opiates are bad, but I rely on them to make my Mind functional. I've had tons of medications for my AD(H)D, but they all were terrible. Amphetamines like Ritalin were just too toxic on my liver and other medications actually made me more insane than sane.
I now take Clonazepam dayly on psychiatrist prescription and they do the job of calming my mind and taking the extremes of my emotions down to a reasonable level, but I still don't feel too good about them.
Wer, I wish you the best of luck. Luckily you don't rely on anything, like I do, in order not to go mentally haywire. I tried stopping them for a while and this lead to terrible restlessness and chaos in my Mind. I couldn't concentrate on anything and became very frustrated. In turn I would become socially disfunctional and this in turn slowly leads to insanity. I've been down that road once before and I don't wanna ever go there again so I continued taking them.
Be glad you can stop taking opiates without having such problems.
In the period between my 20s and 21s(up till recently) I've had a psychedelic quest searching for spiritual answers. I've gotten many and learned alot and now I've quit them, even smoking Marijuana, in order to streamline myself for my next journey: School and a carreer. I've had 2 years out of school when it was responsible to do this and it really helped me figure out what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my life; An artistic carreer starting with attending the Art College in Rotterdam.
Yet I wouldn't be surprised if, later in my life, I would do magic mushrooms, psychedelic cacti or DMT again. They remain precious experiences for me and I'll always be, as I've ever been, a quite spiritual person. But as for now I've had my share of insights into the reality few people dare to recognise ;)