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Yes!!! I totally get it and have struggled with that too. These are the books I'm currently cycling through:

Twenty-Four Hours a Day (not AA, but about alcoholism)

Daily Reflections (AA)

As Bill Sees It (AA)

Courage to Change (Al-Anon, useful for self-esteem issues and building a relationship with a higher power)

Courage to See (This isn't affiliated with any program, but has some great daily readings and is also useful for self-esteem stuff)

How to Love (Buddhist)

I absolutely love Thich Nhat Hanh and want to get the rest of his "Mindfulness Essentials" collection. They're all short books on mindfulness in different contexts (How to Love, How to Sit, How to Relax, How to Eat, How to Walk). I've also heard good things about The Energy of Prayer although I haven't gotten it yet so I'm not sure if it's set up well to be daily reader.

I've also used some Emmet Fox books in the past. Several of them have prayers/meditations in them that I've cycled through in various parts of my sobriety. Here's one I really liked:

"God is the only Presence and the only Power.  God is fully present here with me, now.  God is the only real Presence – all the rest is but shadow.  God is perfect Good, and God is the cause only of perfect Good.  God never sends sickness, trouble, accident, temptation, nor death itself; nor does He authorize these things.  We bring them upon ourselves by our own wrong thinking.  God, Good, can cause only good.  The same fountain cannot send forth both sweet and bitter water.

I am Divine Spirit.  I am the child of God.  In God I live and move and have my being; so I have not fear.  I am surrounded by the Peace of God and all is well.  I am not afraid of people; I am not afraid of things; I am not afraid of circumstances; I am not afraid of myself; for God is with me.  The Peace of God fills my soul, and I have no fear.  I dwell in the Presence of God, and no fear can touch me.  I am not afraid of the past; I am not afraid of the present; I am not afraid for the future; for God is with me.  The Eternal God is my dwelling place and underneath are the ever-lasting arms.  Nothing can ever touch me but the direct action of God Himself, and God is Love."

I went to one AA meeting when I first got clean and never went back. I understand people have found support and success in it but to me, personally, I felt it only increased the stigma of drug addicts as these broken hopeless people barely hanging on by a thread. It's an outdated system that relies on little science or attempting to progress the participants and relies more on holding people in place and focusing on the past. Instead I just worked towards becoming a normal person. Here are some of the resources I used:

r/Fitness - Getting Started: Exercise is probably the #1 thing that will aid you in recovering. It can help your brain learn to produce normal quantities of dopamine again as well as improve your heath, mood, well being and confidence.

Meetup: You can use this site to find people in your area with similar interests. I found a hiking group and a D&D group on here which I still regularly join.

Craigslist: Same as above - look for groups, activities, volunteer work, whatever.

Diet

This will be the other major player in your recovery. Understanding your diet will allow you to improve your health,mood, energy, and help recover whatever damage the drugs may have done to your body.

How Not To Die Cookbook

Life Changing Foods

The Plant Paradox

Power Foods For The Brain

Mental Health

Understand whats going on inside your head and how to deal with it is also an important step to not only recovery but enjoying life as a whole.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

The Emotional Life Of Your Brain

Furiously Happy

The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

Educational

If you are like me you probably felt like a dumbass when you first got clean. I think retraining your brain on learning, relearning things you may have forgot after long term drug use, and just learning new things in general will all help you in recovery. Knowledge is power and the more you learn the more confident in yourself and future learning tasks you become.

Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse

Why Nations Fails

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health

Continued Education / Skills Development

EdX: Take tons of free college courses.

Udemy: Tons of onine courses ranging from writing to marketing to design, all kinds of stuff.

Cybrary: Teach yourself everything from IT to Network Security skills

Khan Academy: Refresh on pretty much anything from highschool/early college.

There are many more resources available these are just ones I myself have used over the past couple years of fixing my life. Remember you don't have to let your past be a monkey on your back throughout the future. There are plenty of resources available now-a-days to take matters into your own hands.

*Disclaimer: I am not here to argue about anyone's personal feelings on AA**

Get yourself a headset. Make all the music you want, you won't bother anyone. Great investment. headset.

$660 is a lot of money, over the course of a lifetime, it's peanuts. Also, if your parents see that you're actually working hard to make things work out, unless they need that money, maybe they'll just 'forget' about it.

If music is your passion, and it is a great passion!, then make your life about music. Give yourself to that experience. You don't know what it will do for you. Be honest with yourself. If you have talent and perseverance you -will- have a measure of success. If you really don't have the talent and it sounds crap, be honest with yourself. You should always listen to your stuff and ask yourself: would I listen to this myself if it was on the radio? It's super easy to do and you want to be honest with yourself.

Music is your thing. Live your thing. Wait for nothing, wait for nobody. Don't wait 'until the time is right'. The time will never be right, there will always be different bullshit to deal with. All your life. Trust me when I say this.

