Sobriety starts today - the final 'day 1'.
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 1
Sobriety starts today - the final 'day 1'.
My anxiety was bad - my head was gyrating on my shoulders ever so slightly from the stress and I was just praying my doctor wouldn't pick up on it. Maybe I wanted him to, but the anxiety was too severe and I wanted out. I was flushed and shaking. I was sweating profusely. I was nearly going to confess everything -- which was why I was there -- but like most things in life now, I chickened out when it counted and rambled about my insomnia to get more tamazapan. I walked out with a script for a 30 pack, which will be added to the stillnox pile.
We'll call that a consolation prize for nearly pulling it together. I had six of them that night with a bottle of wine, 2 beers and 400mg of codeine. That was two weeks ago.
Work was the same the next day. No one picked up on my fogginess, my flushed face, the bags under my eyes, the short fuse or any of the other train-wreck symptoms that a serious addiction problem inflicts on a person. My mask of ******** had survived another day in the downward spiral that I've been going on. The angle of decline has been so subtle that by the time I realised I was nearing the bottom of the hill, turning around seemed unfathomable. I can go 3 days sober before feeling good and having 'one last high'. Sometimes 5 days, but never 6.
Then I binge. It can take weeks to pull myself out, but within 3 days I'll usually return. It’s quite astonishing how quickly I can change my whole disposition on sobriety. It can flip in minutes.
Sometimes I wonder how it got to this. I had a long, staggered transition to serious addiction that started from the age of 14 when I first smoked pot, climaxing here today with the strung-out 28 year old that can only seem to wade through patterns of self destruction. I got hooked on weed surprisingly quick, and I developed an obsession for smoking it every night as a teen. I wondered, did I just really like weed, or was there an underlying addictive impulse to drugs in me? I went with the former. 14 years later, I'm addicted to opiates, alcohol and sleeping pills. Seeing as they are all CNS depressants, they are a dangerous, toxic, almost suicidal mix that induces euphoria, takes away pain and anxiety, and switches the brain off. Probably why it works for me so well.
I'm the textbook definition of a functioning drug addict. I have a pretty good job at a university that I've had for 8 years, I study part time and get good grades, and I'm physically very fit. Well, as fit as you can be with the drug and booze combo. I do mixed martial arts and can beat the **** out of most of the fighters I train with. My boss respects me, I've got options, I've got no criminal record, I'm in good shape. I look relatively young for my age. I have career advancement opportunities.
This is on the surface, but this charade is getting out of sync. The lies are catching up with me. I see people who know me look at me, and whisper about me, as they know something isn't right. They probably speculate. For someone so bright, fit, driven and charismatic, my inconsistencies are starting to get noticed. My staff, my training partners, friends, family - they must all, by now, have put together that problems are lurking just beneath the surface with all my inconsistencies. I'm so driven, talented and smart - yet my training partners wonder why I'm in the gym four nights in a row, building conditioning, and then I'm gone for a week. My staff wonder why I'm late so often - why I always have dramas and excuses. My friends wonder why I'm driving around at night, setting fire alarms off and staggering around downstairs. My family wonder why I'm always broke.
It's probably the world's worst kept secret. Though because I lie so much and I've been lying for so long, I've created a fabricated existence of who I am... Who I think people think I am, who I pretend to be. Hiding this destructive monster that is creeping out of the pyramid. Or maybe people have seen straight through it the whole time. Regardless, this has to end.
Last night was my night on, and I have vague recollections of driving and struggling to make out the lines as my vision was crossed. I remember (like a bad dream) trying to decipher where one traffic lane line met the other as to stay on the road. On one trip I bought more stillnox (I only know because I checked netbank today), which is the absolute devil for me. Why the pharmacist served someone so loaded on pills, codeine and alcohol comes second only to the stupidity of the person driving around, buying more legal drugs at 10pm on a Thursday night.
I've set fire alarms off in my stillknox stupors. I've drunk every drop of my housemate's alcohol, on a weeknight, without memory. Many times. The sleeping pills crept in to the picture when the poppy tea and codeine tolerance became too much and I stopped getting high. Thank god I don't have a regular oxy dealer, as I'd surely be in the perils of an even darker addiction than I am now.
So what's different today? I'm not sure, but I know that in some capacity or another, this is the end. I'm sick of the lies. I used to like myself, but that self-appreciation has dissolved into ugly self-loath. I'm losing hope and the ability to ever think I can remain sober. I can now see the contrast from the optimistic kid who looked forward - who was always positive - who lived for tomorrow; to this grown man who dwells on yesterday and lives for the high today as to not think about tomorrow. I resent my superiors at work for not offering me higher roles. I resent the training partners that have come out of the woodwork, worked hard, been given fights and represented the team successfully. I resent friends who've moved on, got partners and go on holidays. I resent those that aren't inflicted with this addictive pattern that I'm perpetually stuck in. I resent myself more than anything. Even though I haven't hit what most people would consider rock bottom on here, I'm a long way from the top and the opportunity to turn it around is fleeting.
