Hi All

[littlebopeep]

I woke up this morning realising that it was all getting out of hand, and I don't even know how I found myself here. I seem to be in a different country to everybody else, all I know is that my lifes pretty f***ed up and I obviously need someone to understand me, and thats why Im here. I just need to know that Im not the only one with addictive behaviours and that I'm not a freak!

[tyler]

Hello and welcome. You are certainly not alone as a quick look around these boards will confirm. I would recommend posting over on the newcommers board as it gets alot more traffic than this one. Usually a post is up there for no more than 5 minutes before it gets a reply. I can relate with things being out of hand. They really had to get that way for me before I did anything about it. Ended up losing most everything including, almost, my life. But I am clean not and thinking more clearly every day.

One thing that really helps in recovery is the support of a program. I'm not sure what your drug of choice is and it really doesn't matter anyway, but there are a number of recovery options out there. I'm sure you've heard of AA http://aa.org and maybe it's cosuin NA http://na.org (Narcotics Anonomysis), these are 12-step based programs and are the most common programs available. You go to meetings, work with a sponsor, work on the steps and stay clean with the help of the group and your higher power. There are also a number of secular programs, SMART Recovery http://smartrecovery.org , Lifering http://unhooked.com , and Rational Recovery http://rational.org to name a few. SMART and Lifering both offer meetings on-line and limited face to face meetings. Rational Recovery does not use meetings and uses self help. SMART can be worked with or with out meetings.

The first step of the 12 steps is Admiting that you have a problem and your life has become unmanagable. Sound like you are there.