San Luis Obispo
Addiction Recovery
Center
Compassionate Treatment of Substance Abuse
Treat Addiction -- Save Lives
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Compassionate Treatment of Substance Abuse
Treat Addiction -- Save Lives |
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Patient N
It’s taken me entirely too long to write this. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve thought about the topic countless times. Actually to be exact, I think about it multiple times every day. It is a part of me. It will never go away. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have it any other way. “Me not using drugs” is entirely too important a reality to fade away into oblivion never to return (which by the way is frighteningly possible and statistically probable). A key part of maintaining said reality is the continual existence of the opposite of that reality: the hideous memory of “Me using drugs.”
We all make mistakes in life. However compromising my sobriety cannot be one of them. Being an addict I have to live knowing that a dark ravine exists on either side of me, much closer than too most, and one misstep could end it all: my life or any life worth living. I’m not writing this to convince myself; I have AA meetings to accomplish that. I am writing this because if I don’t, I’ll be a hypocrite. I’ve heard the argument, “Why continually rehash the past? What’s the point of living in regret?” To me, remembering everyday that I am an addict and actually putting my experiences as such on paper isn’t living in the past, it’s resurrecting the future with an insurance policy. I don’t know if that policy will ever pay off. Life is unpredictable, the odds are I will fail according to statistics, and we all know how insurance policies are but why not try? If anything, I will never give up. I will take every precaution imaginable. I may make mistakes but I will never stop fighting for my life by fighting my addiction because “living” addicted will never be living. I’ll choose living as an “addict in recovery” any day over that hell.
“Talk about your experiences,” is more or less what I think of when I think “Testimonial” (which bye the bye is what you are reading apparently). As I mentioned, I go to AA to get into the nitty gritty of that kind of stuff. You know, the stuff you don’t want to think about but you do. I used drugs. The first time felt amazing, the next two years sucked ass…especially my stint in UCLA detox which consisted of lots of throwing up, utter sleeplessness to the point of hallucination, and oh yeah thoughts of smothering myself with a pillow. It was all very glamorous.
People like to think that if they show others the nasty, nasty side of drugs (say a video of me in detox), that those people won’t use drugs. I think not. My drug use was inevitable. I was a star child. I graduated high school at sixteen. Went to college and graduated at 20…yada, yada, yada… you get the picture. The point is I was always capable of being addicted because I am an addict. The only reason it didn’t happen sooner rather than later is happenstance. By luck of the draw I happened not be exposed to “temptation” at an early age. Nothing changed suddenly. Nothing “prompted” me to throw my life away into a pit of utter despair and painful oblivion. Some would like to think that addiction is as seemingly fleeting as the common cold. It isn’t. The “virus” stays with you be it dormant or active. You will never be “cured.” Get used to that. Embrace it. Live it. In my case, as in millions of others, my moment had simply yet to presented itself. As soon as that first oxy hit my brain, the addict took over. My doctor Jekyll smothered my Mr. Hyde. It’s a classic song that will be sung and heard by addicts and their loved ones over and over and over again for human eternity. Its true but it doesn’t have to be sad. I refuse to wallow in any sort of self-pity. Drug addiction is a difficult thing for most people to talk about let alone accept as a common reality but it exists and in shocking numbers. A great example is the transformation my mom has made throughout my own personal “war on drugs.” She doesn’t deserve an addict as a daughter but she has one. She didn’t want to see it, believe it, or accept it but she has and she is one of the most important people in my life and in my continual recovery, no question. I believe the quickest route to healing is accepting who you are and not letting it define you. Current public perception about drug addicts and the misperception that addiction is confined to your local crack house is hindering countless potential recovering addicts because we as a culture refuse to believe that our professors, our mothers, our sisters, our neighbors, and “the Jones’s” down the street with the white picket fence around their house are addicts too. We have to be better than that as a society and as human beings.
Addiction is a devil that has no preference to age, race, social standing or gender. I reiterate this point because it was a big misconception that I once had. After my first bought with recovery, I was told by a DRUG COUNSELOR that I just had a “bad patch” and that I “wasn’t really an addict and I would get over it.” Apparently this person decided I was “cured.” This translates to: I was taking up too much time and (according to said person) making other addicts, feel bad about their current state. It also translates to: the “counselor” who regurgitated this crap to me had little or no knowledge of what and how addiction works or they just didn’t care. I still don’t know which but the fact that I was given such an easy excuse to go use again is ridiculous. I already had billions, if not trillions, of excuses of my own to convince myself to use again. Dr. Jekyll had Mr. Hyde in a chokehold already. Did the referee of the fight really need to kick him while he was down? It was totally un-called for but such is life.
I don’t pretend to have any or all of the answers. These are my thoughts according to my point of view and my experiences. I struggled with writing this for so long because I felt like I had to write about the shitty experiences I had while on drugs (P.S. 99.9% of the time I was on drugs was a shitty experience). The more I think about it and the more I write about it, I realize my life as an addict does not have to be and is not about drugs and the horrific pain they brought me. It’s about hope, survivorship, and learning and accepting who you are, in order to become a better person. When you accept the circumstances of your life and who you are, you join reality and the living once again. Why live outside of feeling? It hurts “so good” because eventually it feels so good to deal with life and all of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Without the sweet there is no sour. Acceptance is key as much as strength. Become who you want to be. It is not easy. I don’t have the “cure” but I’m not using drugs and I’m the happiest I have ever been. I know now I am capable of that much less and that much more. I just walk a very, very fine line in life and I am happy to remind myself of that fact every chance I get. |
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