Why Meth Was the Hardest Drug for Me to Quit
If you would’ve asked me years ago what drug would take me out, I probably would’ve guessed heroin. After countless years of going down a path I swore I never would, I never thought I’d see the day I got off the heroin —that was until someone introduced me to meth.
Meth was the substance that ended up having the tightest grip on me and the weirdest part is, when it first showed up in my life, it didn’t feel like a monster at all.
My story with drugs didn’t start with meth. It started long before that. Like a lot of messy things in life, it started during my teenage years, right after my parents went through a nasty divorce. Everything blew apart and I was left trying to figure out where I belonged in the middle of it. Partying became somewhat of an escape.
At first, I was just doing what teenagers do — hanging out, drinking, experimenting. It felt like freedom, but fun has a way of slowly turning into something else.
Partying eventually turned into using cocaine. Then using cocaine for fun, turned into using it alone. Before I knew it, I had crossed another line I once swore I never would — heroin.
I always said I would never use needles. Never. That lasted right up until the moment it didn’t.
Once I started using heroin, things escalated. Quickly. I became an IV drug user almost before I fully understood what was happening. It’s wild how fast your brain can rewrite your own rules when addiction is involved.
Heroin almost killed me on more than one occassion. I couldn’t function on it, and I surely couldn’t function without it. My entire life revolved around avoiding one thing — being sick.
If you’ve never experienced opiate withdrawal, imagine the worst flu you’ve ever had, mixed with full-body anxiety. Your bones literally hurt. You’re fully convinced you might actually be able to jump right out of your own skin. I went to lengths I’m not proud of to avoid that feeling. I stole from my parents. I lied. I manipulated people who loved me. I did whatever I had to do to make sure I wasn’t sick.
Heroin ran my life for several years.
In 2014, I found out I was pregnant with my first child. That moment changed things. I knew I couldn’t keep living the way I was living, not with a baby depending on me. I found a shelter for pregnant women that helped me get back on my feet. That place honestly saved my life.
They helped me get into treatment. Part of my treatment plan included MAT, which stands for Medication Assisted Treatment. MAT uses medications like Subutex or Suboxone to stabilize the brain and body while someone works on recovery. It helps prevent withdrawal and cravings so people can focus on rebuilding their lives instead of fighting constant physical sickness.
For me, at that time, it was what was needed. I stayed sober my entire pregnancy. For the first time in years I started to feel like maybe I had a shot at doing life differently.
On October 16th, 2014, I gave birth to my daughter and just like that, I had a tiny human looking at me like I was the center of her entire universe. I told myself that once she was born, I would taper off the medication for good. I didn’t want to remain dependent on any substance. Sometimes life doesn’t always follow the plan we make in our heads.
After she was born, I rekindled my relationship with her father. I moved out of the shelter without much of a plan and ended up leaving my treatment program because the distance made it nearly impossible to get there consistently.
Since I left treatment, I also lost the medical support needed to taper off my medication safely. So instead, I did what many addicts do when they run out of options. I quit cold turkey.
Let me just make this SUPER clear: coming off Subutex cold turkey sucked major ass and I don’t ever recommend doing it the way I did. I will never forget how sick I was. Somehow, I pushed through. After that shitstorm passed, I stayed sober on my own for a little over a year.
For a while, things looked like they might actually work out. Addiction is sneaky, and sometimes the people we surround ourselves with make it even harder to stay on the path we’re trying to walk. My relationship with my daughter’s father slowly pulled me back into the same patterns I had fought so hard to escape.
That’s when someone introduced me to meth.
At first, it felt like the complete opposite of heroin. Heroin had made me numb, slow, and barely able to function. Meth made me feel like I could suddenly do everything. I had energy. I could clean, talk, move, stay awake, feel productive.
My brain convinced me that this was somehow different. That this drug was actually going to be better for me. Which, looking back, is almost funny in the most tragic way possible. It only took about six months for meth to completely destroy everything around me.
My relationship with my daughter’s father completely fell apart. I had nowhere stable to live after we split. Eventually I made the heartbreaking decision to give him custody because I knew I couldn’t provide for her in the way she deserved. Losing my child broke me and instead of facing that pain, I dove headfirst deeper into my addiction.
Everything revolved around using. I wasn’t working. I had nowhere to live. My entire life became a cycle of chasing the next high. I would stay awake for days at a time. I would pick at my skin until my entire body was covered in sores. I was living on an entirely different planet mentally.
Meth didn’t just change how I felt. It changed who I was. I would have episodes of intense paranoia. I had explosive bursts of rage over things that didn’t even make sense. I was a complete mess.
By 2016, that lifestyle finally caught up with me. A drug charge combined with a theft charge landed me in county jail for over a year.
