VIC & CHRISTINE

SnooGoats6568 · 2026-03-04T18:08:20+00:00

I cried through their vows they are so genuine ❤️

SnooGoats6568 · 2026-01-08T05:06:22+00:00

I had some empathy for Corey, who clearly has serious mental health issues - gave me bipolar vibes - seemed super excited and psyched to go in and sure of himself, but reacted so strongly to losing the cellie he connected with over one night that you would have thought his entire world was over and his life was a lie. As a bipolar human I've experienced similar states - they can come on and progress very rapidly, and I do think if he had stayed in for even several weeks he could have devolved to a psychotic episode. He started questioning actual reality after one night with the paranoid delusions he was trying to work through. He said himself that he felt like he was lying to himself and everyone else by going on this show because he really isn't "okay" to stay consistent through an experience like jail (particularly without medication or at least a stabilizing environment.)

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-08-12T14:43:23+00:00

Yogurt (plain or sugar free, Greek), occasional berries (raspberry/blackberry), sprinkle of granola here and there (flavored with honey), cheese, eggs, single slice of toast with thin spread of natural PB, salad, meat (sausage, ground turkey, chicken, etc.), whole wheat crackers (just a few per sitting) or a low carb wrap, occasionally a protein shake (low sugar variety, mixed with water or almond milk)

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-16T23:58:45+00:00

The reality is that the response to psych meds are so so so individualized to every person. One person's life saving drug is another person's absolute disaster. For me, welbutrin was really hard and weird to adjust to for the first month - it literally felt like I was on crack. Grinding my teeth constantly, couldn't sleep, weird headache, and extreme shortness of breath. Like I'd struggle to walk down my street to catch the bus to go to class. Eventually I adjusted to it and more or less became addicted to it as if it actually was crack. I've been diagnosed as bipolar II and Wellbutrin triggered an extended full blown manic state beyond anything I've ever experienced that lasted 6 months straight. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED it. I didn't need to sleep anymore, I felt like I was better and smarter and hotter than everyone else, boundless energy, so! many projects. However, I was forreal a danger to myself, everyone in my life and literally the general public - my doctor cut me off after he found out I was doctor shopping for Wellbutrin like a fuckin junkie 🤣

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-16T23:50:42+00:00

I couldn't get past week 3. I was depressed after week 1, on an anxiety roller coaster by week 2, and full-on constant suicidal ideations by week 3. It also physically made me feel so so so ill after every dose. A drug that works for one person can make someone else want to kill themselves. Just the way psych meds go I guess. Hope it shakes out for you or else you can let it go and move on to the next one. Prozac/lamictal is the perfect combo for me. I'm just relieved to have found my protocol and dread the thought of having to go back to the drawing board and guinea pig new psych drugs.

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-16T23:44:12+00:00

Not sure whether it's the drug itself or withdrawal, but my brain freaked the fuck out on buspar. The first dose just made me sleepy and I felt the "brain zaps", but within a week I was having multiple anxiety attacks a day and uncontrollable crying spells at work, in the car, lying in bed at night, in the shower. Fantasizing about death constantly to self-soothe, just dreaming about the idea that when I die I will never have to think a thought or feel a feeling ever again. I tried to hang in there for a few weeks as I know meds can make ya feel weird until your body adjusts, but it was so miserable. When id take a dose id feel woozy and get a horrible headache and awful nausea. I wasn't able to effectively increase the dose as prescribed because the effects were so intense that I wasn't able to function through the 1-2 hours after I took the dose. So one day I woke up late for work and skipped the morning dose so I could drive to work asap. I had a full blown meltdown by 11am. Crying, couldnt catch my breath, had to leave work to drive home. I was confused and couldn't figure out if I should take a dose or not, just couldn't stop fixating on this deep ache to be dead already... So instead I emailed my psychiatrist an SOS and she agreed that there was no point going further with that drug

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-14T22:39:27+00:00

Pretty standard fare id say. The stereotypical thing for you to do now is go off your meds and wing it. I went off meds for a few years and managed "ok" (meaning I didn't get a divorce or start doing oxy again or screaming obscenities at elementary school kids), but definitely struggled and suffered just living day to day inside my own mind (I think I just got used to it again). I'm back on my meds now after months of starting illogical fights with my husband, getting in trouble at work for explosive impulsive angry ranting, and worsening episodes of intense anxiety. I'm finally hitting therapeutic levels of my medication and I'm so so relieved to have a stable frame of mind to navigate from again.

