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The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Sobriety
 
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009
 Alcohol is poo poo NJ, have you considered abusing opiates instead?

* # ¿ Feb 9, 2017 05:26
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:33
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009
 That allergy idea is loving stupid. Lol

* # ¿ Mar 14, 2017 22:29
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009
 Addiction is a disease of the mind that results from a combination of inherited predispositions and environmental influences. It's not the result of a goddamn allergy ffs

* # ¿ Mar 14, 2017 22:32
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009
 I spent all of last night shooting coke. I have an allergy, you see. An allergy that compels me to buy cocaine and inject it into myself.

* # ¿ Mar 14, 2017 22:39
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009

CaptainSarcastic posted:

There is a heritable component to addiction - exactly how much of it is nature versus nurture is not entirely known. Genetics play some role, though. If you look at family history it is often a pretty clear generational line - I can easily trace alcohol back up my family tree on my dad's side.
I don't think that's necessarily genetics though. I remember at a very young age walking in on my uncles or my mother doing drugs or even shooting up and I''m sure that played a large role in why I found it very easy to start using drugs in that particular manner. There is a family history of drug use present in my family, obviously, but that could well be from the normalization that occurs from observing drug use from a very young age being passed down through generations just as easily as a genetic influence. You could apply this same line of thinking easily to drinking. If your father was an alcoholic the habitual consumption to excess of alcohol was something you certainly witnessed from a very young age.

* # ¿ Mar 15, 2017 06:04
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009

CaptainSarcastic posted:

Make me get all pedantic and poo poo up in here...

"Twin, adoption, and family studies conclusively demonstrated that genetic factors account for 50 to 60 percent of the variance in risk for developing alcoholism."

https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh40/64-75.pdf
That would seem to indicate there is a genetic component to alcoholism. I suppose I stand corrected though I wonder if the same holds true for other drugs. I imagine it would but I don't really have anything to back that up.

* # ¿ Mar 15, 2017 08:01
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009

Pennywise the Frown posted:

I believe prescription opioids is how my cousin got into heroin. He was doing pills for years and then switched to heroin for a few years. Heroin is way cheaper and cleaner than it used to be so it's a sound choice. He's dead now. Last year on May 1st he was found after an overdose. I was there before the coroner got there. He was my best friend.

Please don't do heroin people.

I really blame a lot of it on the criminal justice system. He went to jail for heroin possession, became a felon, and then his life was 10x more difficult than it was before. Instead of throwing him in jail and keeping him on probation for years he should have had treatment. When he got out he couldn't get a job for a very long time because he was listed as a felon. He had a bachelors degree and was previously working in a sleep clinic. Then he was barely able to get a job at a cabinet making factory afterwards. He had to move back in with his parents who gave him so much poo poo all the time. His mom and mine are sisters and they can be quite unreasonably harsh. Well, not anymore for my mom. She went to NAMI meetings all the time and learned a lot about mental illness and is now my single best support. His mom however, went to Alanon meetings and they focus on how bad the person who is doing drugs is loving up your life. She went the tough love route and I think that really contributed to his death. I'm very mad but I'd never mention that to her though. Anyway, he couldn't get a place to live because again, he had that felon label. When he finally found a place it was a lovely apartment with, guess what, not so upstanding citizens living there.

So he went to jail for heroin instead of getting treatment. Then the felon label turned him into a second class citizen at best. Then, due to the hardship all of this cost him, he got back into heroin and accidentally overdosed.

Now he's dead.
You know that could just as easily be the end of your story. "Now he's dead."

I don't say that as some like scare tactic but just to underline how we all as addicts have the same disease. Every time I think of going and buying dope that what I think of, dying. You want to live, don't you? I do. It doesn't require anything else except your heartbeat.

* # ¿ Mar 21, 2017 20:46
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009

Hardawn posted:

Gonna have some sleepless nights at first

Yeah there's no way around this it's gonna suck and it is going to be difficult but at the end of the day do you want to live your life? That's what you have to ask yourself.

* # ¿ Mar 21, 2017 20:52
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009

Piss de Bundy posted:

drinking is good, then it gets better, then it gets very very bad

be good to your body goons

Heroin is exactly like this too. They're actually probably equally as dangerous to a person with the inclination to abuse only there's just one you can buy at the grocery store.

* # ¿ Jun 1, 2017 05:20
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009

Piss de Bundy posted:

im glad that when i started to drink too much i was able to be like whoa buddy, this isn't cool

i wouldn't get the shakes or anything crazy, i wouldn't even drink until the weekends. but i had this idea i HAD to be plastered all weekend or i "wasted" it.

alcohol is cool and everything but if you have to ask yourself "do i drink too much?" you probably doooooooooooooo
Yeah, you're lucky then. Opiates really grabbed me, I cannot control my use of them in the slightest. It's not even like I'm cured or something I actually have to be really careful and mindful of it all the time. What I've come to understand is that there is a certain type of person that once they start they have to do it till they're destroyed enough to stop or they die. Alcohol or heroin it's much the same though heroin will put you in a grave a lot quicker for various reasons. Still, it could of easily been alcohol that did it to me. Which is why I do not drink.

* # ¿ Jun 1, 2017 05:31
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:33
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Jim Barris
Aug 13, 2009

Pennywise the Frown posted:

I am still here, still alive. I didn't drink about 25 days straight before having a lapse. Last week I drank a few times and I just drank last night. I'm learning that this isn't fun in the least bit anymore. Those 25 days were extremely productive. I got poo poo done around the house, my yard, I started BJJ again. I have an app called eMoods to monitor a few different metrics for bipolar disorder and printing the graph is pretty eye opening. Depression, anxiety, irritability, etc. all trending downwards.

So I did have a few lapses, but I didn't completely relapse. I just take note of what I was feeling at the time I did drink, and now I can try to avoid that the next time. I'm trying to be a bit more proactive and mindful this time and it seems to be working little by little.

Thanks for your concern homie. :glomp:

Keep it up! You don't have to drink anymore or ever again.

* # ¿ Jun 1, 2017 22:49
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The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Sobriety