My story - legna
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My story - legna
I am a member of Narcotics Anonymous; my name is Angel. I believe that some people are born addicts, some are created. I think that I fell into this second category. I grew up in a working class family that aspired to move up the food chain. My father worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day six days a week as well as putting some time in on Sundays trying to insure that we had everything we needed and most of what we wanted. Dad can probably best be summarized as every Norman Rockwell print ever made. My mother was my primary caregiver and can best be summarized as every Steven King novel ever written.
My early life was characterized by physical, mental and sexual violence. It was not nearly as bad as some stories I've heard, much worse than some others but I've found that it doesnt really matter much. What does matter is that I felt unaccepted and thought that meant I was unacceptable. I felt unworthy and thought that meant I was worthless. I felt unloved and thought that meant I was unlovable. Since then I have found that feelings are just feelings but unchecked they create thoughts and my thoughts create my life.
Stuck with all these unpleasant thoughts, I did what any rational being would do in such a situation; I sought to escape them. At first I simply stuffed them. By eight years old I was being treated for ulcers. Then I tried to swallow them and by nine years old I had developed an eating disorder. I tried to escape into school and sports, religion and relationships but nothing worked. Eventually I turned to drinking and drugs.
These two were especially taboo for me. My mother loved conditionally. If you were who she wanted you to be, she loved you. If you were not who she wanted you to be, she didnt love you. Unfortunately for me, what she wanted me to be was the perfect child. Those who know me well tend to have problems accepting what I am about to say but since you all dont know me well you might find believe this: I wasnt perfect - you know, as a child anyway. J
Ulcers were a physical problem that I could explain away and still hope to achieve the illusion of perfection and be loved someday in spite of them. Same holds true for my eating disorder despite its obvious psychological component. A less than perfect grade in school could be explained away by the teacher disliking me. It was the wrong religion and that's why I left. The girl had too many issues so thats why I broke up. The opponent tripped me and thats why I didn't score. But if I picked up a drink or a drug the illusion that I was perfect or presently would be smashed forever. It felt like giving up one's virginity, once gone you could never reclaim it.
Eventually though, after resisting the lure of an easy escape for what seemed like forever, I picked up. My first drink was at my friend Bob's house where I was spending the night. His mom took off for a date and of course, we promised to behave. As soon as she was out of the driveway, Bob produced a six pack of beer he had been hiding. I was terrified but decided to give it a go. I nursed one beer while Bob drank three watching all the while for the telltale signs that I was growing a horn or third eye or some other outward sign that I had become irredeemable. By the time the first beer was gone, the terror had subsided to simply fear. I matched Bob beer for beer on the last two.
He then offered me some mescaline. Since two beers didnt seem to be too bad, I took two hits. That seemed to work out even better and so I didnt hesitate when he offered me some weed. I didn't much care for the pot and it started making me sleepy and paranoid so when he offered me a solution in the form of two hits of speed I quickly accepted. Then I suggested we get some more beer. Down to the liquor store we went, $20 in hand, to find some adult willing to buy a case of beer for two needy kids. The first time was a charm and in five minutes we were on our way home with a case of beer. I took three more hits of speed with the first beer and somewhere through the first six-pack I found myself on his couch, my heart racing and thinking I was going to die. I'd inhale and my belly (which went in at the time) formed a pool of sweat that poured off me as I exhaled. Bob wanted to call an ambulance, my mother, his mother but I wouldn't let him. I would have rather died than be found out. He helped me upstairs and I passed out. That was my first use and I never went a day without again until I found the program.
My addiction had been well established before I ever took that first drug and I hit the ground running. Stealing, running away, breaking and entering within a very short time I had multiple run ins with the law, been arrested multiple times and after my third treatment center the courts decided that I had hit their bottom. The had this new-fangled idea they were going to sign me up for which entailed forcing people to go to twelve-step meetings. And so, with the gracious assistance of the court system, I found myself in my first AA meeting in November of 1978. Narcotics Anonymous wasn't well established in my area and despite rumors of its existance, it was AA that I found myself in.
