When battling a drug addiction, do you ever stop wanting to use?

Question by Groove Child: When battling a drug addiction, do you ever stop wanting to use?
This is going to sound horrible to some, and sound like nothing to others, but basically this is my story.
At 13 I started high school, I skipped 8th grade so I was a smart kid, but had no common sense. I got into partying and was hospitalized my freshman year for alcohol poisoning. My sophmore year it went beyond weed and alcohol, and I got into pills. Mostly amphetamines. Halfway through my sophmore year I was taken out of regular school and put on an independent study school program to get me back on track to graduate. I was 14 years old and started using ecstasy. It went from using it every weekend to using it every 4 days to trying to use it daily which clearly didnt work. I was chasing the comedown with meth. I get goosebumps even writing this because my love for ecstasy was so deep. I know it sounds retarded but I lived for that drug and if it was going to kill me I was completely okay with that. I would have died for it. My hair was brittle and falling out which I am assuming was do to poor health. I hardly ever ate, I couldnt go a day without something in my system, my face was so pale and my eyes were so dark all of the time. I was constantly covered in bruises and burns and cuts.It scares me to look back at pictures. By 15 I was pregnant. I chose to keep my son and from the second I made that decision he became my number one priority. I quit every drug that I was doing cold turkey. I never left the house for fear of seeing friends or places that had memories. I changed my phone number, I got 2 jobs, I got my license as soon as I turned 16, I bought a car, and I gained some self respect. I ended up graduating high school a semester early with honors and even spoke at my graduation. I won several scholarships and I started college before I gave birth. I am now 17 and have been clean almost 2 years. My son is my pride and joy. I am in my second year of college working on my prerequisites for a nursing program. I am still working two jobs and I ended up meeting an amazing man who I have been with for over a year now and is helping me raise my son. I am young and I have thrown away every chance I had to have a decent childhood, but I respect the consequences of my actions and I am doing the best I can. My son is in no way deprived of love, affection, good health, or good parenting in anyway so don’t get me wrong. I am extremely happy now but there is still one thing that makes me feel like I am so close to falling apart. I still can’t talk to old friends, I still cant go certain places or listen to certain songs. I am terrified that I will be drawn back to the drug that destroyed my life. I still think about it daily. I still crave it, yet now I don’t love it. I am simply terrified of how bad I still want it. So my question is, will I ever stop wanting it or is this just another challenge that I now have to face for the rest of my life?

Best answer:

Answer by Jody B
The craving will always be inside you somewhere because it’s an addiction, but you can make a difference over ‘the extent’ to which the craving bothers you. You have to keep yourself busy which it sounds like you are doing. You have to make new friends, go new places, listen to new music. You have to leave the old stuff behind. One thing that draws a person back to usage is boredom. They don’t spend all their time chasing the high so they are not sure what else they should be doing.

One of the best ways to learn to break a craving, which they will teach you if you ever decide to try anything like Narcotics Anonymous, is to ‘play through the tape’. That means you have to look past the initial craving and play it through in your mind until you get to the part where it ruined your life last time. It will be a challenge that is going to crop up from time to time throughout your life. Do not ever fool yourself into thinking you can be around those people and not do it. But you definitely have the power to keep saying no and stay on the right track if you want to.

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