Signs of Life

There eventually comes a point in an alcoholic & addicts career, where they begin to show evidence of their hobby becoming a crutch. Even early on before any real problems arise, there are always the tell tale signs that let your family, friends, relatives, teachers, co-workers, law enforcement, significant others know that something is askew.

Having bloodshot eyes or dilated pupils; using eye drops to try to mask these signs  Skipping class; declining grades; suddenly getting into trouble at school  Missing money, valuables, or prescriptions  Acting uncharacteristically isolated, withdrawn, angry, or depressed  Dropping one group of friends for another; being secretive about the new peer group  Loss of interest in old hobbies; lying about new interests and activities  Demanding more privacy; locking doors; avoiding eye contact; sneaking around

There may also come a point where your drug of choice consumes your every day existence, where it is not the exception to be fucked up, but the rule. It really seems that you cannot operate without your fix. By now you either don't care if people know that you use, or are so delusional & isolated that you still think your secret life is safe. 

Escape from the worries, escape from the stress, escape from the relationships..
Escape the days, the nights, escape your life.

Towards the end, you're either down in the attic or up in the basement with it. The kitchen & living room have been off limits for some time, and even the bedrooms, bathrooms, and closets can't be trusted at this point. There is no place to hide from it anymore. There is no middle ground anymore, as it can only operate on extreme ends of the spectrum. Yeah, it could be a psychological metaphor you have managed to turn into reality even after you've lost all sense of what that is . . .

You find yourself in that dark, lonely crawl space again, wrestling around with it. Your chosen addiction... or maybe your addiction chose you. Either way, you're stuck. Stuck battling with it day in & day out, night after night hoping for once to come out on top, victorious, smelling like a rose. 

More often than not, you just end up lower than the last time you said never again. Coming down with cold sweats, dry heaves, psychosis.... trying to coax yourself into a bathtub of ice water in hopes of lowering your core temperature as you could fry eggs on the frontal lobe of your brain. You begin to recite a "Fox Hole prayer" to any Deity that may or may not be there watching over you, that if you can just survive it this time you will kick the dope habit for good.

"There comes a time, in a short life, 
Turn it around, get a rewrite
Call it a dark, night of the soul
Ticking of clocks, gravity’s pull
First you get close, then you get worried....."
-Cold War Kids

R.I.P. Whitney

I ended up going from a human being dabbling in drugs & alcohol to a druggie & Alcoholic dabbling in being human...

How do you change? How do I recover from a hopeless state of mind, body, & spirit? 

The way out is through...

The same scenario can be applied to my recovery, and while some people dive head first into the program and never look back, that has not quite been my story.
I didn't take my first drink of beer or drag off of a joint and then immediately hit the crack pipe... I dabbled for awhile... testing the waters so to speak.

When I came to my first 12 step meeting (willfully, without the aid of a treatment program, court order, nagging parents or significant other) I was a little skeptical of drinking the recovery kool-aid. I assumed it was a cult and there would be tithing and arranged marriages involved at some point. There was no doubt that I did not belong with these people, I was terminally unique in every way. I figured I would visit the rooms of recovery for awhile, hang out with sober people, while I figured out another way. 

I didn't want to be an alcoholic... my father was an alcoholic, I swore when I grew up, I would manage my own demons or at least have the common decency to hide them from friends, family and society. When I came around the meetings, I didn't want it to be a long term solution, I just needed to quit for awhile, so I started dabbling in meetings as a newcomer. I didn't introduce myself to many people, I sat near the back & kept to myself. I didn't scream from the rooftops that I had found a cure for my disease. I certainly wasn't going to admit to anyone I knew that I had been visiting a cult , while trying to stay sober. Until I knew for certain it worked.

I wasn't a glorified pothead in high school until I knew for certain it worked for me.

I wasn't an avid everyday drinker of alcohol until I knew that it worked for me.

I wasn't a dignified cocaine addicted professional until I knew that it worked for me.

Once I experienced the escape & relief provided by drugs & alcohol while applying them to my everyday life as a solution to anything I faced... I knew it worked.

.... Until many years later it just didn't.

Is there life after drugs?...

The only way to know if the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous / Cocaine Anonymous, Anything Anonymous works, isn't by tip-toeing around it. Applying your own bookends to the program by doing the first step & the thirteenth step over & over again wondering if "sexually transmitted recovery" is really a thing or if you should actually open up a big book with a sponsor. "It only works if you work it."

You didn't get fucked off enough to land in hospitals, institutions, jails, and treatment centers by  merely"Dabbling" with substances. You surely won't get un-fucked by merely dabbling in recovery either. "Half measure availed us nothing."

Where there once was a bottle opener on my keychain is now a sobriety chip.

Instead of paraphernalia, open containers, or baggies of substances, you will most likely find more sobriety tokens of various lengths of time littering my car, my jacket pockets, my home.

Instead of pictures on my social media accounts of keg parties, thrashed Las Vegas hotels, and countertops of empty bottles, you will see sober friends together at New Years, Halloween, Recovery in the Rockies, etc.

Dropping one group of friends (using buddies) for another; being secretive about the new peer group (recovery meetings, friends, activities)

For awhile I kept the details of my recovery behind closed doors, I now realize this mirrors my path of addiction on my way back out of the dark.. I need to embrace recovery with all I have.