Despite the age differences, I found people in AA with whom I could relate. Too, they gave me the kind of unconditional love and acceptance that I had been craving my entire life. I stuck around. I got a sponsor and worked the steps to the best of my ability and with a measure of success. I walked through trials and tribulations without picking up using the principles that had been given to me. Amongst those trials, and the one that will resurface in this story, is that during my military service I was held prisoner in the former Soviet Union as an enemy of the state. I stayed sober for seven years. Seven years into my sobriety I started working through the steps again with a new sponsor but couldn't get through the first step with him. He kept rejecting it. He kept saying silly things like, It sounds like you hit your parents bottom, the school districts bottom, the courts bottom and the cops bottom but I dont hear you telling me how you hit your bottom. Eventually he suggested that I try some controlled drinking until I could do a thorough first step. I set off to show him.
Many of us no doubt have had curiosity about some of those new drinks that had come out since we gave up drinking. Wine coolers were new at one point and sounded kind of cool, or Mike's hard lemonade, or whatever. I was like that. My first drink was going to be something new that had come out since I last drank and had been curious about. My first drink was an eight ball of crack. What followed was seven years without a day off from alcohol or drugs. I'm not much into war stories; most of us know the terrain: homelessness, poverty, withdrawals, and legal troubles. Eventually I was busted selling drugs to a cop and found myself facing seventy years. I was bailed out by my best customer and was high before I left the jail parking lot.
Over the next month I tried to quit numerous times and failed repeatedly, never amassing even 24 hours. One morning I woke up in a hotel room and found myself alone. The girl who had been there with me had left and worn my pants out. I was left with what used to be a white pair of harem pants, a string of failed quit attempts, a sentence of seventy years hanging over my head along with an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness.
Despite seven years in AA, I was convinced it wouldn't work for me at this stage of my addiction but I was desperate. I looked in the phone book and for you youngsters, thats the thing we used to use before the invention of smartphones and found a meeting. Through the. helpline, a ride for me was arranged to an NA meeting. Honestly, I remember very little of that first meeting. I know I was high when I got there and I know I got high afterwards, and I know that I had arranged a ride to a meeting the next day but thats about it. I went to three meetings the next day and five the following day gathering the courage to try to quit again. When I finally got home that night it was after midnight. I decided that it made no sense to try and quit then that my quit day would be the same if I quit at 12:15am on that day or 11:59pm and so I continued to use through the day and into the night on that May 10th.
Though I vividly remember my experience of quitting, it seems quite surreal now; after all, it happened to a different person I am not that person any longer. Here though, is the defining moment of that quit
I lay on the floor trying to sleep, a hammer by my side. My arms and legs often flopping around with a mind of their own as my nervous system short circuited. I sometimes would use the claw part of the hammer to tear at the crawling under my skin, sometimes resorting to just pounding on my arms and legs to kill the sensations. The mental torture, of course, was worse. My mind screamed for more, my will crumbling over and over. Finally it screamed, If I dont have a hit Ill die! I remember the thought; so clear and then a response filled with strength and total and utter conviction Then die. And I meant it with all my heart. And then I did.
I'm told the ambulance got there six minutes later and I had no heartbeat. More than enough time to stay dead, or at least be permanently brain damaged. But I didn't. When I regained consciousness, I knew I would never have to use again. Make no mistake, I was still a disaster physically, mentally and emotionally, but I was free if I chose to be. And so I began the long road back.
My public defender told me my best deal was four years. I felt sick. I began attending meetings and really threw myself into recovery attending 387 in my first ninety days clean. Recovery became a full time job, one that I took very seriously. As the court date grew nearer, I became more resigned and accepting of my fate. I may be going away but I would make the most out of my ability to go to meetings and jump-start my recovery at the moment. I figured Id need every inch of head start I could get.
Three things stick out in my mind during that first ninety days. Roger was the first. In those early days I found it hard to relate to people in the meetings. And seeing as they couldnt possibly comprehend how much pain I was in so how could they relate to me? And then there was Roger. Three years sober, Roger had set his five year old daughter on the porch one morning as he turned to close and lock the front door of his house. Because of the cold and ice in the cracks between the door and door frame, he had to slam the door shut to get it to close. When he did, he loosened the sheet of ice on the roof and turned just in time to see it fall on and crush his daughter to death while he stood eighteen inches away.
