Hello there ;) My story thus far..
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Taunton, MA
Posts: 267
Hello there ;) My story thus far..
Hey guys, first time poster. This is going to be pretty long, just a heads up. I found this site threw a website called Living Sober Sucks. He might even have posted here..although I'm not sure. Anyhow, I'll get right into it.
I'm 30 now. Going to rewind it back about 20 years. I remember going through the health class, and having them tell us and demonstrate how bad drugs/smoking/alcohol was. I specifically remember sitting in that class in 6th grade telling myself I would never ever dare to mess with any of that stuff.
I was always uneasy/anxious growing up...I got embarrassed very easily. I was never very secure with myself. I got made fun of just a little bit, not much. I picked on the kids worse off than me. I was friends with mostly everyone, partly in part because I was into sports..anyways..moving ahead.
Come high school, freshman year hit and it was tough for me. I had severe acne, had a pretty tough time adjusting to new kids...etc. Beginning of sophomore year, my few close friends that I grew up with in school began smoking weed. I remember telling them that I would never touch that stuff, and that they shouldn't either.. Anyways, as sophomore year began to come to an end, and basically the group of kids that I began fitting in with all smoked, I said *** it one and day and said let me come with you guys after school to try some weed. I wish I never made that choice.
Well I didn't get high that day, but something inside me changed. I was able to be rebellious. My parents were pretty strict about me hanging out with people, didn't let me sleep over friends houses, basically didn't even let me walk the street alone...all my life..so this led me to saying *** it all and I"m going to do what I want.
Well I got high for the first time a few times after that and absolutely loved. I started smoking every day for the next 3 months or so, until sophomore year was over. I decided weed wasn't enough. I wanted to experiment...so I did. I started researching more drugs, and decided I wanted to try acid. So I did. I got my entire group of friends into it. (About 12 of us). We hung out every day after school, and on the weekends, doing acid, taking mushrooms, smoking weed every day, and drinking occasionally when we could get someone to buy it for us. We were all just turning 17 so we weren't able to buy it ourselves. Anyways, this whole summer I ended up tripping about 100 times between acid/shrooms/ecstasy. I then discovered that I loved alcohol, and would absolutely drink as much as I could whenever we got it. 10 shots was no problem for me. I was never a mean drunk; in fact, quite the opposite was true. I was the biggest jokester in the crowd, which made me feel good because I could deflect anything negative about myself that I viewed about myself, or received from others, and pretend it wasn't true. I was on top of the world for this summer.
Senior year comes around, I'm pretty burnt out from the drugs. I'm still smoking every day. I smoked every day before school, until I got expelled 2 weeks from graduation. My mom made me get my GED right away. Thank god she did. I ended up doing more psychadelic drugs until I just couldn't handle the highs anymore and decided I had to stop. I went into a 6 month stint where I drank every day, got kicked out of my house and lived at a friends house which was essentially a party house every day.
Alright, long story short here, I was 19, woke up one day and decided I had to stop..and enlisted in the Navy. I was actually a very good candidate for the navy having achieved many awards, travelling the world, never got in trouble..however since I couldn't smoke weed anymore (even though I would every time I went home on leave), I drank a lot. I mean probably at least 3-4x a week..when the weekend hit, I would just get drunk with my buddies and that was that.
Fast forward to 2007, the year I get out of the navy. I come out with something like 7 or 8 thousand in my bank. I come back to my home town, and jump right back into my old ways. I was smoking weed every day, and started doing percocets and oxycotins 40's. All this time I never really did anything in excess, and I was functioning. I just kept drinking and drugging..etc.. 6 months after I stopped all the drugs except weed/alcohol and got a job. I worked for about a year until I got sick of the job and decided to enlist in college.
September '09 I started college and in December of '11 I graduated with an associates degree in computer science. I was so proud of myself. I had a GPA of 3.83....however in the last semester of school, my girlfriend was pregnant, I was still smoking weed practically every day, and just drinking here and there.. I've quit for times like 3-6 months sporadically but never quite stopped entirely. Anyways, I transferred to a local university to continue for my bachelors degree and this is where all my problems began...or should I say where they began to come to life.
