The rise of Fentanyl use has fueled the Unites States opioid epidemic in recent years . The United States has reported over 90,000 opioid related overdoses from 2019 to 2022 with close to 56,000 of those deaths reported to involve synthetic opioids. Bringing awareness to this issue and understanding the feelings of someone who struggles with the mental obsession of addiction can not only help them but allow you the opportunity to help others in your community.
Do You Feel Like Smoking Fentanyl Right Now?
This article is meant to address the desire you feel at this moment to smoke fentanyl. The writer wishes to prevent you from acting upon that desire. How can the writer accomplish this?
Perhaps by begging you in the following language: “Please, please don’t get up from wherever you are sitting and go use fentanyl today.”
Rhetorical strategies intended to manipulate you might instead only succeed in off-putting and alienating you, so a direct appeal seems appropriate.
“Please. If it doesn’t kill you this time, it will next time. And there will be a next time.”
But surely, you are already aware of this danger and it is a risk you are willing to take.
So perhaps instead this writer ought to present you with options alternative to that which is currently most appealing to you.
Why don’t you go read a book? Or take a walk? Or eat an apple?
Of course and unfortunately, you will not find these option as attractive as the notion which presently preoccupies you, for if you are fantasizing about smoking fentanyl, you are in all likelihood doing so because you have done so before, and the euphoric memories of so doing have released dopamine in your brain and triggered your craving for more.
And so it appears now that the writer of this blog means to persuade you by deconstructing the neuropsychology behind your feelings.
But the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous says that we’ll be “unable to stop [using] on the basis of self-knowledge” and our current predicament does seem to bear this out, doesn’t it? You are not stupid, you are in pain, and smoking fentanyl will make the pain go away.
So instead, do this: if you love anything or anyone on earth; your family; your parents, your brother, your sister, your uncles, your aunts, a friend, your wife, your husband, a son, a daughter, someone who’s died, a place; your home, an idea, an art form, the earth or love itself; think of them now. Then hold tightly to that thought, though tornados surround you, and scream and scream and scream into your heart.
This will keep you sober from one moment to the next. But only that.
Then, if you are interested in a more permanent solution, we can help.
Conclusion
If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, Oak Forest Recovery can help be the foundation of a new way of life allowing you to grow the connections in a community committed to spiritual growth. We offer many approaches to a long-term solution to living with addiction. We understand that depression and anxiety can fuel substance abuse and offer treatment programs that focus on the dual-diagnosis of mental disorder and substance abuse.
Follow Oak Forest Recovery and the journey of our community!
