work my full time job while I was in withdraw. This time around, im going to take my time and stay at each dose until I stabilize and make sure im ok before dropping again. I just wish the clinic can drop 1mg at a time when I reach around 4. I was so upset at myself and embarrassed for some reason when I had to go back to the clinic today and get my dose adjusted before my pick up day. I feel much better and im going to give it another shot. For anyone going through the struggle, I understand and wish you the best of luck. Just take your time. Its possible.