A Longish Story...

[meaculpa]

I have very little recollection of anything before the 7th grade. I can't seem to remember important things that happened in those times, both good and bad, but I remember that I started seeing a counselor in 4th grade, before I even knew how to get high. I don't remember anything that was talked about or if it helped.

I do know that I have been using drugs to cope with "being me" for as long as I can remember. I have a deep seeded hate for myself, which, when I write it out sounds so stupid, because I really cant explain why, but its there, almost like another personality, hissing at me and and screaming at me about how stupid, ugly, fat, awkward, or whatever else while I am trying to go about my daily life. Sometimes I am literally STUCK second guessing myself over and over and over again, to the point where I can't move.

Drinking made this part of me go away. I guess it takes some people years to figure this out, but I knew it from the beginning; I was self medicating. I knew this even in high school. It was almost as if when I was drunk or high I could see that people could actually stand me, and actually like me as a person. It made that hate go away.

It worked out great for years. I was smart enough to rarely get caught in High School and still do OK, got into college, but then with my newborn freedom, I started drinking and using every single day. Needless to say, I dropped out after a year, but maintained 2 jobs on campus to keep my close-by-campus apartment (celeron @ uconn if you know the area) for another year to keep the party going.

Unfortunately, I no longer had the means to live a party boy life style on my own, with rent and all, so I ended up moving to California with my estranged dad for a year. He promised me the world, and that he would make it up to me that he abandoned me so long ago, which I truly think he believed, but as a serious alcoholic on his 3rd marriage and with two young (4 and 7 year-old) children, he couldn't provide, I couldn't cope, and I left California after being hospitalized for suicidal ideations (read: I bought a shotgun and drove out to the desert, but wimped out and called mommy back in CT)

I did learn a valuable lesson in that year though. A: I was just like my father, even though he had nothing to do with my raising (**** you, Genes) B: I watched addiction literally ruin someones life (his) and saw how fast it could happen. When I visited him before I moved out, he had a new Porsche, 7 years of sobriety, a million dollar house, and a young wife. Upon my arrival to live with him, he was drinking a bottle of wine while grilling. 9 months later he was divorced, which cost him everything (including children), but the house, which was mortgaged to the hilt (2004 by the way). It was the most spectacular crash and burn you will never see on E true Hollywood stories.

This is when I realized I would not be able to drink as a normal person for the rest of my life, but was not ready to quit yet. After a few arrests, a few jobs, and a lot of self destruction, I met a girl who was not exposed to any of this. She was a farm girl, never smoked a cigarette in her life, could drink socially and leave it alone when necessary, and very religious. She was everything the old me would have wanted to avoid, but she brought out the best in me, and I started reevaluating my priorities. We fell in love, but I was still drinking. She went through hell with me.

During this time, all while hiding it from her, I managed to pick up a cocaine habit. I know how and why, a co-worker introduced me to it, and it was something I could get high with and nobody would know. Whats better than that. I could get geeked up and just focus on the fun parts of life, and my poor girlfriend just thought I had irritable bowel syndrome.

Here where **** gets real. We got pregnant. I convinced myself that this would be my way to stop my drug habit, which was now at ~200 per week. We got married in our living room, and actually were quite happy, but she knew something was off when we set up a joint bank account. I should have worked for Enron with all the misdirection of money I had going on. I made more money but never had any to contribute to the family fund. Needless to say, it was ALL feeding my habit. We still managed to have a beautiful daughter (if you ever read this Lucy, I love you with all my heart).

Even with the birth of Lucy, I still couldn't stop drinking or using. I tried to hide it so my wife wouldn't get concerned and felt that I could get it control on my own, but it just got worse and worse. I kept making deals with myself: OK you will stop when shes 1 month old, 2 months old, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I literally tried to quit coke at least 200 times, and every time came crawling back. The longest I went in the first 18 months of my daughters life without a drink or coke was two days.

