Change4life

Wow good question Sharon.

Ive gone over this one over and over in my head many times.

I dont think I can pin point any one thing that sent me into a lifelong downward spiral. It was a combination of a lot of things.

I was adopted and have no idea of any family history so maybe there was some genetic factors going. I do know being adopted left me with low self esteem right from jump. For as long as I can remember I have always felt like... hey if my own mother didnt want me or love me than nobody will. Ive held that thought my whole life. Ive sort of made peace with myself on that one, but I have to admit in the back of my mind I find myself wondering what is so wrong with me that someone would give me away.

Growing up we didnt have a lot of money. We lived in an area that was pretty mixed in terms of income, but the majority of the people were fairly well off. I dont think we could have stayed where we were if it wasnt for the help of my grandmother.
Most of the kids in my school had the big bucks and wouldnt be caught dead in anything that wasnt designer. As for me I was sent to school in hand me downs that never quite fit and was picked on unmercifully.
I still remember as if it happened yesterday the time the kids surrounded me and pulled my pants down in the middle of the field during lunch. Then there was the time somebody thought it would be funny if they put dog **** on my head. I dont mind if people laugh with me, but being laughed at is no fun.

I use to try so hard to fit in, but it never happened. I was always the outsider and that is where the behavior of isolation started.
I took up the guitar and spent hours alone in my room practicing. Once I was able to play for people I was accepted, but was still considered the different one.

When I was a kid before I started drinking I use to pretend I was drunk. I remember stumbling around the house acting as if I was intoxicated.
It wasnt long before I started drinking for real. I think I started drinking when I was 12 and I got such relief from that feeling it never occured to me that I might become an addict.

I fell in with a crowd of all the other misfits and we would drink and drug together. I finally belonged to a group and I thought I was cool. Little did I know that would be my eventual serious downfall.
I thought if I could drink more than everyone else and do more drugs than anyone else I was cooler than everyone else.

By the age of 16 I was playing in bands with people way older staying out late in the bars we played at. I had fake ID which I thought was great at the time, but it was only a license for me to drink. By the age of 16 I drank everyday, I was smoking weed, popping pills and snorting coke. I found the world of LSD and lived in a hallucinatory saste for years.
By 18 I was addicted to heroin.
By the time I was 17 I was drinking and drugging alone. I just thought I was so cool. I spent my days practicing performing and getting higher than high. I was always in the spot light surrounded by people, but always always feeling so lonely. that big empty feeling in my stomache only went away when I was high or drunk.
I started to slowly isolate myself and it got worse and worse.

I guess if I had to narrow it down I would say that loneliness, and low self esteem were the major factors leading up to my addictive behavior. i just never felt worthy of love from myself or anyone else.

At the age of 46 I am finally trying to learn to like myself and maybe someday i will learn to love myself. Until then I dont think I will ever be able to find true recovery.

I started off using to fit in and then the using was used to beat myself up. The self destructive behavior was inevitable. After years of abuse my nerves were shot and that is when my love affair with zanax started.

Whew I think I am going into crying mode. Maybe I need a break from this subject. sorry for my rambling!!

SaTiT

It took me a while to actaully go into a lot of details about my childhood.
I don't like to talk about it much but it came up and bit me in the ass.
About a couple years ago. I started getting flashback just driving to work or
just sitting at my desk. I get flash back of very violent episode.
I almost got into an accident becuase I went into a flashback.
I blank out from the current moment...i didn't remember driving
for 3-4 blocks.....i almost ran over someone.
i didn't know why it came up after all these years..but me blanking
out scared the crap out of me..i was clean and sober.


When first did my first 4th step..a lot of it was just about me and what I did
wrong. I just write i beat as a child or just one sentence.
When I think of my father..the first image I get is me flying through
the air and hitting a wall or my head getting bashed.
My step-father is an active alcoholic and very abusive towards me.
I go to the acoa section and talk about it sometimes.
After going through a lot of current life pain.
I notice there's a common theme in my life especailly when it
pretain to women..In every relationship i felt abandond.
i also notice while my ex-wife was bueatiful..she was very abussive
to me...but I like it..Her streak of meaness trun me on.

i just started wrinting alot..didn't know where it was going to lead to..
Another 4th step.
I didn't want to relive my childhood pains anymore..but the pain I was
feeling as an adult (codependcy)..felt very, very semilar. it's as if I've been dealing
with these issues all of my life and it kept coming up over and over
again...Was there sometime i left out..was there a lesson I'm suppose
to learn?? A lot of codependency books or self esteem books bring up
these subjects...So I wrote as much as I can...with a differnt perceptive
or through differnent eyes. Through the eyes of a loving adult.
there was still a little kid inside of me..A hurt, angery kid.
I just been trying to love him or reparenting him

I feel much better today..it's as if I can breath right or re- wired
or that damn fracture glasses I've been seeing life through all these years
had been removed.

fuster

I was born into a well to do family and always had friends and did not lack much in terms of material things growing up. I was raised to believe that expressing any extreme emotion was bad, so even though I felt many emotions growing up, I supressed them because the way my parents raised us, I had no real tools to deal with feelings, other than put them away in a compartment, close the door and ignore them. Shame was used to modify behavior in my family. So the main emotion I knew was shame.

As a child I never attended a wedding or a funeral. So those two extremes of life and emotion were never experienced (although my parents attended both events from time to time)

Then came adolescence. Hormones, girls and strong feelings. Eventually I discovered that alcohol and drugs worked well to put away my feelings. As an adult that same method worked for me. The shame, however, followed me everywhere.

Eventually all the friends I had went away. I drank too much, did too much cocaine, for them to stand being around my tired, irritable and argumentative sorry self. When I finally saw a therapist, she helped me with my family of origin issues. Things started getting better. However, the substance abuse got worse the more I dug into my childhood issues and opened up the wounding to heal from it.

But where ever I went, God had already been there. He knew where I was going. Eventually his help became too obvious for me to ignore and I took His hand, and got helped. I am not really different than the person I was before I started drinking and drugging. I just have an allergy I have to live with now, and I am good with that, it is not a big deal any more, it is just part of living life successfully rather than as a loser. And I am healing.

IO Storm

One way I have changed is I am not spoiled anymore. My only recollection of a

good spanking was when I was five. I was a sickly but hyperactive child. I

had rheumatic fever when I was five and the doc advised my mom to tie me down

the bed as I kept getting up and jumping around all over the place..and outside

if she didn't catch me quick enough. I used to just love jumping up and down on the

hood of our Packard..I loved the sound it made as the hood popped in and out.

I imagined it would pop me up to the sun.

Daddy had warned me ...but found me early one morning in my flannel nightgown

popping on the hood. He stripped branches off my climbing tree and switched my

legs . We sat on the porch and and with tears he said the old devil would love it if he would

let me do everything I wished. So I grew up self will run riot always looking back

to see if the devil would catch up.

In psychology they call this a double bind..behaving one way and believing another...

that can lead to disassociative disorders in young adults.

When I entered into recovery I learned that I had tried to run the show and have

an effect of my will upon evderyone and everything, doing the same things over

and over and over again expecting different results!

In social work I asked the children in Foster Care and group homes to try to be

angry at their parent's disease....not at their parents yet I failed to do this myself

in my personal life.

I am only now beginning to grasp this concept.

To not look on the outside of aperson or what behaviors they exhibit...

but accept folks as they are I have not walked in their shoes. I don't pass

judgement on any other human being....I do not have that right and never did.

This is helping me to not take things personally although there is still a lot

of work to be done...God's not through with me yet!

I suppose this called acceptance.

I believe it is all about grace.

Love,

:

IO