skatebowls

was rolling on ecstacy all day and smoked a little bit of weed...felt good until i started drinking and everything seemed to go downhill. i feel like i'll never be able to quit. i've been going to AA and i feel better after the meetings, but then i relapse. i have a career in mind, and am getting my ged on the 17th of april, but i need a job..where should i get a job?? i just feel like bar's are evil places, where everyone is out to backstab everyone. AA is the opposite, everyone is so friendly while i feel like a huge jerk. people i dont even know come to shake my hand..ugh i just feel like i take advantage of nice people..just need advice on keeping busy..i have too much time to think about ****.

CarolD

Welcome....

What are you doing about your drug use? Have you considered NA?

skatebowls

yeah i've been to NA..its just hard because my parents are cool with me doing drugs but they are against drinking. so i just feel like drugs aren't a big deal to me, they don't **** me up like alcohol does. they are definately a distraction from my life and my goals, all my friends do drugs and that's all they do it seems like, maybe it's just my perspective. my friends pressure me into drugs, meanwhile my choice to drink is all on my own. i can recover from doing drugs, but it seems like the night after drinking alcohol i have trouble concentrating, don't feel goal driven and in general just feel depressed. i went to a really good AA meeting the other day and it spiritually made me feel renewed. i want to do the things i used to do as a kid, like pet animals, go to the county fair, go out to nice restaurants..

langkah

You know where the sober people are, and they're ready to help when you ask. My relationship to drugs was as you described. Alcohol was a whole different animal.

Gertron

Yeah I don't get quite as animal on drugs either myself as I do alcohol. I would take it easy on everything if you can and try to avoid situations where you'll end up drinking or doing drugs. You might eventually find your friends are not that much more than drinking buddies anyways, and should then be able to occupy yourself with more productive things. Hang in there!

sugarbear1

AA works best when one is sober from all substances and for those who work the steps with guidance from another.

Best wishes,

davaidavai

I knew people into drugs in high school. Really smart people. My impression was that they found ways to excuse their use on that basis: like by virtue of innate intelligence, they were immune to embodying the cliche, no offense, of underachieving stoners blinded by pride and lazyness. But they were all great people. I liked them, but was apart from them. At that time, I more delt with life through isolation, and when I discovered alcohol it was love at first taste. It was really my favorite thing. It was a way into the social world for 5 minutes.

But I can see how having parents, maybe really liberal? Who "experimented" (as if snorting coke or shrooming while trespassing on a golf course is like some grandiose Timothy O'Leary acid test) might enchance or suggest an impression that there is some kind of value to the experimentation, or that taken outside of a purely 60s and 70s bubble, this holds some kind of social value. I guess personally speaking, I remember my drug experiences in college only as trippy stories. Those sensations do not endure in any meaningful sense outside of psychosis. In other words, the experimentation didn't inhance my life, was merely a knee jerk response to social pressures, wasn't smart, liberal, anything, but just a waste of time, money, and health.

While drinking whiskey (although Hemmingway, blah, blah, blah) Makers or Jack or Jameson or some other sophomoric little gesture towards sophistication like that merely made me into just another red faced, noisy fool.

The deception I practiced on myself was nowhere as thick and hard to assess as when I was in my late teens and 20s. See it now, clearly, and try using that energy to practice virtue. Seeing things clearly is much more interesting and rewarding than a narcotic, if you can believe it. Virtuous, clear headed thinking can be rewarding on a moment to moment basis, and lasts even longer than a peyote experience, although you may have to sell your Burning Man tickets when you realize that being a promiscuous middle aged drunk is lame.

Ananda

Many of the people you meet in meetings have been exactly where you are. You're not a jerk...your just an alcoholic...just like them (hug).

Perhaps you can talk to one of them about what is going on with you. It helps me to post to SR and read others posts and respond. Keeps my head out of my head

glad you are here!

Gottalife

I'm an alcoholic, not a drug addict. I always had choice where drugs were concerned and mostly I chose not to use them. I much preferred the effect fo alcohol. When alcohol became a problem, I stopped for a brief and miserable time and a friend suggested I try some weed. One puff was all it took, and a drink was down my neck in seconds. I now know that drugs (which I have the power of choice over) will lead me straight back to alcohol - my drug of no choice.

No choice, in my case, means powerless and beyond human aid. Sitting in meetings with a bunch of friendly people did not treat my alcoholism. I needed some power, more than I had myself, and I found it by getting a sponsor and working those steps.

A spiritual (or conversion) experience as the result of the steps is how my alcoholism was treated.