Don't get tempted into smoking, get her out of smoking. It's bad for you, it's hugely expensive and getting sick from smoking is -really- expensive, and fucking painful to boot [I've seen it, I'm not touching smokes with a 10 foot pole].

You're young. You're entitled to making mistakes. That's how life teaches you not to be a dumbass. It's about not making the same mistake twice. Or too many times.

One mistake you cannot make is: not working on your passion. It needs constant nourishment, in view of negative feedback, bad reviews, off-days, bills to pay. Mind the budget, it's super important. Use a balanced budget to allow yourself to be successful and thrive at what you're good at.

Don't go into debt if you don't have to. You'll need equipment. Buy -good- equipment. Buy it once, take really good care of it, it will last you many years.

Other tchotchkes... you can do without. You're not here to show the world that you can buy 'one' too. Not having debt, as $660 dollars proves you, is a much -much- better life than having debt you have to service for years. There are things you want to spend good money on, there are things you don't want to bother with.

You don't need most of what you see people buying. You really don't.

You want to play music. Play music. Find your passion. Allow yourself to be lost in the experience, that all by itself is a far better drug than anything you can buy off the street. There is, IMHO, almost no better medium to achieve that state than music is.

Give yourself to music. Music will pay you back. In joy, in recognition, in opportunities, in legacy, in oeuvre, in doors opening, in admiration, in money. It's -real-, it's something you can work at. It's something that will work for you.

-YOU- have to do the heavy lifting, but it's a journey worth going on. You're not losing yourself to despair. You're not giving some anonymous body the means that would have bought you a better life for questionable moments of 'relief' from the real world.

The real world is there to be explored in all its harshness and beauty. Not with a dull mind, but with a mind that is open to the experiences, the impression and the expression of what it is you feel deep inside that you want to communicate.

Taking drugs is like excessively obsessing over a picture of a candle while making music is the very incandescent light of the sun itself.

Don't live a second-rate life, live a good life!

"So, /u/youngslut_, what made you look at your life in a different way when you felt so depressed earlier in life?"

• There was this dude on the internet, Reddit [you know Reddit, right?], and he told me some stuff, it turned out to make a lot of sense. I didn't really get all of it at first, but the more I got to think about it, the more it seemed to gel. So, here I am.
  
  "Obviously, that must have been some good advice."
  
  
• He even wrote this conversation about it!
  
  /Make music, make your heart sing, touch our souls, have a happy life!

Don't get too caught up on the higher power thing. A lot of people are too literal (on both sides of the coin) and end up missing the point.

I'm an staunch Atheist but have no problem relating to and using the concept of a higher power in my recovery. Religion and Spirituality are not the same thing. I have met a lot of people who come into AA or NA and immediately get defensive or riled up when they start hearing the word god. They start calling people out or putting them down. Thats wrong and disrespectful.

On the flip side, I see people who think because that word is used, its OK and appropriate to read bible passages in a recovery meeting, or speak about Jesus as if he should be (or is) everyones higher power. Thats wrong and disrespectful too. "God" in this context is really just a place holder for wherever your personal strength and understanding comes from.

There are some really great books that deal with the compatibility of Athiesm and Spirituality, and explain the difference between those and Religion.

For example, I can look at a mountain and know how its made, how it formed and the process that created it. That doesn't mean when I'm hiking and look up at it, I can't be in complete awe of how beautiful it is, what it needed to come to be, and the fact that its something so much bigger than I am. Not in size, but in the fact that I couldn't create in on my own, its been there millions of years longer than me and will be there for centuries after I die. That feeling of being so small compared to the enormous existence of that mountain(in size, in history, in the pure power if it just being there), is connection with with something. Its Spiritual.

Heres one of my favorite books, if you are interested

[The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Book-Atheist-Spirituality/dp/0143114433), Its a great jumping off point.

Falling in Love is not Love. I think it's important to realise this. Get hold of a copy of "The road less travelled" and read the chapter on Love. Falling in love is a type of insanity. As a recovering alcoholic I try to avoid insane thinking.

Praying is a good idea as is legitimate love - helping other people recover -so if you belong to a fellowship I would suggest you up your service work and remember there is no step 13.

Good luck

A book I just received last week but haven't started was The Zen of Recovery. It came highly recommended to me, and I'm looking forward to starting it :)

Well I know for me, full on abstinence from drugs and alcohol is the only way to go. But I know some people who are addicts that don't have issues with cannabis. We just watched this film in IOP which I think is the best film I've seen about the science of addiction (even though it can get a little cheesy at times). I recommend you watch it sometime. I tried to find a place to watch it online for you, but couldn't find a legit place.

