Managing my drug use – Jack’s story

I’ve lived in Canberra my whole life, I am twenty seven and have been addicted to opioids since I was about nineteen years old. I started smoking marijuana when I was thirteen but started to use heavier substances after I got diagnosed with PTSD at nineteen years old. That’s when I started to use OxyContin and found that it made me completely numb and not feel all the anxiety and depression that followed my PTSD.  

It started to be hard to get my hands on the oxy tablets that I was using so I moved to heroin which I was using daily.

It started to be hard to get my hands on the oxy tablets that I was using so I moved to heroin which I was using daily. It wasn’t until I went away on holiday for two weeks that I came to realize I was dependent and started to feel withdrawals for most of the holiday. I was so naive that I didn’t think it was withdrawals and just thought that I was sick with the flu or something similar.  

I got straight back into using when I got back home and that’s when things started to get out of control. I went from using .1 of a gram to using nearly a whole gram every day and with all my savings I had depleted and not wanting to commit crimes to support my habit and being kicked out of my house and living in my car I realized that my life was unmanageable and I needed help. I thought to myself that I would just go cold turkey as I had done it before when I was on holidays and although being extremely uncomfortable it was doable but I failed to realize that my usage was a lot higher than it was back then and felt that just the start of the withdrawals felt like the peak of the withdrawals that I had experienced while on holidays. I couldn’t bring myself to go even 1 full day without using as I just felt way too sick and realized that I’d need some sort of professional help. 

I couldn’t bring myself to go even 1 full day without using as I just felt way too sick and realized that I’d need some sort of professional help.

I booked myself into a rehab which would only accept me if I was on OMT (Opioid Maintenance Therapy) as my use was too high and I would be an extreme risk if I wasn’t on OMT. I got onto methadone and once I was on a stable high enough dose I went into rehab and spent three months there learning as much as I could to be able to make the right choices when I was out of there to keep my usage from getting out of hand again. I didn’t go into rehab with the expectation of being completely sober but to be able to manage my use and to control my cravings when I didn’t really need any more but was just being greedy.  

In rehab I learnt the three Ds which are: Delay, Distract and Decide; and just using those three steps I found that the cravings would go away. For example – I would first try to not think about it or delay my decisions and if I found that it wasn’t working for me and my cravings were still quite bad I would try to distract myself with doing something creative like drawing or painting or just watching something on the television (although I had to be careful to not watch something that would trigger my cravings even more). Once my cravings weren’t as severe then I would make a decision on what I was going to do, because I realised – the clearer mind I had, the less compelled I would be to use.  

Another thing I learnt in rehab was that we all have a “Tool box” in our head that we can fill up with all kinds of information or strategies that help with managing use and some of those things could be getting on OMT, the three Ds, doing some mindfulness or meditation to keep me more mellow when bad cravings kick in or even trying to manage funds in a way that only allows you to spend a certain amount of money per day as to not be able to get more than I actually needed.  

Now I’m not saying that rehab is a necessity to be able to manage usage in a better more productive way as anything I learned there can be googled; but it helped me to be able to go from using quite a bit to go back down to only using once or twice a week. The same can also be achieved by getting on the OMT program, but some people don’t like it and rehab has an important learning component where you can get a lot of support and knowledge from interactions with health professionals and other residents too.  There are also Narcotics Anonymous groups that are run pretty much every day of the week around town although they are more on the abstaining from use side of things. For people who prefer harm reduction approach S.M.A.R.T. recovery meetings could be much better option than NA or AA groups. If you want to check them out they are held through Directions. 

The most important thing is that once when you realise your life/drug use has become unmanageable – you should look for help, inform yourself and try different options until you find the right thing for yourself.

The most important thing is that once when you realise your life/drug use has become unmanageable – you should look for help, inform yourself and try different options until you find the right thing for yourself. That will help you find more things to put into your ‘’Tool box” and have permanent strategies to apply whenever you realise you want/need to change something in order to take care about your health and wellbeing.  

Written by Anonymous