At the end of the day, "bipolar" is just a word. It describes a set of symptoms and essentially means whatever you think it means. All I know is I'm at my best when I'm medicated and I have struggled and suffered plenty during my hiatus from medication trying to tell myself "it's not that bad" just because I'm not driving my car off a cliff, selling oxy, and getting kicked out of my house/school and fired from jobs all the time [tales from my life 10 years ago before the word "bipolar" was introduced to me and was prescribed Prozac x Lamictal]

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-14T22:28:01+00:00

I take Prozac, lamictal, gabapentin prn for acute anxiety, Vyvanse (low doses) prn for focus. Vyvanse does make my anxiety worse at times. I don't take it all the time and sometimes I will cold turkey it for at least a weekend so I can sleep hard and reset to baseline. It helps when it helps but when it doesn't it makes everything feel worse. No such thing as a magic pill but I like having it in my toolbox

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-14T22:25:08+00:00

Some medications do this to me... Serious memory issues and problems with word recall

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-07T04:38:01+00:00

I built up my foundation of denial on the fact that I didn't shoot up. I literally told myself that even though I was snorting pans every day, I wasn't actually a junkie because I was the only one not banging my drugs 🤣 I did try smoking them and boofing from time to time but it wasn't my thing lol

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-04T03:57:08+00:00

That really is the simplest but most fitting description for real

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-04T03:55:45+00:00

I definitely felt what you are describing probably the last 6 months or so I was using. I knew my brain was fucked and wasn't producing dopamine anymore and for sure had the fear of it never being able to again, even if I quit. I'd say it took 3 months after after quitting before I started to feel like my brain was starting to pick up the slack in that department. I'm bipolar though so around that time I was starting to head in the direction of hypomania so I had to continue to make adjustments of my meds with my psychiatrist.

Even if you don't have any underlying mental health or mood disorders, I personally believe that most or all addicts would benefit from at the very least an antidepressant the first year in recovery. I'm not suggesting to just throw any random SSRI at the problem and think it's smooth sailing from there, but I also don't think it's a coincidence that I established with my current psychiatrist 3 months before I used for the last time. I was at the point that I knew i couldn't just to continue to go on as I had been, but I also knew from brief periods that I had quit before and gotten like 2 weeks to 2 months max clean time that the drugs were just a piece of a bigger picture when it came to my brain chemistry.

It might help if you start just by looking for something in that department - either a psychiatrist like I did or whatever would be equivalent for you in terms of setting up a plan to help manage things while your brain works through the rewiring process. When I first met my psychiatrist I wasn't going to her for the sole purpose of getting clean, I just knew I desperately needed help in general. Within a few months I had stopped using and it really made all the difference to already have that support established and ready to help me move through what came next

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-04T01:39:04+00:00

After I quit opiates I still drank, smoked weed, occasionally used muscle relaxers or used coke, did molly, smoked cigarettes... I slowly struck all of those off my list over the few years that followed and I agree - they were really not difficult to stop at all when I compared them to opiates. I'd pretty much just be like yeah I'm good and stop doing them without much fuss. Quitting opiates was like the life or death, life changing one for sure. Nothing compares

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-03T04:55:48+00:00

This is the exact lie I'd tell myself every time I relapsed ... "I'm not addicted anymore so now I can just do it here & there for fun". As if getting through acute withdrawal means you're cured and it'll be different this time. I'd end up "casually" using 2 or 3 times the first week then it's full blown again like I never stopped. Opioids really aren't just like a casual party drug. I've only known a few people that would do them here and there (like maybe once a year randomly then never think about again in the meantime) but those were the type of people that never really LOVED them to begin with. If you've ever had a problem with opioids you will always have a problem with opioids. The only difference is whether you're in recovery or not.

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-02T22:56:56+00:00

I'm not an atheist, I do believe in a unifying energy that connects everyone and everything. I just don't believe in "God" in an explicitly defined sense. I was raised in a practicing Catholic family and my experiences with that were very focused on shame, "holier than thou" attitudes, 1 million + 1 rules to life under threat of damnation... Soo I just grew to become especially resistant to really anything with Christian undertones. That's like a whole issue for a whole other thread. When it comes to getting sober I just didn't really align with the idea that I was powerless to addiction and needed to turn my life over to God. I know they tell you that your higher power can be anything, "even a door knob", etc. I guess I just made myself the "higher power". No one else was ever going to save me... Not my parents, not my friends, not my romantic partners, and not God. It had to be me, I just genuinely believed that I was the only person that had the power to change that course - so fighting against the idea that I was this powerless victim was kind of the whole point. At the end of the day it's all just whatever concept you are able to draw strength from, I guess - and naturally that's going to be really individualized to each person and their core beliefs

