The first question’s in, and it is a tough one. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about these things, and for good reason: It isn’t good to dwell on them, especially when you’ve not been sober/clean for long. That said, I want to strongly discourage you from continuing to read if you’re in recovery, which here I’ll qualify as less than a year since you last used.
Just to be clear: If you haven’t been clean for at least a year – and even then, check your conscience – go watch a movie or read a book.
Gustavo/Dad writes:
Every time I have been treated with a narcotic pain med, in addition to the (variable) pain control, I have felt either nothing, or nausea and/or an intense malaise.
Question: Did your first doses of narcotics feel good? If not, what made you take the second dose?
Deep breath.
Here we go.
Did your first doses of narcotics feel good?
Yes, but my first doses were small and I wasn’t in any pain. I’m no doctor, but I wonder if this made a difference.
A few things are important to understand here:
1) My first experiences were with the little cousins of heroin – hydro- and oxycodones like Lortab and Percocet. Still narcotics, but nowhere near as strong.
2) By the time I was experimenting with narcotics – probably late summer ’07 – I’d been through marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, ecstasy, and hallucinogens (LSD as well as experimental designer drugs like the 2C family). The significance of this is that I’d already watched the effects of a variety of drugs on my body – I was experimental in my use to the nth degree – and was very practiced in, quite literally, controlling my body in the event of negative effects. I’m not sure how to relate this except in terms of the stomach flu: Have you ever been sick, or felt as though you were about to be, and “steeled” yourself, perhaps until you were closer to the toilet? It’s like that.
3) I wanted it to feel good. I wanted it very badly. This begins to answer the second question, but I’m not ready to go there, yet.
More to the point, I think, are my first few experiences with the drug Oxycontin, which led to my heroin addiction in early 2009. These experiences would have been anti-climactic if I’d been expecting anything. I snorted the crushed-up pill and it made me sickly, lazy, and cloudy. Very similar to the symptoms you described, Dad. It wasn’t until one of my friends showed me how to use it intravenously that I fell in love. And oh man did it make me sick.
What made you take the second dose?
As I said above, what made me take the second dose is, well, wanting to. At that point in my life, drugs had been my way of escape for a few years and I was committed to them. It wasn’t all peaches and cream, but when it came down to it, I got results (apathy, dumb happiness, rootless pleasure). I was buying the lie.
What’s crazy is I knew it was a lie and I kept going. I could put you in touch with the people with whom I used to shoot up or smoke or whatever and every one of them will tell you about how I would talk about Jesus and how I wanted to quit, much to their chagrin. It wasn’t every time, but Jesus came up a lot when I was high. I wrote things in my journal like this, pleading with God to deliver me, make it better, anything. But another part of me was all in.
I got sick almost every time. I didn’t throw up, but I felt awful. The initial rush was followed by an incredible wave of nausea, but I was addicted to it as much as I was addicted to the needle and the drug itself. I cherished it, to some degree, because it meant I’d just shot up.
(Soap box: I hope you see that these are not cut-and-dry, black-and-white feelings. Feelings rarely are, but these are twisted and dark – are they not? – and I can’t make sense of them outside of Christianity. How else do you explain this infatuation with what is incontrovertibly evil than to say I am evil? And if evil, at odds with God. And if at odds with God, in need of a Savior!)
Beyond that, I’d already gone so far even before the Oxycontin and heroin that, even though I knew I’d be sick, it was all I had. I mean, I know that’s not true, but it felt true. I’m here to tell you: when you’re sticking a needle in your vein, there doesn’t seem to be any way out.
This doesn’t feel complete, but I hope it’s the beginning of an answer. Follow-up questions are welcome, as are completely different ones.
(If you’re a recovering addict and you didn’t take my advice to quit reading and now you’re feeling crazy, do the following: a) Pray earnestly for deliverance, picturing Jesus on the cross paying for it, and know that I’ve been praying for you while writing this. b) Call me, Gary, or someone you trust, stat.)
Red Like Tango 
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