Post
by smutek » Fri Nov 19, 2010 6:59 am
Thanks fellas!
@ Tarekith -
It's hard to pinpoint but I think I would have to say it was a culmination of things and I finally just got tired of it.
I started partying when I was 14. Drinking and smoking weed mostly, eventually started taking acid and eventually got to the point where I was willing to experiment with pretty much anything. I was just a party kid really, I was stoned and wasted a lot but for the most part I stayed out of trouble. I had experimented with it, but I started dabbling more with heroin when I was in my early 20's. Sometime around the end of '93, beginning of '94 I pretty much went off the deep end, started shooting dope and pretty much lost everything. Spent the next 5 years living in various spots - mostly in the ghetto's of east Baltimore. Sleeping on floors in shooting gallery's and stuff like that.
I think that once things get to this point it's pretty hard to deny there's a problem - so pretty much all of those last 5 years I wanted to stop but couldn't. In retrospect, most of those 5 years was spent trying to find a way to get back to the place where I could just smoke weed and drink. I thought I had to have something - once I realized that I didn't have to get high it became pretty easy.
So, basically, it was this huge mind fuck but it just boiled down to a simple choice followed by action. The last night I got high was not unlike any other, just another night of me fucking up my life. I woke up that next morning and the very first thing that went through my mind was "I don't want to do this anymore", but for the first time it was really for me - and I haven't drank or done drugs since.
@ Forge - that's a cool analogy.
I'd been to rehab 4 times, 3 detoxes, in the psych ward 5 times, and 2 separate stints in jails. None of it ever worked. I was locked up from January '98 until January '99. I think that year off of the street helped me a lot. Once I got out I moved into a recovery house and got involved in NA. It still took 11 months of me slipping up here and there, getting high, getting kicked out of recovery houses and moving into new ones. I never went off of the deep end though, and I think for me the important thing was that I hooked up with a group of people that had also just came into NA to get clean and we all became close friends. Having lost so much already I really didn't want to lose this new crew of friends.
Out of that crew of people a few didn't make it and are no longer alive. A few more relapsed here and there, but most of us are doing well and are still clean.
Getting clean was both the most difficult and the easiest thing I've ever done. In the end it boiled down to me realizing, and internalizing on a deep level, that I don't have to get high. Once I really realized this it came down to a simple decision not to use.
From this point I just became really involved in NA. I was really into it the first 3 or so years, helped start a few groups, held positions in those groups and did various service work.
2 of my close friends from my little crew and I, we actually threw a clean rave for a couple of years that did pretty well. We even started getting club kids coming who weren't recovering addicts because our party was just about the music and the dancing. It was killer, eventually my 2 buddies relapsed, one of them died and the whole thing kind of fell apart.
But yeah, I was really involved with NA the first few years - eventually my involvement in NA became less and less and was replaced by things like work, school, family... I still go to the occasional NA meeting and still am a member of a home group though.
@ dum -
Totally get what you're saying, however it's not a chapter that I want to close and I don't think I will ever be 'over it'.
For me this isn't at all a bad thing though. Those experiences played a huge role in making me who I am today - and I'm still an addict, I'm just not using today.
I guess maybe it's kind of like that old saying, "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it". Maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, I'm not sure. I do know that by openly sharing this stuff over the years I've had quite a few opportunities to help other people, which is cool.
