it all seems so pointless, like sweeping a dirty floor but you don’t have a dustpan so you keep finding new places to hide the dirt. Now it’s under a table, now it’s behind a bookcase, now it’s in a corner, it doesn’t matter because it’ll never go away.
Well the big ‘news’ is I’ve quit SH (my regular method) going on a month or more. I got sick of cleaning up the mess so I just stopped. But it immediately got channeled into a different vice (back to drugs, which I had quit for most of the year). So there’s that huge pile of dirt again, just in a different place.
I do think there’s some strategy to this though. For the last 3 years I’ve been painstakingly steering away from the real killers (alcohol being the worst) while embracing less damaging ways of self destruction, some so subtle they don’t seem like addictions but the are. Violent workouts can replace SH in a pinch (I’m talking real brutal like running 20 miles while calling yourself a piece of shit the whole time). It’s amazing how many places you can hide that dirt. But it’s never going away. It’s just building up bigger & bigger. Hide it in a closet until the door busts open and it all comes spilling out all over the floor again. Isn’t that happens with most ‘recoveries’? People get clean for years, even decades, but then something flips a switch and they spiral straight to death in a matter of days. People think it’s such a shame that something triggered a relapse but the truth is it never went away.
11 comments
Now if you could only channel your vice into something productive? Cleaning? Building stuff? Exercise- you call yours violent but isn’t running still better not?
What if you simply cycle from one vice to another? You know how if you take one thing for sleep, it works great in the beginning and then it eventually ceases to work? Then you take something else, works for a bit then it also stops working. SO some people cycle between 2 or more sleep aids. One stops working, go to another, then back to first. Seems to be better than taking one thing and have it a super high dose.
Perhaps cycling between your vices would work in a similar way. If you choose ONE vice, it’ll get dark/out of hand pretty fast. But cycle between several, maybe each one will be less severe…
your tolerance for each vice will be less if you cycle through them. and gives your poor body a chance to recuperate, until you abuse the heck out of it again O_o
Thanks eternal, those are all great suggestions reminding me that maybe it’s not completely pointless. Youre right the goal should be to channel all the ‘dirt’ into something productive, Ive done a few ‘rage cleans’ recently and parts of my living space are spotless. Exercise is a tricky one, with me it’s closely linked to negative & self destructive thoughts, like *TW* in the past I would cut and immediately follow it with an intense workout to maximize the bleeding & pain. yeah i’m all kinds of fucked up.
But I also associate exercise with good feelings, especially the results, so maybe I can separate it from the self harm aspect.
Building stuff would be the ultimate successful re-channeling. I’m not at that point yet but I know a lot of people can do it. The ‘tortured artist’ comes to mind, but also I’ve heard gardening & landscaping is a great way to cope.
lol suddenly I’m reminded of the old Happy Days episode where The Fonz channels all his rage into building birdhouses and he builds like 50 of them
Also brilliant comparison between cycling vices & cycling sleep aids. 100% spot on.
btw, did you ever start with your new therapist? not that i have much hope in therapists, but i believe in one of your posts a few months ago you mentioned something about trying to see a new therapist?
oh wait, i think that was heartless…
yea that must’ve been heartless… My insurance ran out a year ago so I think I’m in the same sitch as you… No $$ No help :/
I sense that I’ve been mentioned… that joke never lands on here, but maybe this time.
Contrarian that I am, I don’t agree on the unavoidable nature of the metaphorical dirt. I’ve got some ex addicts in my family, and while they can trend obsessive they really manage never to be consumed by their compulsions.
I look at my father in law a lot. One part of this is what I touched on elsewhere; I seek teachers, and there is no one like an ex addict to teach about pain and regret. We’re pretty similar personality wise, wanting to care for people, but also in a lot of pain and experiencing lots of limitations.
