#Substance Use Recovery

[bigticenergy1]

I went over to my neighbor’s place to borrow a frying pan and he offered me a bump and let me tell you, it took a lot to say no but I did!! 🥳

He had like laid out for me and everything too because he knew I was coming 🙄

[hekate-brimo2]

I recently wrote three VicTORIous fics that I think are better than they have any right to be, so Tumblr gets them too. They’re all rated Explicit, and two of them contain sexual situations, so Reader Beware

[wsccinci]

Substance Use and Addiction: 10 Telltale Warning Signs

Substance addiction is a challenging and destructive condition that can profoundly impact individuals and their loved ones. Most people in recovery have a special ability to recognize another addict. For others, it’s not so easy. Addiction is a subtle invader and can slowly and destructively destroy your life. Recognizing the warning signs of addiction is crucial for early intervention and…

[chronicallycouchbound]

People who use drugs deserve love and kindness.

Abstinence is not the only form of recovery. AA/NA doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes people choose to use instead of meeting other needs, which is valid. Some people use for recreational purposes. Some people use for medicinal purposes. Some people who use have substance abuse disorder. Treatment looks different for everyone. Not everyone needs or wants treatment, for various reasons. The only thing Naloxone enables is breathing. Active use is not shameful. People who use drugs often also deal drugs. People in recovery should not shame active users. Active users deserve love. Active users deserve someone to check in on them, get them safer use supplies, and get them pizza. Active users deserve to be listened to. They deserve better than to have that be the first time anyone ever treated them as human since they began using.

Let’s care for each other.

[imbecominggayer]

How To Write Characters With Addiction

From @differentnighttale: "I am curious if you give advice about writing people with addictions for example substance. I have reasons my male MC does it. But how can I describe the addictions the MC has correctly."

In this post we are going to be talking about addiction! From alcoholism, substance abuse, nymphomania, to everything else that can be a possible addiction. This post will be all about making this realistic and complex :)

A) What Are The Benefits?, Make It Convincing

Grab a fucking piece of paper or whatever you have and just write a paragraph from your addict's perspective on the situation. Omit the bad stuff. Make it highly convincing. if you aren't thinking "hmm, understandable" after you've written and read it, you did it wrong.

What do they get out of it?

Why did they like it at first?

Are they calmer, more intensely concentrated, does it take the edge off?

Are they more confident?

Does it ease the sense of being fundamentally wrong or dull some other pain?

Is it fun to do something rebellious?

What made them like this thing so much they tried it again, and again, and again?

B) Think About The Consequences, And Ignore It

Oftentime, at least in my experience, people will continue with a bad habit if it means they don't have to be the one to think about the consequences.

The Consequences For Addiction Include:

Financial. Depending on what your character uses to get their fix and how much they use, they might be spending hundreds a week if they are a particularly aggressive user. People often steal money from their loved ones. Addiction also tends to get people fired. Write a scene where your drunk character gets fired for operating machinery. Have them be a burdenous sponge.

Social. It's common for addicts to lose their loved ones since it often gets to a point where it's impossible to care about these people despite how much you love them. Make love ones leave your character! And don't blame them

Physical. STDs, Overdose, Liver Failure, and a shit ton of other issues from the chronic to the fatal either cause, exacerbate, or are linked with addiction. Recovery can't automatically save your character so don't write that story.

Psychological. Being an addict isn't fun since you get to struggle with points 1, 2, and 3 all at the same time! Write about your character issues. Their lack of control. Their spiralling life.

Write all about your character's suffering. And then have them justify it. Make it convincing.

They need it. It's not their fault that this is the only that helps them! Everyone just doesn't get it. I'm trying to work on it, OK?! It'll all work out! They know that it's wrong but...

My most hated shit is when a character's arc is easy. They struggle with some things like a big dramatic argument with their wife, they cry a bit, and then they learn that "drugs are bad" so everything is fine :D

NO!!! Why don't you write about a friendship that doesn't get mended? A chronic illness they now have to pay huge medicine bills for? A fucked-up rap sheet that they can't escape?

