gneiss

I want to be clear that doing meth and drinking basically sucked the soul right out of me (a dementor, if you're a Harry Potter fan like me... sorry. I'm a nerd). It was the worst time of my life in a lot of ways.

Even so, I look back with a weird nostalgia. I learned a lot about myself and how to handle relationships. I learned much about the way the world (and the legal system) works. I learned that drugs can numb pain for a little while, until I was ready to deal with it (of course the kicker was that when I was ready to deal with it, I was hooked on drugs and it only made a bad situation worse). I learned how to spot a methy a mile away and I see them EVERYWHERE now. And I look back at the insane memories and hallucinations and weird things that happened and know that they are my own world, no one will ever know the whole story.

Vladimir Putin once said of the Soviet Union that no one with a heart could look back on the Soviet Union without nostalgia, but no one with a brain would actually hope for its return. I kind of feel like that about drugs: it was fun while it lasted and even somewhat useful but it is something I can't go back to; it's time to move on.

Anything similar, or is this a stage everyone goes through when they are quitting?