dpac414

least

Every day when I wake up, I say a prayer of gratitude that I stopped drinking before anything worse happened to me.

CupofJoe

When I had been sober for about two years, I moved into a part of town that was a bit rough around the edges. Lots of drugs, homeless addicts, mentally ill, people having a really hard time. Gunshots and police cars every night. Every day, I'd walk by people down on their luck and deep in their addictions. I'd often think that I could easily have gone down that far if I hadn't had my family's house to recover in. It reminded me to be grateful for the opportunities that I had and to try not to take for granted any more the chances I still had.

I always said hello to anyone who talked to me and made a couple of "friends" who I waved hello to every morning. I don't think they ever realized that I had more in common with them than you would think at first sight.

We're all human, deserving of kindness and compassion. I pray there is hope for those who are still suffering, especially in such difficult circumstances. Some life circumstances make it much harder to get sober, I think. Not impossible, but definitely different.

Thanks for the post. It was a good reminder to be grateful.

Tailai

This is perfect.

WeThinkNot

This thread reminded me of a gentleman I met in AA by the name of Tim.

When I met him he already had about three years of sobriety and was living in a halfway house around the corner from where the meetings were held. He had mentioned that he got mixed up in other drugs as well as alcohol over the years. Despite his sober time his hands were shaky and he had some uncontrollable facial tics. I never asked him about it but I assumed it was irreversible damage from whatever drugs he had taken in the past.

The guy was very eloquent and soft-spoken in meetings, I always assumed he was college educated despite his disheveled appearance and impaired motor skills. One meeting I attended he was sharing his life story. As it turns out Tim did in fact go to college and got a job in tech here in Silicon Valley. He had a wife and children, was living the white collar lifestyle until it all fell apart for him. He shared that he hadn't had contact with his kids in years.

I also work in the tech industry. Somehow I had never gotten fired all the years I was working while being a functional alcoholic. I naively thought that my job and lifestyle would be guaranteed for life. After all I wasn't some bum on the street, I work in an office and I have a badge and everything!

Whenever I think of him I think of the juxtaposition of his eloquent demeanor and ragged look.

FreshStartOk

Yeah my Dad got offered a job in Silicon Valley just before it got up and running. Idiot turned it down, and he would have gone places because he's clever.

Misssy2

I want to say you were like them drinking...only you had a place to drink or a place to live..but generally all "addicts" go thru the same routine...drink..or drug...try to sleep...drink..drug recover.

I remember one day looking out my window and ridiculing the girl across the street because she was outside in her pajamas going to meet the drug dealer on the corner...when I was literally sitting there waiting for the time the liquor store opened...it dawned on me...I thought I was "better" than her...in reality I was HER.

Same here...you "were" them.
I was "them".

MantaLady

I’ll always remember being on the phone to my mum when I was in rehab in Thailand and she said “well Manta, your not like the rest of them there, you know the druggies and park bench drinkers, you just have a little problem and your better than them” I told her I was no different to the crack addict that had mugged people for money, the heroin addict, 24/7 drinkers or anyone else there, that I wasn’t better than them at all. An addict is an addict. Our substances may be different, some are higher up or further down the helter skeltor of addiction but we were all addicts on the same destructive ride trying to get off.

I don’t see a homeless addict, a high functioning addict, a single parent addict, a criminal addict, a business man/woman addict. I just see and addict and regardless of what we do and don’t have on the outside, on the inside we are the same and suffering. Addiction does not discriminate and neither do I x

Gettingcloser

I am also very grateful to be away from my alcoholic past. Looking back I still can't believe the way addiction became apart of me and it needed to be fed or I was beside myself with discomfort. Until you have experienced addiction this cannot be explained and understood.
I was so helpless under the reign of alcohol and now I live each day with purpose, peace and gratitude. Great thread!!

dpac414

Yeah, I hope no one took this as me saying that I was better than any of them. Because had circumstances been different, had I not been as privileged, financially stable, had a supportive group of people, I could have been. I think if I had kept drinking I would have ended up much worse. Was having some aching in my right side right before I quit, which was scary.

As Manta said, we are all addicts. The only thing that's different is the hand we were given in life.

MantaLady

Absolutely not dpac! My comment was an observation of normie types who see a homeless alcoholic and think that they are less than a high functioning one when us addicts all, as a rule have learned humility through our fight for sobriety and we feel we are the same. xx

DriGuy

I didn't read that into your comment at all. It's just sad to see others destroy their lives. After I got sober, I kept bumping into a guy I worked with. He was a nice guy, level headed, and contributed to our staff. I would see him in the grocery store and the movie rental store, and every time I saw him he was smelling of liquor. He wasn't falling down or slurring his words. He was still functioning fairly normal. Of course, I never noticed this before, because I was probably doing much the same.

I felt sad for him, because I recognized myself. After work, you start drinking because you're off duty. But you still have to go to the store, or do business downtown, and you're always doing it in various stages of inebriation. And it's sad, because there is not a damn thing you can do to help. In recovery, we know alcoholics are helpless, and that we are helpless to help them, unless they want to quit, but then all we can do is offer support.

Even those who want to quit still have to find their own way. Whether they go to AA or participate in SR, each has to find that little light inside themselves that shines on the trail head where the path begins. We can tell them that it's there, but there's so little we can do until they find it. It's sad. I remember hoping that guy would find his way, but feeling helpless knowing it has to be his way in his time until he is ready.

nez

Hell is hell, no matter where it takes place.

At one point I was close to sticking a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger. If I had done that, would it have been any different if I had done it in the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company, rather than in an alley in Skid Row?

Would my loved ones have felt any different by the surroundings and circumstances of where I took my own life?

To get to that point of suffering that I was experiencing at that particular time, location and financial situations were non-factors.

I can't fathom that board room hell is less or more than skid row hell. Hopefully I will never know the answer, because my experience took place in between the two; but all I know is that it was absolute hell.

Zevin

I really resisted going to AA meetings after re-hab because they are in a scary part of my town (and I'm so ASHAMED to admit this now) but I felt superior to "those people".
Then somebody said, "there's not much difference between being an addict/drunk on Park Avenue or on a park bench." Opened my eyes and knocked me off my pedestal.
Great thread.

DriGuy

I experienced something similar, although I'm reluctant to say I felt superior to them. Before I met them, I may have imagined them as losers, but it's not like I was feeling superior, because I thought I had become a loser myself.

brighterday1234

August252015

I always think of the "children who have no choice" any time a meeting closes with a prayer for those still suffering. I was that kid.

And, yes, we are all the same. It is humbling to be in the company of all walks of life, and keep my ego or judgment in check.

Kaily

I have a real fear of being homeless. More so when I was drinking but still it is there. I only have myself for support and I am not financially stable. It happens. We just never know...

I wish more was done to help.

The thread me think of this song.

FreshStartOk

I do wonder about homelessness and addiction, I wonder which one comes first most often? I mean if you're not an addict before, homelessness is certainly enough to make anyone one isn't it?

Kaily

I think it is a bit like the chicken and the egg question.

A dire situation like homelessness must make recovery desperately difficult. If it were not already difficult enough.