Almost broke my sobriety

[MorningDanceTrece]

⚠️TRIGGER WARNING: substance use⚠️

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I used to have Alcohol Use Disorder/Substance Use Disorder. I have two and a half years of 100% sobriety from all drugs including alcohol.In the last 8 years I've been sober over 99 and a half percent of the time.

Monday night something went sideways and south.

My son and I had a huge fight on the phone.

I got into a huge state of OVERWHELM and the Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria kicked in big time and I decided I was going to take something I'm not supposed to.

I reached out to my neighbor who used to make edibles and asked her for some and thankfully she had stopped doing that a couple months ago.

(For people who don't know -- edibles are some kind of candy or cookie or thing containing THC which is the active ingredient in marijuana with which I used to have a major massive addictive problem smoking).

She texted me a minute later and offered to pick me some up the next day.

I thanked her for her thoughtfulness because it is thoughtfulness but I outed myself so to speak and told her that I'm trying to stay 100% sober from all drugs.

I also told her that THC is contraindicated with my mood stabilizer so I better decline her offer.

I'm grateful that I was protected from my own self and still have my two and a half years sobriety but I'm scared about what happened.

I had gotten to a point and I'm at that point again today were taking any kind of drug that I'm not supposed to take including alcohol or tobacco or nicotine replacement AIDS is like cat food.

Literally as gross and goofy to have a drink of alcohol or some other drug as it would be to open up a can of my fur babies' Tiny Tiger 🐅 grab a spoon and dig in.

Is anyone else in recovery for Substance Use Disorder and have any feedback on how to deal with the ADHD impulsivity triggering urges / using instances?

TIA

[MorningDanceTrece]

I'm quite shocked that no one had anything to say.

I can't believe that there aren't any other ADHDers on this message board who are also in recovery from Substance Use or Alcohol Use Disorder (although many of those people choose to use the pejorative label alcoholic and the non-existent 'disease' alcoholism).

Especially considering that at most 10% of the total population has drug including alcohol misuse problems and that at least 25% of the ADHD population has problems misusing alcohol or other drugs.

[Tigger4me]

Hi, So sorry for your recent troubles with your son but it is wonderful that you were able to stay sober. I became aware fairly early that I'm very susceptible to all forms of addiction so I stopped all recreational drug consumption quite awhile ago. But I can get into a depression/self criticism spiral with the best of them. I'm not always able to pull myself out of the beginning of a downward spiral, but I've gotten better with working on a set of what I call reset switches. It actually helps me a lot to think about these as a real reset switch like turning off and restarting a computer. Maybe something like these might help you in tough times.

Basically, the reset switches are to help me get out of/ leave the trigger situation and go to a completely different environment; helps if its new and interesting.

First and hardest for me, but one of the best reset switch, is to reach out to someone to generate a deep positive emotional connection; my trouble shared is halved switch. My next best switch, also second hardest to activate is my anger-to-exercise switch. We are talking about hitting a punching bag (at home in basement), climbing up and down a lot of stairs at work, a lot of sit ups to get high heart rate. Next best is for me to change location, get away from the physical/emotional triggers that start the spiral. Take a walk outside (cold weather works for me) in woods are best, but somewhere I can see a long distance. I also try exercise in parallel. Last, I keep on tap, a daydream-like continuing fantasy story where I'm the hero; a story I can drop into just about anytime. Right now its a Sci-Fi story.

If I can break away, I tend to do the least emotional damage to myself and others. Take care.

[MorningDanceTrece in reply to Tigger4me]

Thank you for your response and all those ideas to consider which I appreciate