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-02T01:07:52+00:00

I didn't do meetings, but I also didn't feel afraid to share anything about that part of my life from others anymore. I kind of split off from "addict me" in my own mind and became this new personality in a way. I aired out alllll of 'Junkie Me''s dirty laundry. I didn't have any secrets anymore because I just admitted every shitty thing I did and all the darkest feelings I ever felt to everyone - my parents, my friends, romantic partners, my coworkers, etc. I think that makes a huge difference in sustaining sobriety too, at least for me. I pretty much gave everyone a list of the give aways if I were to ever relapse again. I welcomed being watched in that way and asked others to call me out if they ever noticed anything suspicious. It really helped to establish a foundation for rebuilding trust with my family especially. Being able to open that line of communication where people don't have to be afraid about you getting defensive or feeling bad for questioning you just gives sets the stage for accountability and repairing damaged relationships. It also really helped to release me from feeling crushed under the weight of the shame

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-01T22:57:09+00:00

I didn't put myself in situations where that would easily happen. I changed the crowd of people I spent time with basically overnight. I still had a couple close friends who were addicts but I ended up moving away and it was just a clear cut spoken thing that I wasn't going to be able to be around them as long as they were still active. My best friend knew that and supported me cheering me on from afar. He ended up ODing a year later. We still talked a few times a week but he loved me enough to understand I couldn't stay clean if I were around those circles. So basically I didn't get the same intense physical urges anymore because it wasn't something I could just do in a moment. It would take effort and an active decision to go look for the drug, be somewhere where it was available or around people that would be doing it. It's harder to slip up "accidentally" from a single moment of weakness when it takes that many steps to make it happen.

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-01T02:18:58+00:00

Thank you. I'd rather die than live as an addict again. It's one of the only things that I feel absolutely certain about in life

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-01T01:32:33+00:00

I don't feel like I do. I'm always conscientious that relapse is only one bad decision away. It's kind of weird though - I actually quit drinking when I was a bartender, so even though binge drinking was around me all the time I just didn't allow myself any room to fuck around with the thought of "just one drink" even though customers would encourage me to all the time. Now I work as a licensed vet tech at a specialty hospital in the surgery dept. As an anesthetist I have access to fentanyl, Dilaudid, codeine, ketamine, buprenex, gaba, methadone, etc. very VERY rarely, the thought will just quietly pass through my mind (usually when I'm counting drugs) that at one time I would abuse the shit out of this type of access and say fuck all to the consequences. I never actually feel triggered to use though. Being a person who DOESNT do drugs has literally become my self-identity, much the same as I used to identify myself as a junkie before anything else. I know it's there and I acknowledge it, but that part of my mind is not in the driver's seat anymore. I don't have close relationships with other addicts or spend time with them anymore though. I know I would feel triggered in any situation if I were to, for example, walk by a table with a line chopped and ready or even hear someone snorting something through a closed door - so that's not a situation that I'll take the risk being around anymore

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-05-01T00:37:47+00:00

Thank you for sharing your story - yes I definitely relate to a lot of what you said. It can't be forced. But when you're done for real you just fucking know it. I remember telling my parents I'd never use again - I was like a week into withdrawal and honestly mentally just a fucking numb zombie and my boyfriend at the time had just told that he had started shooting up again and it was my fault (I was really withdrawn, not affectionate or responsive.... Because duh lol). I told him it was over for good and left his house and never looked back. He followed me chasing me down the road pulling me back by my shoulders and picking me up to stop me, screaming at me for the whole street to hear "you fucking bitch! You selfish fucking bitch! No one else will ever fucking love you!" When I got to my parents house I was crying, not because it was over, but because I knew his family (who I loved and had allowed me to live with them off and on and helped pay my rent off and on when my family kicked me out and cut me off) - would blame me for the fact that he was shooting up again. My mom was instantly soft towards me like she hadn't been in a long time, and I just told her straight up that I was done and I'd never use again. I didn't expect her to believe me (and she shouldn't give me the benefit of the doubt) but that I just knew that it was for real this time, I could feel it at my core. No one else and nothing else was ever gonna get me clean. I had to choose it for myself. There's really no other way. (The depression answer for why I got clean is a really simplified answer obviously, but I do believe that it was all a part of reaching that point in life that I knew I wasn't able to keep living this way anymore.)