And it's not because we want to punich addicts. It's because it doesn't matter if you care about addicts if you don't care about the messy shit!

It's easy to sympathize with an addict if you make them the most innocent victim who never hurts someone intentionally and who gets rid of the addiction in a second and never struggles with it ever again!

Do the hard shit. Make your readers sympathize with the unsympathetic asshole addict! Addicts aren't always good people! They can be dickbags. And they still deserve resources. Life isn't some kind of karma game where dickbags suffer and good people rise! Everyone deserves to not suffer!

Addiction is ultimately a disease. But it's a disease that can make someone you love into an absolutely unlikeable person. And this is coming from someone with an alcoholic dad <3 He does good things and bad things. I can sympathise with my dad and not let him walk all over me.

C) Withdrawal Is Leaving An Ex, Relapse Is Returning

Addiction is a motherfucker trying to leave. It's basically the equivalent of a clingy ex who keeps contacting you, asking for just one conversation, and the moment you so much as acknowledge them you are fucked.

And suffering the brunt of a clingy ex who won't take the hint tends to cause the same symptoms as withdrawal!

Obviously, withdrawal symptoms depend on what type of ex you have and what age you are and yada yada yada. Research for specificity :)

Withdrawal symptoms can include:

Headaches

Insomnia

Fatigue

Hallucinations

Seizures

Tremors

Cravings

etc.

BE AWARE: Relapses are when someone returns back to their drug if they were going cold turkey or going back to their original dose. Relapses can sometimes result in an overdose due to the fact that the brain has been weened off the substance and is now overwhelmed by the high dose.

Relapses often happen when a person makes the deliberate choice in order to stop these fucking nightmarish symptoms. To use the analogy of a clingy ex, you start talking to them in order to tell them to stop contacting.

Relapses can also happen through being in a setting where the behaviors associated with the addiction such as sex, gambling, drinking, substance use, and all manner of things are normalized.

This setting could be a party, a bar, or even a friend group.

Relapse is made more likely if someone is self-detoxing away from a support group or a doctor.

Writing about withdrawal and relapses are an important part in making a story feel more authentic. Just like with mental illness, people rarely learn the lesson and follow it perfectly. They make mistakes. Slip back into old habits. Do shitty things.

We aren't writing their suffering to punish them. We are doing it because you can't say you care if all you are willing to do is look at the easy parts.

D) Little Tidbits To Keep Track Off

This is the miscellanious things that didn't fit into their own boxes.

Friends!

Do they have friends who also have their addiction? How do they hang out? What are they like? How are their substance using friends different from their non-addict ones?

Slang!

Don't just look up slang for your substance of choice. You'll need to look at some first-hand accounts of addiction. Find an influence who has struggled with substance abuse in the past and see how they talk about it!

Variables!

Remember to keep their geographical location, socioeconomic status, time, and a host of other factors. If your character is a penniless alcoholic then it's unlikely they'll get their hands on some type of expensive gin. They'll probably use rubbing alcohol. Keep the price of your drug in mind.

A character's status will also impact their slang. No one unironically says doobie anymore.

A character's location will also impact how they get their shit and how other characters will react to that addiction.

A character's financial status also impacts how the consequences of their actions impact them. A low-income character wont be able to afford the same medication as a rich addict. They also won't have the same luxury for quality therapy, rehab, programs, time, anything really.

Look At The Addict And The Loved Ones

Try not the skew the reality of addiction to paint the addict as the victim and the loved ones as evil for not being forgiving and tolerant enough.

Keep sympathy for both the addict and the loved ones. Or drop sympathy for both of those characters.

E) RESOURCES

FDA and DEA online databases and drug resources

Social Networking Groups

Medical Journals

Local medical professionals, police, and medical examiners

The US national poison center

[multiplicity-positivity]

Here’s some positivity for systems who struggle with addiction and/or substance abuse!

