Well, OP, I guess count yourself lucky that you (presumably) have a clinic with a methadone program available nearby. I originally got hooked from a coworker practically handing out percocets to his coworkers to make the night go by easier. It did. Oh god, it did.
Fast forward through 5 or 6 years of heroin abuse and I ended up getting into methadone because my then weed guy had two friends with scripts who were happy to sell them. There's no program here, these are scripts for people with chronic pain. The dope in this town is overpriced and rubbish, and my normal dope guy was now 2 hours away. It was either drop $40-$50 on gas just to go buy grams of raw or settle for methadone a few block from my house. I was eating upwards of 80mg throughout the day just to survive the work day with no backup plan. One day, they ran out. I was too sick to go to work, and I lost my job that day.
Without driving 2 hours to get dope that wasn't stepped on 5x over I ended up discovering dilaudid (hydromorphone). A little googling revealed that — and I must preface by saying, don't bang pharma pills! — you can crush dilaudid up, let dissolve in water for a few minutes, and then suck up into a syringe through a cotton, just like dope. Most of the fillers and shit tended to collect at the base of the cooker, while the syringe gets filled with seemingly clear water. It's the closest thing to dope I've ever felt; different, but still a blast to your whole body of pure euphoria. After fucking with that for a while, methadone was back on the streets. I actually prefer that. Sure, you don't get an insta-blast of joy, but you don't have to poke around for good veins, and methadone will make you feel great for 12-20+ hours, instead of just a couple hours with anything you can shoot in your arm.
Not entirely sure the point of my story. I've been clean for 5 days now. Will it last? Who knows? Being broke helps. I'm not the type to go pawn stolen copper wire to feed my habit — the last thing I'd want is to get caught and have to clean up in jail. I'd rather be miserable in my own bed.
My arms, swollen, bloody, bright red from top to bottom from poking myself at least 40 times in one sitting, no exaggeration.
Sounds like a friend of mine. I lucked out in that I'm lean and have 3 pretty big veins in the corners of my arms that run nearly the length of my forearms. I cannot stress enough, if you use needles, ROTATE your spots. To this day, I don't have a single track-mark. Part of that is just me lucking out in the physique department; lots of big veins close to the surface. But the other part of that is methodology. Rotate, rotate, rotate. If you can, never hit too close to the same spot if you can, until it's healed. I did damage one vein to the point that it completely hardened for a week. Now, probably a year later, and it's good to go again. Rotate your spots if you can and learn from mistake hits people.