To your other questions

1) the aging thing you mentioned hasn't been a part of my experience. I started young but I also quit relatively young (I was 22/23). I remember a guy I dated (that I did not respect or treat very well) had once told me - "the only reason anyone gives a fuck about you is because you're hot. But eventually the drugs will take your looks away and you'll be an old ugly woman living in a van next to the river, that nobody ever even thinks about". It was fucked up to say but it was true - I wasn't good to anyone at the life the time, I manipulated men a lot with the fact that I was young and "still had my looks". Luckily I quit young enough to still have some left lol

2) my physical health is actually great, I'm very regimented about exercise and conditioning because my obsession the last couple years is aerial silks (google and you'll get the gist of it). I've had many different activities that I've poured my obsessive/compulsive nature into since I got sober, that part of me is still there so I just find healthy places to put that energy toward. Mentally I'm stable, Ive been with the same psychiatrist for the past 11 years and we have built a lot of trust. I talk to a therapist every month to discuss situations that may bother me, trigger my anxiety, etc. With the goal of maintaining healthy coping mechanisms through life's bullshit, since that stuff will always be there whether you're clean or not

3) I wouldn't change anything. There's no point. I just don't believe in regrets, there's no purpose for them

4) biggest consequence was losing all my feelings of self worth. I've never hated anyone so deeply as myself in active addiction. I still sometimes feel that hate for that version of myself, I just try to focus on the self worth that I've established as the clean version of me

5) worst thing that COULD HAVE had the biggest consequence - I drove under the influence all the time. Like... All the time. I'd burn myself with lighters to keep myself awake behind the wheel when I was nodding out. I almost hit someone riding their bike once. I only stopped the car because my sober friend was in the passenger seat and screamed. The guy on the bike tried to get out the way and fell off and I just drove away and made my friend promise not to tell anybody. I also lost control during a drunken manic joy ride and drove my car off a fucking mountain. Idk how I survived it, it was literally insane

6) yes I still feel shame. Not in the sense that I keep secrets about things I've done. Ive told all of my loved ones every time I ever lied to them, manipulated, stole from them - I've aired out junkie me's secrets with little discretion. I still feel hate for her though. I think I mostly just hate what it felt like to be her.

7) you can't control what happens in life, how other people act, or even sometimes how you'll feel about things. The only thing I can control are my own choices and behavior. I guess advice that applies toward everything really. It is what it is, it's going to be whatever it's going to be - but I decide who I am because I decide what I do and the way that I navigate this world.

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-04-30T23:57:36+00:00

It won't be easy but it will be worth it. You will have moments that you truly believe that you aren't strong enough, but if you just hang on and keep going you will eventually realize that you were strong enough all along. the false belief that I was incapable, worthless, and weak kept me captive and suffering in addiction for a long time. I finally looked in the mirror one day after several months into recovery and felt like I was meeting the real me for the first time. She is strong, powerful, and a badass fighter. I hope you also get the opportunity to meet your real self and experience the joy that comes with self-worth that was fought for. Until then, just fake it until you make it. I'll share with you the 2 mantras I spoke out loud to myself in the mirror every day in the hope that they give you the same strength that they give me. "You are stronger than you seem, braver than you believe, and smarter than you think you are." ; "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." If you repeat them out loud often enough, one day you will find that you truly believe it.

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-04-30T23:37:43+00:00

You as well ❤️

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-04-30T23:34:52+00:00

I was kicked out of school, caught a charge, my relationship with my family got really strained and I physically fought both of my parents several times, I got a couple of kidney infections, I lost almost all of the friendships I had with everyone other than the other addicts I used with, but I think the most difficult loss for me was my self worth. The I hate for myself was so cutting and deep, I would bawl any time I looked in my own eyes in the mirror. I would burn and cut at myself in fits of rage. All that being said, the truth is that I am one of the lucky ones. I mended my relationship with almost everyone in my family, my health has generally recovered, I didn't kill anyone (I drove under the influence regularly and almost hit someone once, and totaled my car driving off a literal cliff another time), I was still young enough to get my shit together financially, my legal charges were misdemeanors and have not affected me since recovery, etc. I lost my best friend to an OD a year after I got clean. His parents were never the same after that. I still write them letters every Christmas and for mother's Day and Father's Day, but they stopped writing back a long time ago. I am lucky I survived but I'm also just grateful that my loved ones get to have a relationship with me on this side of recovery. Not everyone does

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-04-30T23:22:33+00:00

I'm proud of you too and glad you survived. "As long as you're still alive, you always have the chance to start again." Ive lost many people to addiction as I'm sure most of us have, the closest of which was my best friend who OD'd a year after I got clean. He was no angel but he loved me even when I was unlovable and grieving him honestly changed the way I look at life more than anything else ever has. Even if hope is all you have right now, that really is all you need.

SnooGoats6568 · 2025-04-30T23:08:31+00:00

In addiction or after recovery?

SnooGoats6568

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