I was getting hotel rooms thru hotwire to use my drugs in a place where I wouldn’t get paranoid (not that it mattered, id still spend hours looking through the peephole, expecting the police to be coming), and some how some statement came thru to the house. my wife thought I was having an affair. Instead, I had to tell her that the man she met, loved, married, and had a child with, had been hiding a horrible secret for the ENTIRE TIME. I was quite prepared for this actually, because I knew it had to happen, but thought for sure the conversation would end with Natasha and Lucy leaving me. Somehow (still don’t really know why), she stayed. This woman who had NO experience or understanding of drug addiction, stayed by my side.

Its a miracle, that I will never be not grateful for.

I have gone to NA meetings every week since, drank once , and used coke ZERO times since that day, December 27th 2011. With the support of my family and NA behind me, I now know there is hope for my addiction.

What I am realizing now is that I was using for a reason. Now that I am clean and sober, I am back to self loathing, but now I just have way more reasons to. I feel like a monster. When I sit here and think about it, there are a few questions.

What the hell happened to me that I don't remember that made me this way????

Did anything happen to me, or is that my addict brain making excuses for being a horrible person????

If something happened that would explain this near split personality of self hatred, do I really want to know???


I Know you all don't have the answers, and I know I need psychiatric help, but I can't trust them. I have done horrible things in my life and I have already been put in hospitals against my will TWICE by psychologists trying to cover their ass and deal with my liability exposure (direct quote "i could lose my license")

So while I know i Need help, the survival instinct that I know I can't lose this job I have (almost 5 years, its a miracle I was able to keep it going thru all this), doesn't allow me to be honest with a professional.

I WILL deal with feeling like this until I die a natural death for my family... but I would rather not.

I am hoping putting this is writing helps me sort things out, and if you made it this far.... thank you so much for letting me share.

-Bill

[Wellsc61]

Dear Bill:
I don't know if this will help. I had no memories of my childhood what so ever. The first memories I had was when I was 13 and that was about it. It took until I was 40 before I started to have memories of my abuse. It didn't all come out at once Itwastotally like a memory here and there... I was abusing myself with my eating disorder, drug abuse and eventually self mutilation. I was stuck and I did not have to go out.

I have been to 5 treatment centers for my eating disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. On March 19, 2012 I finally went to a place called the center and dealt with all the bull **** of my life... I wrote more process letters than you can imagine. I got rid of the shame and blame that I carried for all my life. I am 51 days clean today and am grateful that I am still alive today. Because I was trying to kill myself...slowly but still trying.

The thing i know is that when you are ready your brain will remember what it needs to remember, not before... Good luck and remember there is a reason why we can't remember everything..

[Hooped]

Thanks for sharing your story Bill and congrats on getting sober.

I sometimes/somehow have self loathing issues myself and also have no idea where they are coming from.

It's like when I sober up and things are going really good and I'm feeling fantastic.... a little voice hidden somewhere in my brain creeps in...'You don't deserve this, to be happy, or feel good...You don't deserve it!!!'

One thing my councellor told me to do, (and I don't know if it will help you or not), was to dig out some old pictures of myself, as a little boy, and look at them when I get that feeling of self hatred.

So I have a picture of me at 3 years old sitting on my Gramma's lap (who I adored), laughing and looking extremely happy. Another, of me sitting very intently on my first kiddie tricylcle. An innocent child.

I look at those pictures and I think to myself: 'That little boy deserves a good life, he deserves to be happy.'

Strangely enough, it makes me feel better.
I do deserve to be happy.
You do too.

[Dee74]

I can't remember much of my childhood either, meaculpa - and I struggled for years with self hatred - part of that was the treatment I received from others, but there was also some self generated stuff in there as well.

for 40 years I struggled with it - for 20 years of that I used alcohol & drugs to try and get some respite from the struggle.

Naturally it didn't work - it just fed the self loathing even more.

I found not drinking and drugging helped a lot - even if it took some time to get there I finally had a clear head ....& then I had to start working on myself. I refused to live my recovery with the same self hatred I lived with in my drinking.

I really believe there comes a time we have to draw a line under the past and say no more.

