We understand that when someone is addicted and they can’t get their substance of choice, they are often driven beyond frustration to desperation. A woman in Fresno, California, with a hydrocodone addiction posted a thread on an Internet discussion board asking anybody out there to help her get some Vicodin. That’s the kind of risk-taking behavior that leads to injury, robbery, and murder.
Of course, when this woman posted her plea for Vicodin, she didn’t say she had a hydrocodone addiction. She simply had to get an additional supply because her doctors were out of town. Sounds like a good story to me, right?
That’s what addiction can drive you to do—you reach out to the worst kind of people to get your drug of choice. In fact, you make those people your friends and hang out with them. That’s simply the nature of addiction. Desperation brings along its two close friends, Secrets and Lies. You probably know exactly what we’re talking about.
Facing Heroin, Oxycodone and Hydrocodone Addiction
In any 12-step group you attend—AA, NA, or Methadone Anonymous if you’re lucky enough to have an active local group—you will at some point need to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself. Part of recovery is the need to admit, at least to yourself and to one other person, the nature of your wrongs. You don’t need to do that until you reach Step 8, so don’t worry about it now—but you should start thinking about it.
Many addiction treatment programs ask the new clients to think about Use, Consequences, and Secrets. It’s a common therapeutic model used in heroin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone addiction treatment. Think about the Vicodin or other drugs you’ve used and how your use resulted in both consequences and secrets.
The woman who wanted Vicodin from just anybody, for example, was probably so desperate she would have exchanged sex for the drugs she needed. What if that meant she was unfaithful to a significant other? What if she contracted an STD? But the worst aspect of it, really, is the secret: By hiding what you do from your partner, you are threatening a relationship that’s already under siege from your hydrocodone addiction.
The Worst Consequence
Remember your first illicit use of any substance? Maybe you were in middle school when you smoked a cigarette outside after classes. Dizziness and nausea were the consequences, as well as the anger from the teacher who caught you. The secret came when you avoided mentioning the whole incident to your mother. That’s when you began a lifelong habit of substance use with destructive secrets and grim consequences.
The secrets we keep vary from one person to another. They are not just sexual secrets, like the woman with the hydrocodone addiction, but also illegal activities, betrayal of our loved ones, and lying. If you think that’s not you, then consider if you stole your grandma’s Vicodin prescribed for her cancer treatment, or if you snitched money out of your sister’s wallet to pay for drugs. You have to be honest and take a good look at yourself.
If you’re like most people, the most serious consequence of all is the isolation. You put yourself into isolation by hiding your drug use, hiding it, or otherwise keeping it a secret. Once you make the decision to tell your closest loved ones that you need help, your healing can begin.
Some people decide to stay quiet if they decide to go to a methadone treatment program for their hydrocodone addiction or other opiate abuse issues. That’s okay, if that’s you, because you are finally looking at your use and consequences, and you are sharing your secret with the people at the methadone program. But one way or another, the use has to end, or you won’t be able to bear the consequences.