Roger knew pain. And he kept coming back and not using one day at a time. I never talked to him about what had happened, never asked him to be my sponsor but I watched him not pick up every day. Its a bad idea in practice, but Roger became my higher power for a bit. He showed me how to do it just by continuing to come back and not use on a daily basis.
The second thing I remember was the birthday girl. During a noon meeting one day, a young woman in the Air Force came in. She had just been transferred the day before and this was her first meeting since landing. She shared that she was particularly homesick as she would be celebrating her fifth anniversary sober tomorrow and would be doing so without the support group she had come to count on for the last five years.
I was saddened by the idea. Her sponsor, her friends, her group no one around she knew to help her celebrate. And with no notice, she wasnt likely to get a cake for her birthday, which was a traditional way to celebrate out our way. Five years was too long a time to receive no recognition I decided, and went home and attempt to bake my first cake. It was completely ridiculous. The cake was lopsided, the frosting was missing in some spots and too thick at others and she cried and told me it was the most beautiful cake she had ever seen. I was embarrassed beyond words but it seemed like the right thing to do and so I did it.
The third thing I remember during those early days was The Plan. My lawyer had been in touch and told me that a deal had been struck for me to receive four years. It was a good deal but I had no plans on doing the time. I had been in a cage during my time in the military and I wasnt going back. The nightmares had never gone away and I wasnt going to live that again. I know that prison in the states would be different than what I had been through but waking up behind bars wasnt something I was going to put myself through. The first night in I was going to kill myself.
It may seem strange to people that I knew that drugs were going to kill me and yet I went through such efforts to get clean only so that I could kill myself when I reached ninety days clean, but in my mind, even today, it makes perfect sense. I knew I was going to die regardless but wanted to die free. It was going to be a choice. My choice. Drugs were the enemy and the enemy wasnt going to take my life from me. I'd do it my way by my own hand and was at peace with that whole idea. The day before I left for sentencing I bought a going away card and brought it to the meeting and asked everyone to sign it for me it was my going away present for myself.
The next morning I went to court to be sentenced to what the judge thought was four years though with me committing suicide that night, it would only turn out to be a few hours. In front of the judge, rather than sentence me immediately, she started asking me questions. Questions about what I had been doing in the months since my arrest, questions about my recovery, questions that, quite frankly, confused the heck out of me and, from the look on his face, my attorney too. Then she called me to the bench. My attorney and I approached the bench and she suggested he go back to his seat.
Then she told me a story. Her brother and his wife had died years ago in a car accident. Someone who was stoned out of his mind hit them and they were killed instantly. I suspected I may not have to kill myself as I tried to recall if our state had a death penalty. She continued, explaining that their deaths orphaned her two-year old niece who she then adopted and raised as her own daughter.
That little girl, she told me, grew up and became an alcoholic and drug addict herself. She ran away from home and stayed missing for two years. One day she got a call; it was her daughter. She had quit, was clean and sober for a year and was hoping for forgiveness and reconciliation. She told her there was nothing to forgive and asked her to just please come home. It turned out that it wasnt possible at the time but they looked forward to the day that it would be. The opportunity finally arose. Her daughter jumped at the chance and the Air Force transferred her to a base in her hometown a day before her fifth anniversary clean and sober.
Without knowing who it was and with no expectations, I had baked my first cake as a gift for the one person the judge loved more than anyone else in the world - her daughter. Then she got serious and her voice got even quieter. You are facing seventy-years. You got a deal for four. If you violate your probation I give you my word you will do the maximum. Now go re-join your lawyer.
She addressed my lawyer first. I've spoken to the DA in the moments before court and he agreed. I've taken the liberty of assuming that youll have no objections: suspended imposition of sentence, three years probation.
