ClayTheScribe

I have been a member at SR for more than two years now. For the longest time, I've put my sober date (07/25/2009) underneath my username, to let people know how long I've been sober so maybe they can see I have wisdom. While it's true that I haven't consumed alcohol since July 24, 2009, I continued to smoke pot for a little bit, but then quit that September. Then I got high at a party in April 2010 and on March 11 of this year I tried to get high and failed. I had said to myself that I could keep my sobriety date because I hadn't drank alcohol and told myself it's OK to have a clean date and a sobriety date. But when I was thinking about posting my recovery story on my two-year anniversary I was thinking that it was going to be mighty hard to write that story without admitting to my marijuana slips and people take me seriously. I realized I was being dishonest with all of my sober friends, my psychiatrist and my therapist, but most of all I was being dishonest with myself. Yes, my mind may not have been clouded by alcohol, which had the potential to really destroy me, but pot had taken quite a toll in my life as well resulting in a low GPA when I graduated, lost opportunities, depression and lots of anxiety. My mind wasn't truly clear.

I've come to a point now where I'm trying to drop all my masks and be completely honest about who I am and what I've been through. My ego was really clinging to that two-year sobriety date and now I've decided that honesty and openness is more important than my ego identifications. I think I still have valuable wisdom to share from being on my path, but my new sobriety date is March 12, 2011. I have no more desire to drink or do drugs, I am more dedicated to my sobriety now than ever and I have a greater support network and more coping mechanisms to keep me on my sober and clean path. I just wanted to post that here and apologize for misrepresenting myself on the forum or in the chat room. This website has been of greater help to me than I could ever put into words and I hope I can continue to give back to the other members.

CarolD

Thanks for clarifying what was happening...
Forward is the correct direction for sure.

Frustriert

Congrats on coming clean. I did much the same. I was free of alcohol for 8 months but was smoking pot and occasionally drinking cough syrup. I reset my sobriety date after stopping and coming clean to my home group and my therapist. Sucked doing it at the time but life is easier now that I'm not hiding that anymore. It feels good. Thanks for sharing.

nandm

Seems to me that you have just shown that you have much wisdom. Wisdom enough to be honest with not only yourself but with others who's lives you touch. Thanks for your honesty and thanks for being here at SR. I know I have enjoyed your posts and this just validates the respect I have had for you when reading your posts.

Terminally Unique

This is all that matters, and I commend you for taking down the date. There is no need to continually advertise the date of your last drunk/high. For whatever it's worth, anyone who offers up how much TIME™ they have, or worse, who asks me how much TIME™ I have, is highly suspect in my book.

BullDog777

right before i got sober, i remember reading some of your first posts and thinking to myself what an amotional mess you were at the time. What a long way you've come from that period in your life. Be it 2 years or 5 months, you've grown by leaps and bounds and nobody can ever take that emotional growth away from you. Good job on all fronts.

abc

Sheesh! Don't worry so much. No booze for two years and only smoking pot like twice at parties is a pretty amazing accomplishment. You deserve a medal. People get so religious about sobriety. Your post reminds me of the people who freak out for accidentally eating food that was prepared with wine, as if this can actually make you buzzed. If you think pot is ruining your brain then definitely put it on the shelf, but no drug is inherently bad. They are bad when used in the wrong way by the wrong people.
For me those drugs are alcohol and cocaine. I could smoke a joint right now and face no consequences. I just don't want to.

ClayTheScribe

Good points, but I was and am a pot addict. It ruined my life as alcohol was ruining my life, just in different ways. I faced consequences for it. I was in denial of it for a long time because of the way parts of our society romantacizes it and because it was so normalized by other people around me smoking. But I was still hunting after the high like an addict. I just couldn't pretend anymore that I had been completely sober all that time.

abc

True, long ago I had a friend super-addicted to it as well. To the point where it made him mentally unstable: delusions, paranoia. So you are right it can happen, I guess it just doesn't happen to me. I've used loads of it over my life and luckily it never caused the kind of habituation and sickness that alcohol and coke did. When I partied with potheads I envied how they could go to sleep easily and get up feeling fine. I would wake up hungover with fried nerve-endings, blood dripping out of my nose, and a desire to jump out a window. I guess my addictions were just more easy to identify.

ClayTheScribe

Indeed, it took me longer to identify and most importantly admit I was a marijuana addict, not only because its repercussions weren't as immediately apparent as alcohol (hangovers, deep depression, mood swings) but I was in love with pot. It had got me to see the world in a whole different way at first and at one point led me to a spiritual experience. In the beginning I felt it let me be more of who I wanted to be or who I thought I really was. But that only lasted for so long before it started giving me anxiety so bad I'd stay inside for days, yet I kept smoking because I was addicted. Now I will never do pot again because I don't want to cloud my mind, but I just had to be honest with myself on that.

sugarbear1

I was on the marijuana maintenance plan, too! Today I am totally sober! 96 days clean today! Welcome home.

Mattcake

Hey Clay You know what I'm going to say: Don't be so dmn hard on yourself. Yeah, be honest... with yourself first and foremost. You are really brave, "coming clean" with others takes guts. The payoff, as a friend usually says, is being accountable to yourself, not with us.

You also know what I'm going to say regarding sobriety dates, I usually get hissed at for saying this: dates are just that, a number. True, every single day counts, and that's why both a member who has 1 day and another one who has 20 years get lots of kudos and celebration - it's so important. My method is different, but we all love it when members reach milestones, both the "veterans" and the newbies.

But it's about quality, not quantity. For instance, whenever I turn to a senior recovery member for a bit of advice, it's not because s/he has.. decades of sobriety. No. I reach out to her because I can see the quality of her long standing, sustained sobriety and recovery. So I figure that I might be offered have a different point of view, along with a new perspective.

The same goes for newcomers who might be on day 1, and they'll say something that blows my mind away.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Do not torture yourself Do work on your relapses - I'm glad that's you are already on to this, make them "count" (haha) for something... You know that I don't count days, but you have your own opinion about that (btw I disagree with your assessment that more time automatically equals more wisdom.

You're still good ole Clay ie a very honest friend with an.. uhmm.. explosive and fascinating temper, LOL.

And you're okay Thanks for coming clean - remember that you did it for yourself, and not for "us". It's all progress, my friend.