vancouverlove

Hi there.

Here's a little bit about my story. I'm 18 and addicted to cocaine. Flat out. I started using drugs when I was 14, taking my first line of coke off a mirror at in high school. My drug usage escalated and soon I found my straight A's become B's. And then C's....so i stopped. That was all fine and dandy until I was 16, when I discovered ecstasy, and MDMA, and quickly found myself hooked on those drugs, causing me to barely scrap by my grade 12 year, and wind up at a university that was subpar to the schools I had intended on going to. When I moved out of my parents house for university, all hell broke loose. Guys would just constantly hand me little bags of coke. I didn't even have to sleep with them. I dropped out of university and got a job...which I eventually quit because I was so high all the time I didn't care. My friends went to rehab and got clean, but I decided that I needed more drugs that people would give me without sleeping with them...so I started selling them. I was selling heroin and crack. At 18. Not exactly what I had in mind for my life goal. Eventually, I lied to my friends, told them I went to detox and got clean on my own...except I wasn't. I just cut down. I wasn't doing an 8 ball and a half a night, but I was definitely doing a gram or so. One day I realized, I'm not happy with who I am. So I honestly quit.

I have been clean for 55 days, only now that I have a nice job making lots of cash, I find myself looking up old contacts and craving more than I should. Consequently, I'm looking to start going to NA meetings. I really want my newcomers key tag, and my 30 days clean key tag. Just to make it real for myself... They only problem, is I'm terrified of going. What should I expect? Will people be disdainful of my addiction and tell me it isn't real? Just because my problem isn't as obvious to others and their's is? I'm scared. Please let me know what to expect!!!

Thanks for reading, and if you just skimmed, thanks for doing that. This is killing me, typing these words, because now that it's written down, it feels so final. I'm addicted to cocaine.

Natom

Hey Vancouver,

My story sounds so incredibly similar to yours. I also was at university, addicted to cocaine and then dropped out. I started going to NA meetings. I've been completely clean for about 7 months. I have an entry in my blog on here that details what to expect at your first NA meeting that you might find helpful. I wish you the best of luck.

Natom.

vancouverlove

thank you for directing me to your blog post. I'm a little less apprehensive knowing the format of the meeting and such. I'm scared to go. I'm super concerned that people will judge me, and compare the magnitude of the consequences of their actions, to how little and unimportant my actions are. What if they see me as just some kid experimenting and not as the person i see myself?

Natom

The only advice I can give you around that is that people don't actually care what you have done. You can walk into any meeting, anywhere in the world and I can guarantee you that someone in that meeting has done either the same things as you, or things a lot worse. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what we have done, just that we want to get sorted out and cleaned up.

It doesn't matter where your rock bottom is. I'm 23 now, but I first walked into, well stumbled into an NA room at 21. People can say that young people haven't experienced enough consequences to want to get clean. But they don't know where our limit was, and where we finally decided to draw the line.

You will only find love and acceptance in those rooms. And a bizarre sense of identification. Let me know how it goes.

Natom.

Lyoness

Hi vancouver. People will just welcome you. And you don't even have to speak, either. You could make your first meeting a speaker meeting where someone shares their story, all eyes are on them. I don't think anyone will judge what drugs you do or how much, they'll just be glad you want to get sober now rather than waiting and losing more years to addiction.

Welcome to SR, too. You'll find lots of support and wisdom here.

dedubya

Dude. Ive been there. Coke is something I know about. Havent done it in 20 yrs. I was doing eights and eventually ounces over days. No fun man. What helped me, I left my sources so they werent around. Period. If thats not a choice, go to aa or na everyday and get a sponsor. that **** will drain you dry, didnt me. I know ones it did. You dont want that.
dub

Threshold

Vancouver...welcome. I started my recovery in NA, and did my 90+ in 90 etc. It's great that you're doing this, getting that support and connection to awesome resources for recovery.

Will some people "judge" you? From your posts here I suspect the harshest critic you will meet is YOURSELF! You are already worrying whether or not you are "worthy" of the support, time, etc of the people in NA. One of the things you will hear in the meetings is to look for similarities not differences, to see all the things that you and the others there have in common, not the ways you differ.

Because it's the common issue of addiction that brings us to the meetings. That is why we gather and that is what we are there to address. You will hear THIS at every meeting "We are not interested in what or how much you used or who your connections were, what
you have done in the past, how much or how little you have, but only in what you want to do
about your problem and how we can help."

Sure, there will be people who may be thinking to themselves "they're not REALLY an addict.." but when we/they judge another, it's really just a judging of self turned outward. Their own insecurity that they twist round and apply to others. It's nothing on the other person. Each of us does it and each of us can learn what WE are insecure about by being honest about the things we are judging in others.

Another great thing to remember is that "what others think of me is none of my business" it really helps us move along in recovery when we focus on our own issues, after all its OUR recovery we are responsible for.

Get your hands on some NA literature, you can read it all free online or get hard copies at meetings (some for free, some for low cost), it's real simple, good, basic, powerful stuff.