jconnor23

Hi, I am brand new to this and thought this may be a good way to possibly receive some advice and support from people here. I hope people reading this wont get aggravated with me telling my story, but in order to truly understand what may be going on with me mentally now, you need to know what happened in my past. I try my best to never think I had it any worse than anyone else in recovery and I never put my story out there for pity, I just honestly need some support because lately I've been hanging on by a thread. I have only told my story a few times in treatment when I was forced to and haven't since, so if anything this will be therapeutic for me. I have to warn you its going to be a little long, but I want to include everything... My name is Jake and I began drinking when I was 16. At that time I was allowed to live in my own house that was given to me by my father who was also my best friend. My father at that time was living in a house down the street with his new fiancee. My drinking started to get a little out of control when I reached 17 and I quit the band I was in so that I could simply focus on drinking and girls. At age 18 the close friends I had were not so close to me anymore, I had pretty much drank the majority of my relationships away and at 18 I left to go to college in Georgia. Upon getting there things got a little more enhanced, I began using coke and ecstasy more and more, abusing adderall and any benzo I could get my hands on. when the time came for winter break my father asked me to come home. When I got there I found the "home" that I was raised in and lived in all my life was turned upside down by my fathers fiancee. My childhood room was made into a room for two of her daughters and my new room was in the attic. I dealt with it and didn't even let it bother me as much as it should have because my father was happy and thats really all that mattered to me. on Christmas eve though, I sat up in my room watching tv, drinking some vodka and I began to hear some yelling from my fathers fiancee, I leaned in to listen and heard her say, "I want you out of here, we are done, please get your things and leave this house." I was heated, this house had been in our family for 300 years, used to be a cottage on a wagon trail and the name of the road is my last name. Not to mention the fact my father was the nicest person alive and I had the feeling she was using him from the beginning. I climbed down and ran into the bedroom and got in her face. I screamed at her "how could you dare do this to us, you cant, this is our house and has been for generations." Truth was she could, she had played this well, had a baby with my father months before and could legally do whatever she wanted to now. My father soon left to go to a neighbors house to talk with a friend, I got my stuff and left soon after because I didn't feel right alone with her. I crawled up in the back of my car to sleep, in winter, with no heat working. my father came about 30 minutes after, got me up and told me to come with him to a hotel. The next day we went to my aunts house where we had dinner and all day I had been sneaking beers from her downstair fridge which I knew was stocked. halfway through I go down to chug 3 in the bathroom and as Im coming out I feel this terrible pain in my stomach. I laid on the couch thinking it might just be some gas or something else that will hopefully pass. I start to eat handfuls of tums and then finally I couldn't take it anymore so I screamed for my dad. When he came down I told him I needed to go to the hospital, and he saw I was in serious pain so he took me. The doctor told me I had acute pancreatitis, the most exacerbated case he has seen in a long time with the youngest patient he has ever seen, 18. I see my father crying out of the corner of my eye and it became one of the worst moments of my life. I was hospitalized for a week, my mother begged me not to go back to college, but somehow being the little crazy 'only child' manipulator I was, I convinced them both to let me go back. My grades were very good as well, so it helped me greatly in my persuasion to my parents to go back to school. After freshman year I decided not to go back to where my father was staying because I didn't want to see how he was living alone now, so I spent the summer at college alone as well, getting messed up day and night in my apartment. When Sophomore year started I made it half a semester before I was too coked out and drunk to even walk to class one day and told the campus psychiatrist I just wanted to die. They immediately sent me to a mental ward/detox in the sticks of georgia where they shot me up with thorazine and kept me there for a week. My father came to pick me up and I cried in his arms when I saw him, he was the only friend I had left and I had missed him terribly. I got back to CT and lived with him for the next 3 months which included a number of talks that I needed to do something with my life. He told me I couldn't just sit at his house all day and drink and he was absolutely right. So of course, I did what so many young addicts do, I joined the military, the united states navy. I left two months later, a week after my twentieth birthday. I got to call my father the second night I was there after I had been up for 48 hours, and I was so happy to hear his voice when he picked up the phone. I remember telling him "I don't know if I could do this, I dont think I can make it dad," which he followed by laughing a little and telling me I could, that he did and its all a game, I needed to understand that. The last thing he said to me was "I love you buddy." Two weeks later my chief calls me over and tells me I need to go talk to the chaplain and I knew that was never good news. I