One of the first things that you learn in recovery is the need to separate yourself physically from your past. Ideally, this would be leaving town and any potential triggers far behind. Obviously, this is not always possible, so, moving one's self to another part of town is generally strongly recommended. This is what we ended up having to do to ensure our success in our recovery. Not only did we physically move, but we made sure that we told no one where we were even moving to, giving no one our new address.
This really did prove to be one of the smartest things that we could have done. The part of the city where we choose to live is not an area where users tended to reside nor even tended to visit. We didn't have to worry about inadvertently coming across someone from our prior life, thus removing any sort of temptation as well. Even though we do have to attend the only methadone clinic in our city, we choose to attend the earliest possible clinic of the day so we see our doctor anywhere from 7am until 8:20am on Tuesdays and Fridays, times when the clinic is exceptionally quiet. Our clinic has a maximum number of patients of 24 and does not see anyone who is IMP - a patient that has missed his normal doctor day - so there tends not to be anyone except the clinic's patients hanging around the clinic at these times. Again, we've managed to eleminate as best as possible the chance of us encountering anyone from our past life.
As we're now going on four and a half years away from this lifestyle, this has also helped with the separation. Doesn't take long for this lot to forget you that's for sure - and thank heavens indeed for this aspect!!! The infrequent times when we have encountered someone from our past, we've done our best to keep any interaction as brief and polite as possible. I'm pretty sure that I am more than strong enough at this stage to resist any sort of temptation, but why bother testing this theory if you don't have to? If it ain't broke...