January 2012, I was so excited to be in a university. But my weed habit was outta control..my daughter was born just the month before, I thought that I would have stopped with her being born but it just increased. Amazingly I always put my daughter first before anything (even now) and never let anything stop me from doing that. Well, basically the last 2 years in the university I have just basically lost all motivation. I split with my ex (she was abusive towards me physically) and decided I couldn't take it anymore. MY grades were awful, I only have a few friends and most are full blown alcohlics or pot heads. I barely did any studying, lost all motivation and just didn't even care anymore. I started noticing changes in myself, where I just stopped caring about most things even though I still keep on pushing with the responsibilities that I have and nothing truly ever got out of control.
I'm leaving a lot out over the past 1.5 years but just know that I have been smoking weed more than ever, my drinking especially over the last 6 months increased pretty heavily. By that, I mean I was drinking 4-5x a week, but not enough to be terribly intoxicating..I mean between 4-6 beers max. Never exceeding that. I had being drunk but love catching a buzz.
Anyway, I've been researching/studying/attempting whatever you wanna call it regarding being sober. So finally, just the last 2 weeks, I made the decision after months of consideration to officially live sober. But I had made this decision a thousand times before, and everytime I told myself I was going to be sober, and I would start, my inner voice would just tell myself that yeah, whatever, you'll be sober for a little bit, but you know you can't live without alcohol or weed, or whatever (even caffeine) drugs may alter your mind. I'm addicted to being in a different state of mind, which drugs always let me do.
Here's the thing. I got sober on December 4th. I made the decision to be sober. What is the difference now? Well thanks to some random guy on the internet who made a website (called living sober sucks I think) basically told it like it was, and essentially the bottom line was that we have the power to make a choice. Either we decide to put that joint/bottle to our lips, or we don't. When I saw that it was this simple, I told myself that I'm just going to not put them to my mouth anymore.
So here I am, almost 2 weeks into sobriety. I haven't experienced any withdrawals or anything. My mind is still foggy. I don't feel any different. But what I do know is that anything that comes my way from now on, I will be handling sober. I've used drugs/alcohol for so long to avoid my problems and escape reality, that now I'm finally ready to take on my life (and internal self). I know it's going to be a tough ride. I haven't gone to class the past 3 weeks. I have so much anxiety built up. I can't even face my professors. I'm going to fail this entire semester. I'm 5 classes away from graduation but will be further away because of failed classed.
Am I scared? Hell yes. But knowing that I don't have to resort to drugs anymore to elude reality, my inner self knows that I will have to tackle these problems head on, and any other problem that may come my way.
I have so much more to write but I'll stop here. I welcome any comments/suggestions. I'm really just looking for support as I'm doing this on my own. I've only told one person (my roomate, friend of 15 years) and he agrees with me. Can't tell my family for I'm in fear of being judged. They know my entire history and think I'm clean.
I'm 30 now. Going to rewind it back about 20 years. I remember going through the health class, and having them tell us and demonstrate how bad drugs/smoking/alcohol was. I specifically remember sitting in that class in 6th grade telling myself I would never ever dare to mess with any of that stuff.
I was always uneasy/anxious growing up...I got embarrassed very easily. I was never very secure with myself. I got made fun of just a little bit, not much. I picked on the kids worse off than me. I was friends with mostly everyone, partly in part because I was into sports..anyways..moving ahead.
Come high school, freshman year hit and it was tough for me. I had severe acne, had a pretty tough time adjusting to new kids...etc. Beginning of sophomore year, my few close friends that I grew up with in school began smoking weed. I remember telling them that I would never touch that stuff, and that they shouldn't either.. Anyways, as sophomore year began to come to an end, and basically the group of kids that I began fitting in with all smoked, I said *** it one and day and said let me come with you guys after school to try some weed. I wish I never made that choice.
Well I didn't get high that day, but something inside me changed. I was able to be rebellious. My parents were pretty strict about me hanging out with people, didn't let me sleep over friends houses, basically didn't even let me walk the street alone...all my life..so this led me to saying *** it all and I"m going to do what I want.