As for whats life been like since then it's been life. There have been joyous moments where I have been happier than I have ever thought possible and tough times that I wasn't sure I was going to live through and wasn't sure I wanted to live through. You probably have had some of that in your life too and if you haven't, you probably will. Throughout it, I havent picked up. On May 10th, 2012, I celebrated twenty-years clean and sober.
My early life was characterized by physical, mental and sexual violence. It was not nearly as bad as some stories I've heard, much worse than some others but I've found that it doesnt really matter much. What does matter is that I felt unaccepted and thought that meant I was unacceptable. I felt unworthy and thought that meant I was worthless. I felt unloved and thought that meant I was unlovable. Since then I have found that feelings are just feelings but unchecked they create thoughts and my thoughts create my life.
Stuck with all these unpleasant thoughts, I did what any rational being would do in such a situation; I sought to escape them. At first I simply stuffed them. By eight years old I was being treated for ulcers. Then I tried to swallow them and by nine years old I had developed an eating disorder. I tried to escape into school and sports, religion and relationships but nothing worked. Eventually I turned to drinking and drugs.
These two were especially taboo for me. My mother loved conditionally. If you were who she wanted you to be, she loved you. If you were not who she wanted you to be, she didnt love you. Unfortunately for me, what she wanted me to be was the perfect child. Those who know me well tend to have problems accepting what I am about to say but since you all dont know me well you might find believe this: I wasnt perfect - you know, as a child anyway. J
Ulcers were a physical problem that I could explain away and still hope to achieve the illusion of perfection and be loved someday in spite of them. Same holds true for my eating disorder despite its obvious psychological component. A less than perfect grade in school could be explained away by the teacher disliking me. It was the wrong religion and that's why I left. The girl had too many issues so thats why I broke up. The opponent tripped me and thats why I didn't score. But if I picked up a drink or a drug the illusion that I was perfect or presently would be smashed forever. It felt like giving up one's virginity, once gone you could never reclaim it.
Eventually though, after resisting the lure of an easy escape for what seemed like forever, I picked up. My first drink was at my friend Bob's house where I was spending the night. His mom took off for a date and of course, we promised to behave. As soon as she was out of the driveway, Bob produced a six pack of beer he had been hiding. I was terrified but decided to give it a go. I nursed one beer while Bob drank three watching all the while for the telltale signs that I was growing a horn or third eye or some other outward sign that I had become irredeemable. By the time the first beer was gone, the terror had subsided to simply fear. I matched Bob beer for beer on the last two.
He then offered me some mescaline. Since two beers didnt seem to be too bad, I took two hits. That seemed to work out even better and so I didnt hesitate when he offered me some weed. I didn't much care for the pot and it started making me sleepy and paranoid so when he offered me a solution in the form of two hits of speed I quickly accepted. Then I suggested we get some more beer. Down to the liquor store we went, $20 in hand, to find some adult willing to buy a case of beer for two needy kids. The first time was a charm and in five minutes we were on our way home with a case of beer. I took three more hits of speed with the first beer and somewhere through the first six-pack I found myself on his couch, my heart racing and thinking I was going to die. I'd inhale and my belly (which went in at the time) formed a pool of sweat that poured off me as I exhaled. Bob wanted to call an ambulance, my mother, his mother but I wouldn't let him. I would have rather died than be found out. He helped me upstairs and I passed out. That was my first use and I never went a day without again until I found the program.
My addiction had been well established before I ever took that first drug and I hit the ground running. Stealing, running away, breaking and entering within a very short time I had multiple run ins with the law, been arrested multiple times and after my third treatment center the courts decided that I had hit their bottom. The had this new-fangled idea they were going to sign me up for which entailed forcing people to go to twelve-step meetings. And so, with the gracious assistance of the court system, I found myself in my first AA meeting in November of 1978. Narcotics Anonymous wasn't well established in my area and despite rumors of its existance, it was AA that I found myself in.