Lots of systems may find that substance abuse or addiction is a part of their lives. Those of us with mental illness, neurodivergence, little access to a good support network, and few treatment options may turn to substance abuse as a way to cope, and subsequently become addicted. Regardless of your situation, all systems deserve love and respect, even those of us who struggle with addiction and/or substance abuse. This post is for those systems!

☀️ Shoutout to systems who have struggled with addiction for many years or decades!

☁️ Shoutout to systems who want to get help for their addiction, but are scared, nervous, or don’t know how!

🌈 Shoutout to systems with headmates who are addiction or substance abuse holders!

☀️ Shoutout to systems who are in recovery! We know it’s hard, but we believe in you and are rooting for you!

☁️ Shoutout to systems who have joined or want to join a step program or some other kind of recovery group!

🌈 Shoutout to systems who are addicted to something that is usually considered non-addictive!

☀️ Shoutout to systems who are not interested in or ready to stop or curb their substance abuse - you get to make your own decisions regarding your own recovery!

☁️ Shoutout to systems who are in therapy or otherwise are receiving treatment or care for their addiction!

🌈 Shoutout to systems with plurality or headmates that formed due to addiction or substance abuse!

☀️ Shoutout to systems with a familial history of addiction or substance abuse!

☁️ Shoutout to systems who are currently sober, are trying to maintain sobriety, and/or who keep track of how many days, weeks, or months they have been sober!

🌈 Shoutout to systems who have recently relapsed - relapsing does NOT invalidate your recovery journey in any way, shape, or form!

☀️ Shoutout to systems who are currently under the influence or who have abused a substance recently - your life still had value and you matter, no matter how inebriated you are!

Friends, we know how difficult, painful, confusing, and all-consuming it can be to struggle with addiction and substance abuse. Please know that you are not alone - we see you and we understand the challenges you’re facing! We care about you and we want to support and uplift you however we can. Your system has worth, your voices matter, and you still belong in our spaces just the way you are, no changes necessary!

We hope you can do your best to take it easy today. Please don’t judge yourself to harshly and try to show yourself and your system some kindness and compassion! Everyone’s relationship to substance abuse, addiction, sobriety, and recovery looks different. Know that it’s okay to take things one day, one hour, or one minute at a time. We love you and we are wishing you the very best in all that you do, whether or not you are sober or in recovery. Thank you so much for reading, and take care!

[snapnarcissisticabuserecovery]

[flowerhoundart]

wrote a poem for the first time in a while. reflections on substance use & escapism

[archive-z]

it’s post-yr-wip wednesday, so enjoy more scenes from my forthcoming follow-up to krapp’s last tape, this time ft. events from the viewpoint of alice molloy, 1985-1989 ✨ all yr canon-typical content warnings for disordered substance use, pregnancy trauma, AIDS crisis-related death, child endangerment, codependent relationships with multiple concerning/unethical power differentials, etc.

“What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.”

from “September 1, 1939”, by W. H. Auden 

It’s 1986 and Alice Molloy sits on the steps of San Francisco City Hall. She has been Alice Molloy for, approximately, the past thirty minutes. She is twenty-five years old. She looks out across Van Ness Avenue, at the War Memorial Opera House. She’s never been to the opera before. She’s never been married before, either. 

She rolls the name around in her mouth: Alice Molloy, Alice Molloy, Alice Molloy. She likes it. She feels like a snake that’s shed its skin, and now relaxes on the warmth of a sunned rock. She wonders how long it will take her to forget that she had any other name before this one. 

There is another her, maybe — scared and strung out — still inside, wandering the atrium. Maybe there is another her buried in a grave in Evergreen Cemetery. 

But this Alice, the one here on these steps, in this waning late afternoon sunlight, is Alice Molloy. She is Alice Molloy, with her newborn daughter, and her new husband, and their second-floor, one bedroom apartment near Buena Vista Park.  

