You’ll hear a lot of reasons why addicts can’t stop doing drugs and why alcoholics can’t stop drinking, but the main reason they can’t stop is because they literally cannot stop—their brains won’t allow it. If they would, and they truly wanted to, I promise you that they could (some don’t want to stop, and that’s a different story). We call addiction a disease for…
Depending on how you define addiction, there’s an argument to be made that cocaine is addictive and not addictive at the same time. I know this sounds confusing, so let’s look at how we define addiction. Most normal people think of addiction as physical dependence: a junky can’t stop shooting heroin because, if they do, they go through withdrawals. For addicts like me, we know…
Are you sober if you’re on Suboxone? I wasn’t — I was snorting Suboxone. It’s a question that many opioid addicts have to ask themselves, especially when facing the question of eventual Suboxone withdrawal. When I woke up in a detox in 2011, the doctor said, “We’re going to put you on Suboxone to wean you off heroin. We recommend you stay on for at least…
This is my OxyContin addiction story — and it’s rough. I was addicted to OxyContin for 7 years, but my story starts well before I ever touched a pill. I was 17 the first time I smoked chronic. It did something to me I’d never felt before. It freed me. Something in me had always been coiled, some gear wound too tight. It stopped my…
On June 19th, 2018, I was able to tell my true-life recovery story on stage at the Moody Performance Hall thanks to an incredible opportunity from Oral Fixation and with the shrewd guidance of Nicole Stewart as my editor. The entire show, which featured many other performers in addition to myself, was based around a simple phrase, “All Over the Map,” which I felt was…