Despite the age differences, I found people in AA with whom I could relate. Too, they gave me the kind of unconditional love and acceptance that I had been craving my entire life. I stuck around. I got a sponsor and worked the steps to the best of my ability and with a measure of success. I walked through trials and tribulations without picking up using the principles that had been given to me. Amongst those trials, and the one that will resurface in this story, is that during my military service I was held prisoner in the former Soviet Union as an enemy of the state. I stayed sober for seven years. Seven years into my sobriety I started working through the steps again with a new sponsor but couldn't get through the first step with him. He kept rejecting it. He kept saying silly things like, It sounds like you hit your parents bottom, the school districts bottom, the courts bottom and the cops bottom but I dont hear you telling me how you hit your bottom. Eventually he suggested that I try some controlled drinking until I could do a thorough first step. I set off to show him.
Many of us no doubt have had curiosity about some of those new drinks that had come out since we gave up drinking. Wine coolers were new at one point and sounded kind of cool, or Mike's hard lemonade, or whatever. I was like that. My first drink was going to be something new that had come out since I last drank and had been curious about. My first drink was an eight ball of crack. What followed was seven years without a day off from alcohol or drugs. I'm not much into war stories; most of us know the terrain: homelessness, poverty, withdrawals, and legal troubles. Eventually I was busted selling drugs to a cop and found myself facing seventy years. I was bailed out by my best customer and was high before I left the jail parking lot.
Over the next month I tried to quit numerous times and failed repeatedly, never amassing even 24 hours. One morning I woke up in a hotel room and found myself alone. The girl who had been there with me had left and worn my pants out. I was left with what used to be a white pair of harem pants, a string of failed quit attempts, a sentence of seventy years hanging over my head along with an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness.
Despite seven years in AA, I was convinced it wouldn't work for me at this stage of my addiction but I was desperate. I looked in the phone book and for you youngsters, thats the thing we used to use before the invention of smartphones and found a meeting. Through the. helpline, a ride for me was arranged to an NA meeting. Honestly, I remember very little of that first meeting. I know I was high when I got there and I know I got high afterwards, and I know that I had arranged a ride to a meeting the next day but thats about it. I went to three meetings the next day and five the following day gathering the courage to try to quit again. When I finally got home that night it was after midnight. I decided that it made no sense to try and quit then that my quit day would be the same if I quit at 12:15am on that day or 11:59pm and so I continued to use through the day and into the night on that May 10th.
Though I vividly remember my experience of quitting, it seems quite surreal now; after all, it happened to a different person I am not that person any longer. Here though, is the defining moment of that quit
I lay on the floor trying to sleep, a hammer by my side. My arms and legs often flopping around with a mind of their own as my nervous system short circuited. I sometimes would use the claw part of the hammer to tear at the crawling under my skin, sometimes resorting to just pounding on my arms and legs to kill the sensations. The mental torture, of course, was worse. My mind screamed for more, my will crumbling over and over. Finally it screamed, If I dont have a hit Ill die! I remember the thought; so clear and then a response filled with strength and total and utter conviction Then die. And I meant it with all my heart. And then I did.
I'm told the ambulance got there six minutes later and I had no heartbeat. More than enough time to stay dead, or at least be permanently brain damaged. But I didn't. When I regained consciousness, I knew I would never have to use again. Make no mistake, I was still a disaster physically, mentally and emotionally, but I was free if I chose to be. And so I began the long road back.
My public defender told me my best deal was four years. I felt sick. I began attending meetings and really threw myself into recovery attending 387 in my first ninety days clean. Recovery became a full time job, one that I took very seriously. As the court date grew nearer, I became more resigned and accepting of my fate. I may be going away but I would make the most out of my ability to go to meetings and jump-start my recovery at the moment. I figured Id need every inch of head start I could get.
Three things stick out in my mind during that first ninety days. Roger was the first. In those early days I found it hard to relate to people in the meetings. And seeing as they couldnt possibly comprehend how much pain I was in so how could they relate to me? And then there was Roger. Three years sober, Roger had set his five year old daughter on the porch one morning as he turned to close and lock the front door of his house. Because of the cold and ice in the cracks between the door and door frame, he had to slam the door shut to get it to close. When he did, he loosened the sheet of ice on the roof and turned just in time to see it fall on and crush his daughter to death while he stood eighteen inches away.