—

December 6, 1985. The CDC recommends delaying pregnancy until more is known about the risks of mother-to-child transmission of AIDS. As of December 1, there have been 217 reported cases of AIDS among children under age 13, and 60% of them have died by the time of publication.

In Paris, their apartment is cold and there’s black mold around the windowsill. Daniel has a persistent cough. Alice wakes up nauseous. 

Three months ago, in San Francisco, Daniel gets an advance for a novel and insists they spend it all right away. 

Though he’s covering with bravado, Alice can tell he’s nervous. He’s never had more than a couple hundred dollars to his name, and never expected to have his sobriety tested in this manner either. 

They book two transatlantic tickets to Paris and a sublet in the Latin Quarter.

Alice wants to chainsmoke at café tables on crowded streets and imagine stories about passersby while Daniel scribbles in his notebook. She wants to go dancing. She wants to see the Mona Lisa. Alice is twenty-four, Daniel is thirty-two.

(Over the past several months, Alice has planned more funerals that she cares to count. She is perpetually in the final hospital visit-cremation-memorial service cycle. As the most junior member of the organisation, her duties tend to be administrative: making payments and filing bank receipts. By cash and by cheque, payments are made to the crematorium, the ambulance, the reception hall, to the sandwich caterers, to the company that rents the folding chairs and plastic table cloths, to the leaflet printers, and the delivery trucks. At the end of it all, someone has to fold up the chairs and turn off the lights. That someone is Alice. 

There is an impersonality to the deaths, she finds. Sometimes people with bring a framed photo of “the deceased” to the memorial service — a sister, a daughter, a girlfriend, a roommate, a friend. When there’s no photo, she often pictures Raequel. Twenty-two now? Would she look older? Or younger? Paris presents itself as a respite). 

Paris’ crisp October turns to a drizzly November and finally to a frigid December. Any argument that sparks between Daniel and Alice is swiftly resolved by swallowing one’s pride and huddling together under their singular scratchy wool blanket for warmth. 

In Paris, Daniel has coughed for three months. He’s smoking his packs twice as slowly because he has to take bone-rattling, hacking coughs after every few drags. 

In Paris, Alice throws up three days in one week. 

(They have both danced around this. It is the heavy, silent thing they neglect to mention. Daniel is sick. Alice is sick. With what — who knows? Fading track marks testify to their rich, independent histories of indiscriminately sharing needles and swapping bodily fluids with, at best estimate, one quarter of the Bay Area’s creatures of the night). 

In Paris, over dinner, Alice tells Daniel she’s pregnant. 

She tells him she’s pregnant and he says yeah. 

He’s staring at the cigarette in his hand, poised over the ashtray and Alice can see the gears turning inside his head. France permits elective abortion up to ten weeks, she can see him thinking. She can tell he’s doing the math in his head. 

She tells him she’s pregnant, and he says yeah. 

They finish their meal in silence, but Alice is too nauseous to keep anything down so throws up again in the brasserie’s toilette. After she’s finished, she presses her head against the cool metal of the cubicle door and then kicks it violently several times. 

When she re-emerges, Daniel has already settled the cheque. He’s got  another cigarette in his mouth, this one unlit, and he’s chewing on the filter, eyes still staring into middle distance, gears still turning. Alice has stuffed her jacket pocket with extra towelettes in case she needs to throw-up in a public garbage can on their walk back to their apartment. 

—

“We both could have it —“ Alice’s train of thought twists and weaves, running the alternatives and counter-alternatives too fast to keep track of until its a circular, tangled mess. “It would be born sick,” she says. 

“We don’t know if we—“  

“But we could. What if it’s born sick? If it’s— if it’s not able to grow?”

“Failure to thrive,” Daniel supplies. 

“I know whatAnd, in a heartbeat of indignation, Daniel ask, “What? What do you want? Do you expect a child to consent to being born?”

“Maybe the hospital finds out! Maybe it’s — taken away from us. Because it’s our fault. How could we live with ourselves?”