It's not what you say, it's what you do. He's going through hell - a hell you can't really understand if you're not an addict. Just be there for him. Go to some meetings with him. check in on him. Give him a hug. Go to a movie or something with him- show him that he can still have a good time in sobriety. If you want to gain a bit of understanding into what he's going through, watch or read Pleasure Unwoven, a good documentary explaining addiction

It's just a Buddhist perspective on the 12 Steps; they're essentially the same.

https://www.amazon.com/12-Steps-Buddhas-Path-Buddha/dp/0861712811

Talk with a doctor, but make sure it is one who will support you in your attempts to get off the drugs - not one who will force you back on. Every psychiatrist I have encountered has refused to assist any patient who wanted to come off the drugs against their advice. In my field this behavior would be considered unethical and you would lose your license, but apparently it is standard practice in the medical field - or at the least psychiatry.

If you want to come off the drug and cannot find a doctor or do not want to see a doctor, I highly recommend Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal by Dr. Peter Breggin. He provides helpful information on how to withdraw safely from psychiatric drugs.

http://www.amazon.com/Psychiatric-Drug-Withdrawal-Prescribers-Therapists/dp/0826108431

One tip in your situation is that if you cannot handle a dose reduction, go back up to the previous dose and try again with an even smaller reduction - perhaps half of the previous reduction. You cannot withdraw too fast because you could have a serious problem or fail in your attempt to withdraw. Try to find a doctor knowledgeable in withdrawing from drugs.

You have nothing to worry about. There is absolutely no chance of absorbing heroin just because they might have done it in your house. It's not a bad idea to purchase a "drug deactivation pouch" so that if you do happen to come across a stash of heroin (usually a white to brown powder or sticky tar-like substance in a baggie or folded piece of paper), you can immediately safely dispose of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Deterra-Deactivation-Neutralizes-Effectively-Quickly-x/dp/B017JE8ESO

1.

It looks from here like trazodone is more popular than competing antidepressants. Possible side effects of trazodone are listed here. You won't experience every side effect. And, even if you do experience a side effect, it may diminish with time.

Trazodone can also reduce anxiety and depression.

Alcohol withdrawal can cause temporary insomnia. It's up to you whether or not it's worth seeking trazodone (at least for a few days). But trazodone definitely might help to reduce the insomnia.

If you wish, you can get a prescription, fill it for $4, then decide later on whether or not to actually try the drug.

2.

No problem!

3.

> Earlier this year, I tried to go to therapy for my Complex-PTSD and the therapist literally told me I had too many problems and she couldn’t treat me.

Oh. :( I hope she recommended someone else.

> I haven’t been able to work in several months because the anxiety and trauma make it hard to walk into the grocery store or get out of bed, let alone apply to a job somewhere.

Here's a list of anxiety-friendly jobs. When you eventually go back to work, the list might be useful.

I clicked on your user profile. If you're still in an abusive living situation, please keep in mind that there are quite a few domestic-violence shelter beds around — and that you can live there for free.

A) Anxiety and addiction can isolate a person. Currently, do you have any friends? If not, do you have a partner and/or some family members who you hang out with sometimes?

B) [Edit: Methadone treatment may reduce heroin cravings.] It also might (or might not) help to reduce anxiety, depression, and insomnia. But it may cause various side effects, and the frequency of clinic visits can be a hassle. Also, it can be too painful to quit it unless you gradually taper your dose down to zero. Have you ever tried methadone?

C) Even a few months of DBT can be helpful. What did you think of it? What made you quit it?

Maybe you might want to read some therapy self-help manual, such as When Panic Attacks (which teaches CBT). You might find it easier to do the exercises together with someone else, such as a friend or family member who also has anxiety. If you have trouble getting out of bed, you could keep the book (and a lamp) next to your bed, so that at least you can read in bed.

>Every morning I'm determined to not drink that day but when 5:00 rolls around I'm ready to get more booze. I know willpower plays a huge role in quitting but my weakest time of day is between 5-10pm after I get off work.

I just broke out of that cycle myself a couple of weeks ago, just got sick and tired of it all. In addition to AA (which I'm still not fully plugged in to) it was really helpful to me to understand what was happening in my brain that caused the downward spiral and kept it going. A couple chapters in Beyond the Influence really helped flipped my alcoholic thinking on it's head (e.g. Do I drink 'cause I'm bored or am I bored because I've been drinking for years? Do I drink because I'm an anxious person or does drinking make me anxious?). Understanding the physiology of the disease really helped me over the first few days - I knew what to expect and I knew the thoughts were my just by brain trying to desperately get back the chemicals it so loved (read up on TIQ's, it was fascinating news to me). Anyway, I guess I'm trying to tell you that the reason you drink at the end of each day might not be because you're bored or frustrated or anxious or any of those things. It could just be because you have a disease. Fortunately, it appears to be treatable and others on this reddit have great input on how they're treating it.