Well I got high for the first time a few times after that and absolutely loved. I started smoking every day for the next 3 months or so, until sophomore year was over. I decided weed wasn't enough. I wanted to experiment...so I did. I started researching more drugs, and decided I wanted to try acid. So I did. I got my entire group of friends into it. (About 12 of us). We hung out every day after school, and on the weekends, doing acid, taking mushrooms, smoking weed every day, and drinking occasionally when we could get someone to buy it for us. We were all just turning 17 so we weren't able to buy it ourselves. Anyways, this whole summer I ended up tripping about 100 times between acid/shrooms/ecstasy. I then discovered that I loved alcohol, and would absolutely drink as much as I could whenever we got it. 10 shots was no problem for me. I was never a mean drunk; in fact, quite the opposite was true. I was the biggest jokester in the crowd, which made me feel good because I could deflect anything negative about myself that I viewed about myself, or received from others, and pretend it wasn't true. I was on top of the world for this summer.
Senior year comes around, I'm pretty burnt out from the drugs. I'm still smoking every day. I smoked every day before school, until I got expelled 2 weeks from graduation. My mom made me get my GED right away. Thank god she did. I ended up doing more psychadelic drugs until I just couldn't handle the highs anymore and decided I had to stop. I went into a 6 month stint where I drank every day, got kicked out of my house and lived at a friends house which was essentially a party house every day.
Alright, long story short here, I was 19, woke up one day and decided I had to stop..and enlisted in the Navy. I was actually a very good candidate for the navy having achieved many awards, travelling the world, never got in trouble..however since I couldn't smoke weed anymore (even though I would every time I went home on leave), I drank a lot. I mean probably at least 3-4x a week..when the weekend hit, I would just get drunk with my buddies and that was that.
Fast forward to 2007, the year I get out of the navy. I come out with something like 7 or 8 thousand in my bank. I come back to my home town, and jump right back into my old ways. I was smoking weed every day, and started doing percocets and oxycotins 40's. All this time I never really did anything in excess, and I was functioning. I just kept drinking and drugging..etc.. 6 months after I stopped all the drugs except weed/alcohol and got a job. I worked for about a year until I got sick of the job and decided to enlist in college.
September '09 I started college and in December of '11 I graduated with an associates degree in computer science. I was so proud of myself. I had a GPA of 3.83....however in the last semester of school, my girlfriend was pregnant, I was still smoking weed practically every day, and just drinking here and there.. I've quit for times like 3-6 months sporadically but never quite stopped entirely. Anyways, I transferred to a local university to continue for my bachelors degree and this is where all my problems began...or should I say where they began to come to life.
January 2012, I was so excited to be in a university. But my weed habit was outta control..my daughter was born just the month before, I thought that I would have stopped with her being born but it just increased. Amazingly I always put my daughter first before anything (even now) and never let anything stop me from doing that. Well, basically the last 2 years in the university I have just basically lost all motivation. I split with my ex (she was abusive towards me physically) and decided I couldn't take it anymore. MY grades were awful, I only have a few friends and most are full blown alcohlics or pot heads. I barely did any studying, lost all motivation and just didn't even care anymore. I started noticing changes in myself, where I just stopped caring about most things even though I still keep on pushing with the responsibilities that I have and nothing truly ever got out of control.
I'm leaving a lot out over the past 1.5 years but just know that I have been smoking weed more than ever, my drinking especially over the last 6 months increased pretty heavily. By that, I mean I was drinking 4-5x a week, but not enough to be terribly intoxicating..I mean between 4-6 beers max. Never exceeding that. I had being drunk but love catching a buzz.
Anyway, I've been researching/studying/attempting whatever you wanna call it regarding being sober. So finally, just the last 2 weeks, I made the decision after months of consideration to officially live sober. But I had made this decision a thousand times before, and everytime I told myself I was going to be sober, and I would start, my inner voice would just tell myself that yeah, whatever, you'll be sober for a little bit, but you know you can't live without alcohol or weed, or whatever (even caffeine) drugs may alter your mind. I'm addicted to being in a different state of mind, which drugs always let me do.