As strange as it sounds (but somewhat typical), jail was exactly what I needed at the time. It forced me to stop. It forced my body to detox. For the first time in a long time my mind started to clear.
When I got out, I truly wanted to stay clean. The desire was there but desire alone sometimes isn’t enough. I walked out of jail with no real plan, no stable environment, and the same people and places surrounding me.
I would have brief periods of being clean — usually because my body literally couldn’t go anymore. I would sleep for what felt like days, let my body recover from the crash, and tell myself maybe this time I was done.
Then eventually the cycle would start again.
Meth made me feel good. Not just good — it made everything feel good. The world felt faster, brighter, more alive. When your life is falling apart around you, something that can make everything feel good, even temporarily, becomes incredibly hard to walk away from.
That’s why meth was the hardest drug for me to get off of. It didn’t just numb the pain like heroin or alcohol once did. I felt like everything was better when I was high. It convinced me that I was finally okay. Life was okay.
For years I continued to battle my addiction and my attachment to meth. I would string together periods of clean time. Sometimes months. Sometimes a little longer. Long enough for my brain to start telling me maybe this time will be different.
Every time I relapsed, the first substance my mind ran back to was meth. Not heroin. Not alcohol. Not anything else. Meth. Something else happened during those years too. Every time I went back to it, I got better at convincing myself I had it under control.
I started learning how to “manage” it. In my mind, if I could just prove to myself that I could use it without blowing my entire life up, then everything would be fine. I started setting little rules and milestones in my head.
If I could hold a job and still use, I’d be happy.
If I could pay my bills and still afford to use, I’d be happy.
If I could force myself not to stay up for days on end and sleep like a normal human being, I’d be happy.
If I could look normal enough that no one suspected I was using… then I had figured it out.
It actually became a goal of mine to learn how to successfully balance meth in my life.
I hate to burst your bubble if you’re hoping this is the part where I reveal the secret formula for functional meth use… but that’s not a realistic goal.
Not for me. Not for anyone.
I actually just wrote a blog post about high-functioning addiction, I encourage you to go check it out. In that post, I talk more about what my life looked like during the periods where I appeared to be functioning. On the outside it looked like I had balance, but on the inside? I was still drowning and still in a lot of trouble.
Yes, I wasn’t picking my face apart anymore, but I was still deteriorating. I was painfully skinny. My pupils were blown up to all high hell half the time. I was working insane hours between two different jobs — the kind of workload that most normal, sober people would struggle to keep up with. I couldn’t maintain a healthy relationship with anyone. I loved telling myself I had it all figured out. That I was using and balancing life. In reality, my entire life still revolved around meth.
I was still working primarily to make sure I could afford my habit. I was still micromanaging every speck inside my bag, calculating how long I could stretch it and how much I could use without running out too soon. I was still panicking whenever I didn’t have anything left because I knew what was coming next. I was still hiding track marks. In the back of my mind there was always this constant fear.
The fear of ending up back where I had already been. Jail. Losing everything again, because no matter how careful I tried to be, I knew there was always a chance of getting into legal trouble. One bad moment. One wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly everything I had rebuilt could disappear again. My apartment, my job… all of it gone over meth.
The thought of that made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to start over again. I didn’t want to lose everything again. I didn’t want to end up back on the streets. I wanted to be the mother my daughter needed me to be. I didn’t want meth to control my life.
Eventually, I had to be honest with myself about something I spent years trying to outsmart. There was no version of my life where meth and stability existed together. There was no version where I balanced it. There was only the version where I finally walked away. And this time… I forced myself to make the change.
There’s a reason they call it the devil’s drug.
Meth doesn’t just hook your body — it hijacks your brain. In the rest of this blog, I’m going to talk more about the factual and scientific reasons why this substance is so incredibly hard to walk away from. Understanding what meth actually does to the brain helped me make sense of why it had such a powerful hold on me for so many years.
It wasn’t just a lack of willpower or bad decisions. There are real neurological and chemical reasons that make meth one of the most difficult substances to leave behind.
The last time I touched meth was in 2019. And for that, I am incredibly grateful.
I won’t lie and pretend I’ve forgotten the high. I remember it vividly. I also remember the other side of it — the night sweats, the nightmares, and the strange emptiness that followed when I first got clean. It felt like all the color had been drained out of the world. Things that should have felt exciting felt flat. Life felt quiet in the most uncomfortable way.
Slowly, the color came back.
If you’re someone who feels stuck in the cycle right now, I want you to know something important: it is possible to get away from it. The last time I used meth, I didn’t know it would be the last time. If I had told myself, “You can never use again for the rest of your life,” I probably would’ve never tried to stop. That thought always felt too permanent.
