Feeling scared and anxious
I slowly woke up about a half an hour ago wanting to get high. That kind of gave me an anxiety attack. I've been laying in bed while it slowly goes away, and now I just feel edgy and awake.
Monday will be 2 years since I last got high. Not so much got high as tried to get high by downing maybe 7 pills I bought from some random at a sketchy night club. I had already drank so much vodka I should have been unconscious save for all the Red Bull energy drinks I was guzzling to keep myself going. The pills were bunk and nothing much happened, but it was the realization the morning after that I could have OD'd and died that got me started on the road sobriety.
I attend occasional AA meetings, I have a sponsor, I've done the 12 steps, I read on SR every day. My sobriety has been strong for the last year, but something is happening. In the past couple of weeks I've almost decided to drink on several occasions, and now tonight I had this strong craving to get high. Alcohol cravings are mostly a short-lived mild annoyance, but drugs are a whole other ball game. It's a deep, primal slowly gathering feeling of need that builds over days and weeks with a growing insistence on satisfaction.
I don't know how not to try to be perfect: the perfect husband, the perfect son, the perfect brother, the perfect employee, the perfect friend, the perfect manager at work, the perfect parishioner, etc. I do okay for awhile and then life becomes this tightly wound ball of bondage to trying to get it all just right. Instead of just allowing myself to be a broken and human and reach out to others I try to carry it all myself and find reasons to blame or fault myself for everything that even remotely goes wrong.
Finally something has to break, and a chemical haze does it for a couple of hours where I can breathe a sigh of relief and just either feel really good or not feel at all. There's no actual part of getting drunk or high that appeals to me when I actually think about it. The pleasure was lost years ago. The reality is anxious come ups and edgy highs and nightmare come downs, but it's the memory of those first few times of chemical bliss and escape that are an illusion my primitive brain is chasing. I can't ever get that back or experience that again - my rational mind knows that but something deeper cries out for it anyway.
Alcohol and drugs cannot be an option as a coping mechanism. I can't drink or use drugs no matter how I may feel - that's a foundation of my sobriety. I've always been solid on that but now feel a bit shaky because I'm not sure willpower and resolve alone can endure the storm if I don't find a healthy way to deal with the realities of life and my human weaknesses and tendencies.
Any support or encouragement would be greatly appreciated.