I got clean over a year ago, my DOC was IV speedballs + crack, and I did them as often as possible. The last week of using was, in retrospect, quite literally the lowest point in my life. Get money, get drugs, lock myself in my room for days at a time, repeat. I remember looking in my recent calls list on my cell phone and everytime a friend or family member called me, I'd let it go to voicemail, yet right there mixed in with the people who somehow still cared about me were numerous calls to and from my various dealers at the time. It was pathetic. I was pathetic.
Whenever I was sick I would usually read the Wiki pages for celebrities / musicians I knew OD'd, some of my favorites were the dude from Alice in Chains, Lenny Bruce, and several others. Anyway, when 9/10 these people died they were in a room alone, hadn't seen or talked to anyone in days, and sort of just faded like a lightbulb slowly going dim. I was in the first stages of this even and I knew I didn't want to die. I'm going to die one day but I know at this point with all the clean time I have that I will not die with drugs in my system.
I put myself in the shittiest, low rent rehab my state would pay for. 19 days in a facility in the middle of the ghetto. Literally in the ghetto, several of AA / NA people who came in to give meetings said you could find crack a few blocks this way, heroin a few blocks that way, I heard gun shots at night often. Lots of drama in rehab of course. I met some very interesting people, none of which I still speak to. I remember the third day without my drugs, after I slept off the binge I'd done leading up to the hour I had to leave, I went outside on a sunny day. Colors, quite literally, were more vibrant, I was shivering and irritated but nothing will remove the memory of how bright and shiny everything I saw looked. I remember reading on Reddit that depressed people literally do not see colors as bright, this was first hand experience with that.
I got out of rehab, did a bit of jail time, got out of jail and immediately got to work. I have put in 80 - 100 hour weeks doing manual labor and I can tell you without a doubt that having a job and saving money was absolutely integral to staying off drugs. I'm not going to bullshit you and say that I'm completely sober, I definitely have smoked Marijuana and drank, but I didn't have that first drink until about 10 months after stopping everything. As of right now, I know that it's not that I'm smoking pot or drinking, it's who I'm doing it with, and it's something I rarely do anyway (once a month I would say would be a lot).
I have friends who were in the same boat as me, and they went the sober for a long time > smoked pot > drank > did some kind of upper> eventually got back on opiates. It's sad but I know I'd feel like a huge asshole if I did that. I like to keep weed as like the supreme reward, and if I can use it reasonably and not every day, or alone, then it's alright. I've had this discussion with several people that there's no sense in getting completely sober if you know deep down in your heart that you're just bidding your time until you can get high again. It's irritating to see people go through with this when you know what's going to happen. As for myself, I'm a huge fan of statistics and I realize that's there's a 5% chance that I will stay off heroin for the rest of my life. We'll see what happens but I think I'll be alright if I keep it up.
Today, a little less than 15 months after getting off drugs, I really enjoy my life. My friends have filtered back into my day to day steadily, a lot of "dude I knew something was wrong but I didn't know how to approach it" or "We knew you were fucked up and didn't want to be around you." Both reasons are understandable. The hardest part of getting clean was not being invited to a good friend of mine's wedding when I had a little less than 6 months. I knew I was clean, I felt good, but this friend had seen me destroy myself with opiates for almost 5 years, what the fuck does 6 months clean mean anyway? I didn't let that perturb me, the truth always come out, and I knew I just had to keep going. I have money in my pocket, I have money stashed in my house, I have a bank account, I will be buying a house in 2018 (Around April), I will start lifting weight instead of casually exercising 6 days a week. I have goals, I have success, I have an opportunity to fix this mess I've made for myself.
The desire to do drugs probably won't ever leave me. You said 8 or 9 years OP and I've spent 5 myself deliberately training my brain to associate opiates with reward and relaxation. It's going to take a long time to get past that, and I have time. It's still weird to me for my skin to feel warm to the touch, people to look me in the eye when they talk to me, people depending on me, being happy, wanting to learn, all these things I would never be able to do had I still been getting high. It takes time, it takes a lot of time and soul searching, but at this point the only thing I wish I'd done was started this years ago. I've learned a lot about society, the legal system, the status quo, and social roles from drug use. I'll never be a casual drug user, it's not going to be one last time, my life is better without opiates and that's never going to change.