Instead, I kept it simple.
I just told myself, I’m not going to use today. Strangely enough, here we are all these years later… and I’m still focused on not using meth just for today.
Of course, it wasn’t just that thought process alone that got me here. I did have to put work into many other areas of my life to maintain not going back to my chronic meth use.
I did attend NA meetings. I did get a sponsor. I eliminated the people I was using with or cut ties with my sources for supplying it. I pushed through the physical withdrawals by taking simple steps every day to still take care of myself. The early days are always the hardest.
Why Is Meth So Addictive?
The power of methamphetamine lies in its relationship with dopamine, the brain's reward chemical.
The Dopamine Flood: Most pleasurable activities (like eating or exercise) release a natural amount of dopamine. Meth, however, triggers a release that is up to 12 times higher than anything the body can produce naturally.
The Brain’s Defense: Over time, the brain tries to protect itself from this overload by shutting down its own dopamine receptors.
The Trap: Eventually, the person no longer feels pleasure from anything except the drug. This is known as anhedonia. At this stage, the user isn't chasing a high anymore. They are simply trying to escape the crushing depression and fatigue of the crash.
Signs & Symptoms
Meth use causes rapid and often shocking changes. If you suspect someone is struggling, look for these physical and behavioral red flags:
Physical Signs
Rapid Aging: Drastic weight loss and sunken facial features.
Skin Sores: Compulsive picking at the face or arms
Meth Mouth: Severe tooth decay, gum disease, and blackened teeth due to dry mouth and teeth grinding
Dilated Pupils: Extremely large pupils and rapid jerky eye movements.
The brain is remarkably resilient. While the damage from meth is severe, studies show that with long-term abstinence, the brain’s dopamine transporters can actually start to recover.
Behavioral Signs
Hyperactivity: Periods of intense energy, rapid-fire talking, and staying awake for days
Tweaking: A period of extreme irritability, paranoia, and anxiety
Repetitive Tasks: Engaging in obsessive, meaningless activities, like taking apart electronics or cleaning the same spot for hours
Secrecy and Isolation: Withdrawing from family, losing interest in hobbies, and experiencing sudden financial emergencies.
The Road to Recovery
Because of the intense psychological toll a structured plan is vital.
1. The Detox Phase (7–14 Days)
Detox is the process of letting the drug leave your system. Meth withdrawal can cause severe depression and suicidal ideation, medical supervision is highly recommended.
The Crash (1–3 days): Extreme exhaustion and increased appetite.
Acute Withdrawal (3–10 days): Intense cravings, irritability, and brain fog.
The Support: While there are no FDA-approved medications specifically for meth, doctors can prescribe temporary sleep aids or antidepressants to manage the most painful symptoms.
Staying clean requires more than willpower. It requires some strategy to handle triggers, emotional difficulties, and intense cravings. If you are interested in creating a full relapse prevention plan for yourself (which I highly recommend) you can download our Relapse Prevention Bundle Here! This bundle is something I personally created with everything you will need to address underlying issues, stay focused on your recovery goals, and work through the difficult shit along the way.
3. Professional Support
Seeking professional help can make a life-changing difference. There are many resources available depending on what level of support someone needs. Some people benefit from inpatient or residential treatment programs where they can step away from their environment and focus fully on recovery, while others find success with outpatient programs, therapy, or addiction counseling that allows them to continue working and living at home.
Support groups, peer recovery specialists, behavioral therapies, and mental health treatment can also play a major role in helping people rebuild their lives and address the underlying issues connected to substance use.
Everyone’s recovery journey looks different. What one person swears by might not be the answer for someone else, and that’s okay. The goal isn’t to follow someone else’s exact path — it’s to find what genuinely works for you, what pushes you to become the best version of yourself, and what supports you in the ways you personally need to stay afloat and moving forward.
If you’re reading this and feeling like you might need help or support, please know that that is available for you. Through my 1:1 peer mentoring sessions, I work with individuals who are trying to rebuild their lives after addiction, navigate early recovery, or simply need someone who gets it. These sessions are a space to talk openly, work through challenges, set realistic goals, and build strategies that support long-term recovery and personal growth.
If that sounds like something that could help you, I invite you to sign up for a free discovery call now. If mentoring isn’t exactly what you’re looking for but you need help getting connected to treatment programs, recovery resources, or support services, please don’t hesitate to reach out — I’m still happy to help point you in the right direction!
If you are someone who prefers to work through things independently, you can also explore our digital resource library, which is full of recovery tools, worksheets, and guides you can use at home at your own pace. However you choose to move forward, just remember this: recovery is possible. No matter how far things have gone, change can happen, and a better life is always within reach. You got this shit <3