get in and he says "Your father has died in a car accident." I was in shock... and I guess I still am in some way. I never really became able to deal with his death. I went back to my barracks, cried all night in my rack and got up at 5:00. I finished boot camp though and got shipped to groton, CT. Upon arrival there I had been informed by my family that I received $500,000 in life insurance that I quickly put in a mutual fund. After about a year in A-school I received a letter telling me that my money had now grown to $590,000. I was a 21 year old, raging alcoholic and addict with over half a million dollars at my disposal. I immediately thought there was no reason for me to be in the navy anymore. I bought a brand new BMW and I left the Navy stating that I had anxiety and depression. I stayed in a hotel for the next six months doing every drug imaginable and drinking 24/7. I left one night to go back home to a party and got involved in a horrible head on collision DUI with another guy and his girlfriend. This being my small hometown, the following afternoon everyone knew what I had done. I left for rehab which I kept myself in for the next six months. When I left, I decided to go with a friend who talked me into moving to florida. He told me the recovery was great down there and the weather was beautiful. Not even a month in Palm Beach, I began smoking weed, and taking klonopin. My friend began introducing me to many people in the program that he knew, one mainly that I began to look up to a great deal. after a few months of getting to know him he told me he could make me some money in the stock market, more than I could ever make with my mutual fund. I knew he was a broker, at least thats what he told me when I first got to know him. He showed me how he traded at home and I respected him a lot, he convinced me he knew what he was doing and in a way he definitely did. I soon wired him $100,000. then when he gave me a $20,000 return I wired him the rest of my money. After that, I couldn't get in touch with him in any way. At that point I pretty much knew I was scammed, so I began drinking, heavier than ever before. Finally though, after a month he picked up his phone. He told me he was sorry and that he had been in colombia and that he would pick me up in five minutes to talk to me about my "investment." He did, but locked the doors as soon as I got in and then patted my body down for wires. I was honestly, very scared, I was 21, 125 and he was 35, 170. Not a good match. He looked at me and said "I am going to take all your money and there is nothing you can do about it and If you go to the cops I will ****ing kill you. get out of the car." I was destroyed, I wanted to die, and needless to say things got pretty bad after that. Over the course of the next two years I was sent to 10 mental institutions that I was baker acted into, was involved in another dui that suspended my license for 5 years and was admitted to two more treatment centers. When I left the second treatment I was on probation for a year. 8 months into my probation I began drinking again and taking xanax. 11 months in I got arrested for a public intoxication which I violated and got sent to jail for. I began to withdraw so bad by the third day that I had a seizure and began hallucinating all day and night. They ended up taking me out of general population and put me in the medical unit where I began talking to walls and hearing voices for a week. After 23 days I was free to go as long as I decided to be directly sent to a treatment center. I obviously agreed and spent the next 60 days there. When I left I had to go on a homeless outreach grant that allowed me to stay in a halfway house for a month. Almost as soon as I arrived, my aunt told me she had received a letter from the IRS stating that I owed them somewhere in the vicinity of $905,000. I felt like I was in a living nightmare, how could this possibly be true? they don't tax life insurance. I knew the man that had stolen my money had something to do with this and when I looked at the IRS letter it was clear that was exactly the case. The exact year he had stolen my money, the exact amount I had transferred him was on my gains for that year. He had made another account using my name and then informed me to wire the money to that account. It took me a few months to figure that out, but now I can see that is clearly what happened. There was also a letter that came soon after that from my bank telling me that my accounts will be frozen (for once, thank god I didn't have any money) and that my paychecks would be garnished. So now I couldnt even work. I had no choice but to go to a homeless shelter when my homeless grant was up where I spent the next six months. I enrolled in college when I was there, applied for loans and grants and used the money to rent an apartment when I was no longer allowed to stay in the shelter. It is now a week away from my 25th birthday, 2 weeks before my 1 year anniversary, and feel worse than I ever have. I have worked so incredibly hard this past year to change every aspect of my life and have done well, but no one wants to touch this case. I never think about using anymore, but I have no self esteem, no job, and I am quickly running out of money. I know if I lose this apartment when I run out of money let alone not be able to go to college there is a good chance I just might fall apart. And unfortunately that looks like exactly what is going to happen... I apologize for how long that was, but I really needed to get all of that out of me, its been a long time since I have told anyone my story. I really appreciate the time and consideration anyone took to read that, and if no one did than I just appreciate the space in your forum to write it... thank you.