I'm a returning NA member. I am desperate to stop using but can't stop... I was wondering if cravings for drugs ever go away completely. Do they? Ever?
Hey M, Yes they do go away after a while of total abstitence from everything and working the program, sharing the craving thought. It takes time and gradually gets better. The best way, in my opinion and in my case, to stop using is by checking into rehab. as I cannot seem to do it alone. It gave me the kick-start i was so desperate for and that I could not do. I am 54 days clean today and the cravings are much less and I am learning to handle them through the program. Best Of luck and love, Magellan
Hang in there. They get less frequent as you stay. I am a drug addict, I think about drugs. If I were to tell you that I never think of drugs in anyway. I would be full of crap.
Using was all I knew, and now I have so much more than I had when I was using. I have caring loving people in my life who are not afraid to tell me the truth.
When I think about using, I think it all the way through. The homelessness, the jails, and the mental hospitals. I choose not to use no matter what.
My sponsor gave me these suggestions when I first came around: Your job the first year is to stay clean, nothing else. My sponsor has 17 1/2 years clean and is 37 years old. I asked her once if she still has drug dreams, she told me yes. I was so relieved to hear that because at times I feel like an alien because I want to use.
With every growing pain a thought passes, with every celebration, my disease wants to sabatoge me. But with NA and my loving and caring friends here, I never have to use again, a day at a time.....
It's was good to chat with you PBF on the chat board.
YES they go away get yourself further and further away from it, get away from those old friends and aqauintences also, make new friends with a different angle on doing life.
I find prayer works well for me and also do inventorys of where my life and head are at.
I had a using dream a few nights back, coping and smoking crack, its just a reminder to me of where i was and how it was and it was terrible and that it still lurks within me waiting for me to slip up and take my life back away from me, but I can only give it back to that life, we have choices today we have tools and we have strength.
We know your clean when you come back and post like Magellan has been doing, when you dissapear we worry of course so keep coming back its good to see others staying clean it gives all of us hope and STRENGTH.....
I was at a F2F meeting this morning and a man shared that he had a using dream last night. Another member told him to enjoy it...it was a freebie. He meant that you could experience the high without the consequences. I was a little irritated, but tried to practice open-mindedness. Nothing about the dope I ever used was free. I ended up paying a price physically, emotionally or spiritually. I don't want a "freebie". To me my using was not a dream, but a nightmare. With those dreams comes the fear, confusion, self-hatred, guilt, shame....Today I can have real dreams.
In my experience, the physical cravings go away first. Over time the desire to use is lifted from me if I am working the program. Yes, I still have thoughts of using. I am an addict and those thoughts will always be there. I don't have to act on them today. NA brings us from compulsion to obsession. We go from using regardless of the consequences to just obsessing about using. Then NA brings us from obsession to freedom. I have to get in the middle of this program. i have to get in someone's back pocket. I have to attend meetings every day. I usually attend 9 a week. I have a home group, a sponsor and work the steps. I am involved in service. I have to fit my life around NA, not NA around my life. What ever I place before my recovery i will lose.
Our basic texts tells us that no one who works the program will relapse.
One of the things I remember most about getting clean at first was how "bad" the cravings were. In reality, it wasn't the drugs I craved, it was the escape from reality I wanted, and the "lifestyle" i associated with usage.
Over a few 24 hours, (april 27 will be four years but whos counting), I couldn't actually give you a time when I no longer physically felt sick, or felt the need to get high, but it went away for real sometime after a year or two for me. Now when I say a year or two, I am talking only about MY experience, not NA as a whole. I know people that lost their cravings very early on, and I also know those that still crave and deal with it with the steps. The one thing I can HONESTLY say for me is, when I stay in some sort of constant contact with the 12 steps, I have the fuel I need to continue staying clean. SOmeone once told me a head full of NA and getting high just don't mix. I hope I never have to find out. I haven't relapsed or had a craving, just for today.
Peace out,
Brett
__________________
Faith: the substance of things hoped for, the belief in things unseen
My experience is that the craving goes, but sometimes the thoughts come at me. When they do, I pray and I talk about it. This is the only disease that can be talked away. And, like others who have replied to your message, I need to go to meetings.
Day by day, you will find that staying clean becomes easier than getting high and not only that, but you will start to find some real serenity. I am coming up on two years and have never been so happy in my life. Nothing in my life has changed - except everything about me. Today I am grateful to say that I am a recovering addict, and wouldn't want it any other way.
Keep coming back - let the miracle happen!
Lots of love Maggie
__________________
The Triumph is not in succeeding, but in not being afraid to fail.
