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All my close friends seem to be drug users

Old 08-16-2016, 02:30 PM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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These are all good thoughts, George, and I appreciate your starting this thread to share them.

I got sober when I was 31 years old and feeling rather worse for the wear.

It seemed like my career and future were slipping through my fingers.

All of my friends at the time were bartenders, cocktail waitresses, drunks, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, strippers, etc.

Not exactly a healthy mix of protégés, although, I probably brought down the quality of the group's character and intellect if the truth be known.

When I went to treatment and matriculated into AA, my friends started changing from very sick people who were in the throes of their addictions to sick people who were trying hard to get better.

Eventually, my group of contemporaries changed and it now includes healthy people or people who are trying to become healthy.

I am a lawyer, and I have given countless presentations to other lawyers and judges about alcoholism, drug addiction and mental health issues.

I write in professional journals about those issues.

I am very open about my recovery.

That way, people who may want to talk in confidence about recovery know someone they can call.

You may keep your recovery private, that is your choice.

I'm just sharing my ESH.

I sure hope you get and stay clean and sober and that your group of friends improves.

And that you stick around with us.
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Old 08-17-2016, 03:22 PM
  # 22 (permalink)  
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I've been sober for almost five years now and I think in retrospect that my first hobby after getting sober was staying sober. It was kind of a boring hobby and it drove me crazy at times but it worked out for the best. A less boring hobby was picking up the broken pieces of the hot mess of a life I had created for myself. That seemed really crazy, especially in the beginning.
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Old 08-18-2016, 12:10 AM
  # 23 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by SoberCAH View Post
These are all good thoughts, George, and I appreciate your starting this thread to share them.

I got sober when I was 31 years old and feeling rather worse for the wear.

It seemed like my career and future were slipping through my fingers.

All of my friends at the time were bartenders, cocktail waitresses, drunks, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, strippers, etc.

Not exactly a healthy mix of protégés, although, I probably brought down the quality of the group's character and intellect if the truth be known.

When I went to treatment and matriculated into AA, my friends started changing from very sick people who were in the throes of their addictions to sick people who were trying hard to get better.

Eventually, my group of contemporaries changed and it now includes healthy people or people who are trying to become healthy.

I am a lawyer, and I have given countless presentations to other lawyers and judges about alcoholism, drug addiction and mental health issues.

I write in professional journals about those issues.

I am very open about my recovery.

That way, people who may want to talk in confidence about recovery know someone they can call.

You may keep your recovery private, that is your choice.

I'm just sharing my ESH.

I sure hope you get and stay clean and sober and that your group of friends improves.

And that you stick around with us.
That really rings a bell in terms of the type of people. I've been hanging out with a similar ish set. Waitresses, people in the music industry, generally those who are lost and not going places. In fact, its a little scary to realise all of a sudden, 'wow, these friends that I've been hanging out with are dragging me down'.

Its stranger as they have been such close friends for almost 15 years, since high school, and the length of time that I have known them perhaps blinds me the way they are, or at least it was blinding me.

I tend to be caught by the notion that my drinking is 'not that bad', as often it doesn't seem to bother me, but it always seems to creep up on me, and with the drug fuelled nights, I begin to realise that my equilibrium has been knocked out of kilter, and I need to take steps to get myself out of that social circle so regularly and redesign my free time. In other words, I would probably benefit from stopping completely, as at the moment it seems to be a cycle of stopping, starting, not having an issue, slowly doing more drinking, drug-taking, and then back to having a problem.

One thing I did work out recently, it was a real lightbulb moment, yet quite obvious: hedonism does not equate to happiness. Perhaps I had got the two confused. Or at least somehow making a connection between 'going out' and 'seeing friends' and feeling happy in myself. Yet, actually, if its consuming drink or drugs, I don't understand how anyone can really feel happy in themselves, in those circumstances. Yet its so ordinary for people to meet only under the guise of alcohol and sometimes drugs. Happiness for me means being happy in myself, feeling I am all there, and able to be healthy mentally and physically to enjoy my life. And by taking drink and drugs, its essentially a form of self sabotage. We are making it harder to feel happy/at peace/in a good place, when we consume, if anything, we are going further away.
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