Roger knew pain. And he kept coming back and not using one day at a time. I never talked to him about what had happened, never asked him to be my sponsor but I watched him not pick up every day. Its a bad idea in practice, but Roger became my higher power for a bit. He showed me how to do it just by continuing to come back and not use on a daily basis.
The second thing I remember was the birthday girl. During a noon meeting one day, a young woman in the Air Force came in. She had just been transferred the day before and this was her first meeting since landing. She shared that she was particularly homesick as she would be celebrating her fifth anniversary sober tomorrow and would be doing so without the support group she had come to count on for the last five years.
I was saddened by the idea. Her sponsor, her friends, her group no one around she knew to help her celebrate. And with no notice, she wasnt likely to get a cake for her birthday, which was a traditional way to celebrate out our way. Five years was too long a time to receive no recognition I decided, and went home and attempt to bake my first cake. It was completely ridiculous. The cake was lopsided, the frosting was missing in some spots and too thick at others and she cried and told me it was the most beautiful cake she had ever seen. I was embarrassed beyond words but it seemed like the right thing to do and so I did it.
The third thing I remember during those early days was The Plan. My lawyer had been in touch and told me that a deal had been struck for me to receive four years. It was a good deal but I had no plans on doing the time. I had been in a cage during my time in the military and I wasnt going back. The nightmares had never gone away and I wasnt going to live that again. I know that prison in the states would be different than what I had been through but waking up behind bars wasnt something I was going to put myself through. The first night in I was going to kill myself.
It may seem strange to people that I knew that drugs were going to kill me and yet I went through such efforts to get clean only so that I could kill myself when I reached ninety days clean, but in my mind, even today, it makes perfect sense. I knew I was going to die regardless but wanted to die free. It was going to be a choice. My choice. Drugs were the enemy and the enemy wasnt going to take my life from me. I'd do it my way by my own hand and was at peace with that whole idea. The day before I left for sentencing I bought a going away card and brought it to the meeting and asked everyone to sign it for me it was my going away present for myself.
The next morning I went to court to be sentenced to what the judge thought was four years though with me committing suicide that night, it would only turn out to be a few hours. In front of the judge, rather than sentence me immediately, she started asking me questions. Questions about what I had been doing in the months since my arrest, questions about my recovery, questions that, quite frankly, confused the heck out of me and, from the look on his face, my attorney too. Then she called me to the bench. My attorney and I approached the bench and she suggested he go back to his seat.
Then she told me a story. Her brother and his wife had died years ago in a car accident. Someone who was stoned out of his mind hit them and they were killed instantly. I suspected I may not have to kill myself as I tried to recall if our state had a death penalty. She continued, explaining that their deaths orphaned her two-year old niece who she then adopted and raised as her own daughter.
That little girl, she told me, grew up and became an alcoholic and drug addict herself. She ran away from home and stayed missing for two years. One day she got a call; it was her daughter. She had quit, was clean and sober for a year and was hoping for forgiveness and reconciliation. She told her there was nothing to forgive and asked her to just please come home. It turned out that it wasnt possible at the time but they looked forward to the day that it would be. The opportunity finally arose. Her daughter jumped at the chance and the Air Force transferred her to a base in her hometown a day before her fifth anniversary clean and sober.
Without knowing who it was and with no expectations, I had baked my first cake as a gift for the one person the judge loved more than anyone else in the world - her daughter. Then she got serious and her voice got even quieter. You are facing seventy-years. You got a deal for four. If you violate your probation I give you my word you will do the maximum. Now go re-join your lawyer.
She addressed my lawyer first. I've spoken to the DA in the moments before court and he agreed. I've taken the liberty of assuming that youll have no objections: suspended imposition of sentence, three years probation.
As for whats life been like since then it's been life. There have been joyous moments where I have been happier than I have ever thought possible and tough times that I wasn't sure I was going to live through and wasn't sure I wanted to live through. You probably have had some of that in your life too and if you haven't, you probably will. Throughout it, I havent picked up. On May 10th, 2012, I celebrated twenty-years clean and sober.
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