Thank you mjak for your quick response. I guess as I think about the question I posed, I now realize that people will resort to a lot of things to get their drug of choice and I am sorry if I came across as being condescending in any way (if you thought I was being "that way"). I guess I wonder when and where a person who is addicted to anything would "cross the line" as far as addiction goes?
I think alot of people, myself included, use drugs to escape some kind of pain in their life, mostly mental. I could think about the worst things that ever happened to me, and at the time there was alot going on, but yet within one minute (no exaggeration here) of snorting meth all that emotional pain would go away. I finally in all my 25 years of life felt like I could deal with my past, and that I was in control of my future. The pain just wasn't there anymore and the feeling was unbelievable. Then other things began to happen, like I lost 60 lbs and went from a fat girl to someone with a rocking body, and was being asked out by many different men which was the biggest ego boost because I had a very painful divorce and felt that I was too fat to get anyone else. Also doing dope opened up a new social network as far as friends go. I had more friends than I have ever had in my life, or what you think were friends at the time. Looking back now I see that none of us were really "friends" we just used one another for our connections, and nobody likes to tweak alone so most of us shared our dope with each other.
After all the stuff this drug did for me I felt like I had found paradise. When the drugs wore off, or if I was out, all the bad things came back with a vengeance. So what do you do? You snort more dope to get the good feelings back. This lasted about a year, and then things changed. I was still able to keep the weight off, but the good feelings were gone and my energy level was plummeting despite being on dope. Other things were beginning to catch up with me as well, and finally my cover was blown and things blew up in my face. I quit doing dope for two months, but then started back again. I was thinking I had been clean for awhile, so the dope would feel the way it used to again. But it didn't, and furthermore, it made me feel even worse. For some reason after I started back every time I would snort dope I would get violently sick. I finally got tired of it and gave up for good.
Anyway, thats my story, but what I wanted to say is that I guess the "lines that get crossed" are different for everyone. What makes some people go farther than others? Maybe those people can't deal with their life unless they are high. This is the way I felt. Some probably feel like they have lost everything, and there is nothing else left to lose so why bother trying to get clean when you have nothing/no one to be clean for?
Your questions/comments don't seen condenscending at all. I don't think anyone could EVER understand addiction unless they have been there themselves.