Here's the thing. I got sober on December 4th. I made the decision to be sober. What is the difference now? Well thanks to some random guy on the internet who made a website (called living sober sucks I think) basically told it like it was, and essentially the bottom line was that we have the power to make a choice. Either we decide to put that joint/bottle to our lips, or we don't. When I saw that it was this simple, I told myself that I'm just going to not put them to my mouth anymore.
So here I am, almost 2 weeks into sobriety. I haven't experienced any withdrawals or anything. My mind is still foggy. I don't feel any different. But what I do know is that anything that comes my way from now on, I will be handling sober. I've used drugs/alcohol for so long to avoid my problems and escape reality, that now I'm finally ready to take on my life (and internal self). I know it's going to be a tough ride. I haven't gone to class the past 3 weeks. I have so much anxiety built up. I can't even face my professors. I'm going to fail this entire semester. I'm 5 classes away from graduation but will be further away because of failed classed.
Am I scared? Hell yes. But knowing that I don't have to resort to drugs anymore to elude reality, my inner self knows that I will have to tackle these problems head on, and any other problem that may come my way.
I have so much more to write but I'll stop here. I welcome any comments/suggestions. I'm really just looking for support as I'm doing this on my own. I've only told one person (my roomate, friend of 15 years) and he agrees with me. Can't tell my family for I'm in fear of being judged. They know my entire history and think I'm clean.
Forum Leader
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Wisconsin, USA
Posts: 16,945
Welcome krete, and thanks for sharing. Congrats on your decision and sobriety thus far as well. We all have different stories as to how we ended up here, and it is good to write it down as a reminder of why we fight to stay sober.
Regarding your fear of being judged, I personally believe that honesty is the cornerstone of sobriety, and keeping secrets helps no one. Also remember that people will judge you no matter what you do, so you might as well do the right thing. As much as we all tried to hide our drinking, most often people know anyway.
Read a lot here, SR is a wonderful place. I use it as my primary support. Ask lots of questions and again welcome.
Regarding your fear of being judged, I personally believe that honesty is the cornerstone of sobriety, and keeping secrets helps no one. Also remember that people will judge you no matter what you do, so you might as well do the right thing. As much as we all tried to hide our drinking, most often people know anyway.
Read a lot here, SR is a wonderful place. I use it as my primary support. Ask lots of questions and again welcome.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: New England
Posts: 100
Sounds great. Scary - yes. Exciting- yes!
I do think it is possible to just make a decision and live by it. You've done things one way for a long time- time for something new.
I do think it is very helpful to keep in touch with people who can relate to what you are going through.
You don't need to "tell" friends and family. I think most of us way overestimate how much other people think about whether we drink or use drugs. Concentrate on living sober, no need to explain anything to anyone. No thanks actually works. I wish you the best, keep sharing about your journey- it helps you and others.
I do think it is possible to just make a decision and live by it. You've done things one way for a long time- time for something new.
I do think it is very helpful to keep in touch with people who can relate to what you are going through.
You don't need to "tell" friends and family. I think most of us way overestimate how much other people think about whether we drink or use drugs. Concentrate on living sober, no need to explain anything to anyone. No thanks actually works. I wish you the best, keep sharing about your journey- it helps you and others.
I'm glad you found us and joined the family. 
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Taunton, MA
Posts: 267
Thank you all for the warm welcome. I actually see a lot of familiar faces as I knew I would when I posted. I have been reading these boards for almost a week steady and became familiar with a lot of you. I think I read the first 15 pages or so, and then skipped around after that. I really gained a lot of insight and helpful knowledge so I can make sure to know what to expect and dodge those bullets as they come.
I'll probably stay in this thread and post regularly, sort of journal like. I've been a solid member on another forum for something totally unrelated (body building) for about 7 years so I'm extremely happy to find a board that supports sobriety.
Thanks again, and I made it through another day sober
I'll probably stay in this thread and post regularly, sort of journal like. I've been a solid member on another forum for something totally unrelated (body building) for about 7 years so I'm extremely happy to find a board that supports sobriety.
Thanks again, and I made it through another day sober
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