When, exactly, did you become an addict?

So, can any of you put your finger on exactly when you became an addict? I imagine most of us have addictive personalities to some degree or another, but was it a slow process or was there a defining moment that you can put your finger on?

I was an addict before I ever took any drugs.  Actually It would be more accurate to say that I was addicted before I ever made a conscious decision to take drugs ( I’m coming back to this later).

From about age 10 on, I remember being  fascinated by the “drug culture” and all the stories I would read in Reader’s Digest ,Time and the local paper. I read everything about drugs that I could get my hands on and thought about drugs constantly.  I had every intention of taking drugs as soon as I was old enough to get my hands on some.

I started drinking heavily and smoking pot at 14 and kept it up all through high school. My best friend and I figured out that the best way to keep our habits going was not to let too many people know about them and not to get caught.  We didn’t hang out with the pot head crowd at school and we were generally thought of as good kids. We had a thing going with some pre-med track guys  who had secret habits just like us and we would trade pot for various pharms ( they had after school jobs at a pharmacy). I was the most responsible, most sought after baby-sitter on the block, even though I went through all the medicine cabinets and bedside tables looking for interesting pharms.  I hit those liquor cabinets pretty hard, too.

In college and my early twenties it was mostly just alcohol and weed, with a little MDA now and then. In my late twenties I was heavily involved in the NYC club scene and took lots and lots and lots of cocaine in addition to the alcohol and weed.

After I stopped doing coke, my drinking got insanely heavy…..at least a pint of hard alcohol a day – usually a pint plus a few bonus drinks and more on weekends.  I realized I was going to kill myself unless I stopped.

And stop I did. I worked it and it worked.  I wrote out all the ways that alcohol was killing me, signed a contract with myself never to touch another drop and put in in an envelope. I wrote the words JUST READ THIS FIRST on the envelope and put it in my bedside table.  For what it’s worth, I have not had an alcoholic drink since Nov 1993…or cocaine either.

For the next 15 or so years I did pretty well, just weed and a little chipping with SAO’s, mostly TY3’s I picked up on-line.  I built a career and started a business. I had a couple of relationships, one lengthy but casual, the next  passionate and intense.

A close friend died of cancer in 2005. Although I never touched any of his meds when he was sick, after he died I began chipping at the leftover methadone pills and opium tincture ( laudanum ). The tincture was particularly alluring – I’m really glad it’s impossible to get.  Still I was successful  at not becoming addicted, although the long acting opiates pushed my buttons a lot harder than the SAO’s. 
 
Then in 2010 I began buying poppy pods on-line  and here I am now.

Now back to the beginning, and to the EXACT moment I believe I became an addict.

The moment happened when I was 9 years old. It was Christmas Eve- 1967, if I’m doing the math right. 

My mother sometimes tried very hard to start “family traditions”. One of those traditions was that the family would all sit down together and drink sherry on Christmas Eve, even the kids, even when we were very young. 

Also my parents did not like to have to stay up too late on Christmas Eve, so Mom would sometimes give  us a spoonful or so of phenobarbital .

My younger  brother and sister had plotted to stay up late and catch Santa so they were trying to avoid the sherry. They managed to slip me their glasses of sherry without my parents noticing. Then Mom gave me the phenobarbital.

I don’t have really strong conscious memory of the high, probably because at the time I didn't realize that I was "high" and didn't think of what happened as me being stoned or taking drugs. At nine,  I'm not even sure I consciously made the connection between the drink and the medicine and the good feeling. I just a vague memory of fuzziness and lying in bed blissed out. But I think that was it, the moment I became an addict.

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moll31· 5d ago

Age 13 to 18 - Smoking herb, drinking, popping lortabs...but could always go a few days without and did well in school, had my life together, all that stuff. 18 to 19 - Doing a shit ton of mdma plus whatever other mystery substance happened to be in the pill I was popping, getting k-holed out, doing coke. This was a fucked up period in which a lot of bliss was experienced as well as a lot of zapping of brain cells. Had to break the cycle and vowed never to touch another e pill again after doing rediculous amounts for about a year. Knew I had addict potential, however it was back to just going to college and partying..... 19 to 23 - Lots of greenery and booze. I was miserably depressed a lot of the time, but could usually hold on for a few days knowing that I'd be getting slammed in no time. I loved alcohol for numbing the pain. Was quite sure that I did some serious brain damage from all the drugs in the rave days, but screw it, weed and alcohol work pretty well as anti-depressants. Sloppy stupid drunk a lot. 23 to 28 - Real world, 9 to 5....all that BS. Couldn't tolerate, but hydrocodone made it bearable. Self-medication truly began. Loved the opiates initially and maintained on hydros for a couple of years. Knew physical dependency had set in, felt doom 'n gloom and the viscious cycle began. Same old story most know....oxys, dillys, snorting, needles, hopelessness.....DRT (GOD DAMMIT, NOT THE ANSWER??! - THEY LIED TO ME ). Never had a doubt that I was an addict once the physical dependency set in. Tried to seek solutions and get help to some extent but when I found NA at 28 and met a couple of good ppl who convinced me that I was a good person I never really looked back and started the process of recovering. Basically, I feel that I was addicted to the enrapturement of mdma and that scene and devastated myself and then self-medicated. Still, I can't say when I became an addict. Always loved to escape, but crossed the rubicon with the x and then seld-medicated opiates which is always a downward spiral. Don't really feel that I was an addict in the true sense until I lost all choice in the matter of whether or not I was gonna use. This was physical dependency to opiates and it started with self-medicating a terrible depression that I tried to hide from others and was too proud to get help at the time.

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melinde· 10h ago

How do you guys feel now?

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