That doesn't mean we excuse things that happened, or we forget them, or absolve anyone - but I had to let it go...

I had to stop the wounds of the past being inflicted upon me again and again.

I had to remove my own hands from around my own throat....

I got some help through counselling. I've also had a bad experience with involuntary hospitalisation back in the 80s but personally I'm glad I gave counselling a second chance.

Sometimes I really needed that outside perspective.

I don't believe we should have to live with the kind of baggage we grew up to shoulder for the rest of our lives Bill...there's other choices besides being drunk and gritting our teeth, I think.

I really hope you find a way to set your burden down and move on.

I know you'll find a lot of support encouragement and help here

D

[CarolD]

Welcome Bill....

Good to know you and your family have turned a corner.
All my best to the 3 of you...

[Lily]

Bill,

First off, thanks for sharing your story. I am so thankful you wimped out in the desert. Inasfar as trying to figure out why you became an addict, you might never know. But for me, I have a year and a half clean now and I think that as a little girl I had a mom who was soooo over controlling and then also she would reject me if I did not behave a certain way and ridicule me, shame me and scream and embarress me. I started stuffing my pain as a young child with food, at 13 I started stealing wine, then it was drugs.

However there came a point in my life I realized that my HP (whom I chose to call GOD) was always there w/ me. Even as a little rejected kid. I chose what I chose and that was the path I took, but now that I am in recovery, I am grateful. I get to experience recovery, turn things over to my HP and even accept things without trying to control them and be serene and okay with it today.

I will never know the whole story but today it is mattering less and less.... as I focus on the NOW and know that tomorrow is a new fresh day and I am going to wake up clean.

I am glad you have your wife a baby girl. Blessings Bill

Lily

[TSDD]

Let me counter this with some other questions....


What the hell happened to me that I don't remember that made me this way????

Do you think you can change it? Will it effect what you need to do about it TODAY?

Did anything happen to me, or is that my addict brain making excuses for being a horrible person????

Again, does this really have any bearing over what you need to do today? Can you change it? (as a side note 90% of this disease for me is me talking to me about what I think about me, and it's generally all negativity and all a big fat lie with the punchline being "you may as well just go get loaded")

If something happened that would explain this near split personality of self hatred, do I really want to know???

Have you considered professional help? Very few people I've met in NA have PHD or MD after their name. They're generally people who wore out their welcome in shooting galleries and crack houses that by some miracle don't use anymore and regain some semblence of normal useful life. They can help you stay clean in that condition, and no matter what else life throws at you, but if you have legitimate trauma or mental illness you should stay clean first and foremost and begin looking for some competent, professional help with those issues.

I used to worry about where I got this "disease" and the old timers told me I got it from a toilet seat... probably not true, but the point being I can't change what happened when I was 8, and even if I could it doesn't change the fact that I can't use mind altering chemicals in safety.

My best advice would be to start riding with other guys who are serious about staying clean. When I ride to meetings alone (particularly early on) I'm in bad company! Riding with a gang made me realize I wasn't as unique as I though I was, I wasn't as awful of a person as I though I was, and for the most part I was just another bozo on the bus and there likely wasn't much wrong with me that an extended period of uninterrupted clean time wouldn't fix or at least give me the ability to sort out.

I promise you whatever "demon" you have going on in your head isn't unique and there's 1000 other people just like you staying clean in the mental condition you are in right now. I can also promise you if you stay clean you have a good shot at sorting it out (possibly with professional help) if it's something that can be "fixed" or at least accepting it and getting on with your lifel

I can further promise you that you will find your answers in meetings where you will find your peers. I can pretty much guarantee your answers won't come on YOUR schedule, and they may not be the one you think you want, but you'll find them. Try to stack together a year clean and see if you don't feel any better. If you're feeling sorry for yourself try to stick your hand out to someone who is struggling with not using today. Go put on a meeting in a prison, detox, or mental hospital... those things often help me gain perspective.

On the darker side I can guarantee without a shadow of a doubt that what's waiting for you on the other side of a drink or drug will make what you're feeling now paradise by comparison.