We also share a hobby, though his expresses differently; tinkering with stuff. He’s really into AV equipment and cars, while I’m more into software and computers. We’re both equally into electrical work and HVAC. It seems to be enough for him, though he’s still struggling to shake nicotine, I suspect it’s like with me that nicotine is one he doesn’t want to shake.
My mother in law is the other one, and I feel like her situation is a bit different. She’s more optimistic, finding new things to hyper focus on all the time. She’s working on her PhD, and that occupies a lot of her obsessive energy.
So that’s my glimmer of hope, seeing their lives relatively free from the demons that occupy so many of us.
The only thing I would stay away from, far far away preferably is drugs that their effects are still relatively unknown. The one that tempted then disgusted me was tranq (the street name for it), that people are cutting opiods with. The problem is that it’s an animal medication, so there isn’t much research on “safe” doses. Essentially as I understand it if you OD on a classic opiod like heroin or fentynyl they can hit you with narcan and most of the time that’ll catch you.
but this new drug, tranq, they have nothing to give people who are on it, they don’t even have tests. Worse, it leads to necrosis which isn’t something I can see anyone seeking out…. I get drugs as an escape, but I don’t think you want to escape having fingers. IDK, might just be me.
Hm I’m still drawing a blank with that joke. Sounds like a reference to something I should know but my brain is mush. Keep trying it, I’m sure it’ll land sooner or later…
Totally agree on the dangers of street drugs. I think you & I have shared some of our experimental research on different drugs. We both approach drugs with a ‘safe’ mindset, or at least pretending to be. What I usually do is try anything in small doses, give it a week to make sure there are no cluster bomb surprises. Then resume in heavier doses til I hit that point of “ok that was too much” and make note of it. I’m pretty good at staying under that point.
But this only works if the grade is consistent, and you can’t get that reassurance with these new street drugs. So I stay away from that stuff.
How is your drug regimen treating you these days? I seem to recall something about your dose being upped, and it resulted in a sort of zombification but possibly in a functional way? We’re all in search of that magic drug that can chill us out, but without turning us into space cadets. If you discover what that is, I’ll order a truckload.
past week I’ve made some progress towards sobriety I’m proud of, but I need to eliminate them one at a time, meaning I keep up full dose for the rest until I’ve entirely removed the worst of them.
it’s a metaphoric shackle, the drugs. Sure, I’m allowed free movement within my house and the city I live in….. but I want out? I’ve got to figure out how to make such a jump while keeping my complex medications going, and I sometimes struggle with that as is.
so far, it would take a decent alliance with someone or some organization with a lot of resources. That might be asking too much though. I pull the shackles of drugs off….. I need way less help to escape. It’s just fix up the house, sell it, load up my stuff and move.
I might not be able to do the work I did before, but I can’t do that now anyway so where’s the loss? I have to get a bit more assertive about what I can’t do, quit leaning on the drugs as an excuse
I’m in an optimistic mood, all things seem possible. Most of all I feel the closest I’ve ever felt to raising the metaphoric middle finger (or jolly roger, pick your poison) to the respectable organizations I’ve tried to impress in my life.
Good old spite is a powerful motivator. I hope you hoist that finger soon. Seriously though, spite or other negative feelings like frustration & outrage have probably fueled more great accomplishments than flower power. So keep that kettle brewing and you can’t fail.
Maybe you can even channel some of that into your journey toward sobriety. Y’know the old “I don’t need no stinkin crutches!” attitude might be what it takes to dump them and never look back. But I agree sometimes it’s best to do it in layers, at least that’s how I’m (trying to) approach my cleanse. Even though my brain feels like a daily mess, I know it would be so much worse on alcohol which I haven’t touched in years. My other crutches have been in a constant cycle, but like eternaldarkness said above, even that is an improvement because it’s less dependence on any particular 1.
But yeah like you said, even if we shake off the monkey, there are still those real world problems we gotta face. And I guess that’s the whole reason for drugs in the first place. It’s a pretty maddening loop and sometimes it feels like it’ll just keep going round until we die, or at least until we find some real support in the world.