“We make a choice. We live with it.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Look.” Daniel presses his hand to her cheek, and his eyes fixed on Alice’s. “If it’s wrong — does it matter?” His thumb traces her cheekbone, over the scar on her eyebrow, where it turns from dark to blonde. “All human decisions are made like this.” He kisses her eyebrow. He sounds surer and steadier than Alice has ever heard him before. “No parent knows what will happen to their kid. What does it matter if it’s wrong? There is no wrong. Just you and me. Me and you. And I want to be with you. Forever.”

Later, Daniel proposes and she says no. Things are falling apart. She doesn’t trust that the centre will hold.

On their last day in Paris, they go to the Louvre. Alice wants to see the Mona Lisa. 

—

San Francisco, 1989. Alice Molloy is twenty-nine. 

A week after the World Series Earthquake, Daniel’s mother calls him from Modesto to deliver the belated news of his father’s passing, the post-script to his unattended funeral. Daniel interrupts the daily pre-school drop off routine in order to purchase a self-obliterating quantity of heroin. 

It’s thirteen hours before Alice finds him. When she finally does, he crawls to her on his hands and knees. He clutches her legs, sobbing, shaking, and high. She says nothing to him, and her cool and implacable assessment of the situation is this: I take care of you, I’ve always taken care of you. I love you, I’ve always loved you. You and me, me and you. Daniel would not die here. Their dance would not end like this.

Her fingers grasp his matted curls, and she gently forces his head back to meet her gaze. With a thumb, she carefully wipes his grimy, tear-stained cheeks. She whispers to him: I forgive you. Of course I forgive you. How could you doubt such a thing? I have forgiven you of everything before now. I would forgive you every time, even this. 

And Alice knew this: Daniel was hers. And he would never runaway from her again. 

Outside, Lena is asleep in the backseat of the car. She is three years old. 

[zaagi-studies]

ayo i'm in recovery from substance use !! academic comeback time

i'll prolly make posts abt this as it relates to my school life over the next few months. i'm not sure if the abstinence route is ideal for me (long-term) so i'm mainly focusing on not drinking for the next few months while i catch up with school stuff & fix my nutrient deficiencies.

i'm also v worried that my profs/advisors won't be very understanding about this but hopefully they acknowledge my recovery efforts and allow me the space/time to catch up. i think leaving school would make my recovery harder since i'd have no income, more stress, and i'd basically just be home all day doing nothing.

i'm excited to take meds (one for alcohol cravings & one for severe depression) but i'm a bit nervous i'll relapse again :/

overall i'm excited to recover so i can live a more fulfilling life !! <3

edit: forgot to mention i'm also doing harm reduction stuff like not quitting weed (nightly use) or vaping anytime soon. they give me a sense of control + i dislike smoking weed during the daytime (anxiety) so i'm not rly worried abt those rn

[smashing-yng-man]

I've done it all - attended Alcoholics Anonymous twice a day, five days a week. Memorized the fourth edition of the "Big Book" from cover to cover. Admitted myself into two different rehabs, staying 60 days each time.

What has ultimately kept me sober from drinking is confiding in my therapist and taking a combination of Acamprosate and Naltrexone twice a day to curb alcohol cravings.

I drank heavily for nearly two decades, and frankly have the experience and genetic predisposition to confirm that addiction is not a choice.

But sobriety and self-care are.

[hound-of-heaven]

Everyone’s reacting and feeling serious feels today but when you are checking on your friends and neighbors PLEASE remember to check on your recovering (and current) addicts.

Today is hard enough without having the siren call of substance use in your head, especially if people around you are drinking or smoking to cope.

[there-will-be-a-way]

Today's affirmation:

Someone who enables my consumption is not my friend.

[torterramerica]

[raeraeway]

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

Once when I was in intensive outpatient many years ago we were doing fun game time for Friday. And another member who was recovering for substance use and I were playing catchphrase

Me: if you’re not drunk you’re _______?

Her: HIGH!!

Me: No!! Sober !! 😭