Hi PBF, First, let me say to you that cravings do go away but can return for no apparent reason at almost anytime. I find that as long as I am working my program sticking with the winners and focusing on a new way of living they are few and far between. I also stopped smoking cigarettes (after 30 years) with the same practices I used to stop using drugs, the same thing I suggest to you. It truly is about surrender. Turning it over to God as you understand Him. None of us are able to do it alone so it is really important to Pray, stay around recovering people and get involved with your recovery process. Once we do the things suggested to us by our predecessors it gets easier to stay clean. It says in our litature that our disease can only be arrested through abstinence. So at times we just have to hold on and go thruogh the craving. Remember we can Talk this away. Recovery is what happens at our meetings.
Buddy look its simple !!! Ever heard this one= """" If you hang around a barber shop long nuff,,,, youre sure to get a haircut !!!"""" My craving comes from obssession,, a fixed idea !! The only way HP can get me off that is for me to move away from old friends in using, stay away from old playgrounds and dump old playthings !!! then it works,,, suddenly,,, im obssession/craving/distress-tension free !! and of course ive to do this onl a daily basis,,, and so I did and in all my clean time ive been freed of cravings for Drugs including smack,grass,LSd alcohol and tabs. thn for cigarettes,,, ive been clean off nicotine for nearly 12years now,,, thank God !!! Now im being set free from cravings for food, anger,, etc,,, all the madness ,pain and withdrawl of active addiction that came along even after stopping to use are going away one by one,,, and my life is free not only from drugs but also from things other than drugs that make up addiction !!!! God Bless you and keep U in your recovery,,for the rest of your life !!!
for
__________________
Raman an addict clean and serene just for today in NA Worldwide ; live to love and love to live the NA Way !!!
As others have also shared, the obsession (craving) to use was more intense in early recovery days than the later days, for me... I don't think that was so for me because of my cleantime accumulation or the logic that time heals, but more so because I was no more hanging out with using friends or at using places, was not associating with connections... the more I did this, the more I was moving away from drugs and using, the less I thought of them...
However, this did not happen by itself or thru sheer willpower and self-control to keep away from old places & connections, but by associating instead with people who have found a way out and are staying clean... replacing old friends with new ones, friendships that I gained at the fellowship, hanging out with them for a change, making meetings everyday, opening my mind and giving the literature a shot by reading it...
Thru this process, I was as involved with NA and recovery as I was with drugs and using; I knew I was capable of it as I had done this successfully for over a decade and a half in active addiction, I had gone to any lengths and persevered my using and so I knew I was capable of doing the same with recovery if I set my mind on it; Today, this strange fact has led me to believe that we addicts are people of great perseverance, resolve & determination... I just needed to channelize these energies in a new way - from "getting and using and finding ways and means to get more" to "not using, staying clean and finding ways and means to deal with my life without having to use"...
Also, most of my cravings arose from my inability to cope with a certain thought or a feeling or a person or a situation in my daily life, which I never learnt except for using and escaping from having to address or deal with something at all... When I started learning to live without having to use with the help of the program and the fellowship, I found that there was no need to use at all, that there is a way to cope with all these things without drugs too...
The more I tried to face these uncomfortable circumstances arising in my daily recovery, the more my urge to use diminished... I realized that I am learning the best ways to deal with my life and whatever life might present me, and certainly drugs came nowhere as good as these new ways that the 12 steps offered me... using lost the appeal... The program continues to give me the ultimate "high" (true peace, joy & gratitude) of life instead of the fake, deceiving euphoria and elation that is followed by depression and pain when I used drugs to fix things...
After having lived in this state of mind and awareness, and striving to practice the tools of the program on a daily basis for almost 3 years now, the thoughts of using come and go but they no more have the power to take control of me as long as I'm under the care and love of "A Power Greater Than These Cravings"...
__________________
"If we do an honest examination of exactly what we are giving, we are better able to evaluate the results we are getting."Chapter 10 - Emotional Pain - NA Way of Life.
So M, my perception and experience is that "it's not that the cravings go away in part or completely, but they just are cut back to their real size, a mere thought of using and not an obsession or an intense urge to use when I AM in recovery (having a daily program and trying to follow it to the best of my ability)... These using thoughts overwhelm us into using because we don't know any other way to live... Once we learn how to live with the help of this program these using thoughts lack the power to transform into a craving or obsession... Hope that helps... Keep coming back, we need you...
__________________
"If we do an honest examination of exactly what we are giving, we are better able to evaluate the results we are getting."Chapter 10 - Emotional Pain - NA Way of Life.