I could die at any time with this cocktail of poison I subject myself to so regularly, or even worse, I could kill someone. This has to end, and 08/08/2014 seems like a good enough day to start again and close the proverbial bar. The fun ended a long, long time ago and I need to change. No cutting back or just social drinks - it never, ever sticks. I always fall back and usually sooner rather than later. Today I acknowledge that I can't EVER do drugs or alcohol again.
Sorry for the long rant, but even typing this has been a somewhat cathartic process. In the years I've been battling this monster, I've never told anyone about my problem, and while declaring "I'm a ******* addict!" in the anonymous setting of an internet forum is only a very small step, it's a step nonetheless. I just want someone to read this, really. Passing the load, even if it is just to a total stranger. With the load slightly lessened, some hope creeps back in and I can think back to that happy, optimistic young boy who had so much potential and think that maybe I'm not completely lost; maybe he's still in there somewhere. I used to think, what's the difference between that young optimistic boy and this resentful, destructive man? Why did he have so much hope? Why did he look forward as opposed to backwards? Why did he like himself? What changed so much? I know the answer.
The boy only ever knew life sober.
We'll call that a consolation prize for nearly pulling it together. I had six of them that night with a bottle of wine, 2 beers and 400mg of codeine. That was two weeks ago.
Work was the same the next day. No one picked up on my fogginess, my flushed face, the bags under my eyes, the short fuse or any of the other train-wreck symptoms that a serious addiction problem inflicts on a person. My mask of ******** had survived another day in the downward spiral that I've been going on. The angle of decline has been so subtle that by the time I realised I was nearing the bottom of the hill, turning around seemed unfathomable. I can go 3 days sober before feeling good and having 'one last high'. Sometimes 5 days, but never 6.
Then I binge. It can take weeks to pull myself out, but within 3 days I'll usually return. It’s quite astonishing how quickly I can change my whole disposition on sobriety. It can flip in minutes.
Sometimes I wonder how it got to this. I had a long, staggered transition to serious addiction that started from the age of 14 when I first smoked pot, climaxing here today with the strung-out 28 year old that can only seem to wade through patterns of self destruction. I got hooked on weed surprisingly quick, and I developed an obsession for smoking it every night as a teen. I wondered, did I just really like weed, or was there an underlying addictive impulse to drugs in me? I went with the former. 14 years later, I'm addicted to opiates, alcohol and sleeping pills. Seeing as they are all CNS depressants, they are a dangerous, toxic, almost suicidal mix that induces euphoria, takes away pain and anxiety, and switches the brain off. Probably why it works for me so well.
I'm the textbook definition of a functioning drug addict. I have a pretty good job at a university that I've had for 8 years, I study part time and get good grades, and I'm physically very fit. Well, as fit as you can be with the drug and booze combo. I do mixed martial arts and can beat the **** out of most of the fighters I train with. My boss respects me, I've got options, I've got no criminal record, I'm in good shape. I look relatively young for my age. I have career advancement opportunities.
This is on the surface, but this charade is getting out of sync. The lies are catching up with me. I see people who know me look at me, and whisper about me, as they know something isn't right. They probably speculate. For someone so bright, fit, driven and charismatic, my inconsistencies are starting to get noticed. My staff, my training partners, friends, family - they must all, by now, have put together that problems are lurking just beneath the surface with all my inconsistencies. I'm so driven, talented and smart - yet my training partners wonder why I'm in the gym four nights in a row, building conditioning, and then I'm gone for a week. My staff wonder why I'm late so often - why I always have dramas and excuses. My friends wonder why I'm driving around at night, setting fire alarms off and staggering around downstairs. My family wonder why I'm always broke.
It's probably the world's worst kept secret. Though because I lie so much and I've been lying for so long, I've created a fabricated existence of who I am... Who I think people think I am, who I pretend to be. Hiding this destructive monster that is creeping out of the pyramid. Or maybe people have seen straight through it the whole time. Regardless, this has to end.
Last night was my night on, and I have vague recollections of driving and struggling to make out the lines as my vision was crossed. I remember (like a bad dream) trying to decipher where one traffic lane line met the other as to stay on the road. On one trip I bought more stillnox (I only know because I checked netbank today), which is the absolute devil for me. Why the pharmacist served someone so loaded on pills, codeine and alcohol comes second only to the stupidity of the person driving around, buying more legal drugs at 10pm on a Thursday night.
I've set fire alarms off in my stillknox stupors. I've drunk every drop of my housemate's alcohol, on a weeknight, without memory. Many times. The sleeping pills crept in to the picture when the poppy tea and codeine tolerance became too much and I stopped getting high. Thank god I don't have a regular oxy dealer, as I'd surely be in the perils of an even darker addiction than I am now.
So what's different today? I'm not sure, but I know that in some capacity or another, this is the end. I'm sick of the lies. I used to like myself, but that self-appreciation has dissolved into ugly self-loath. I'm losing hope and the ability to ever think I can remain sober. I can now see the contrast from the optimistic kid who looked forward - who was always positive - who lived for tomorrow; to this grown man who dwells on yesterday and lives for the high today as to not think about tomorrow. I resent my superiors at work for not offering me higher roles. I resent the training partners that have come out of the woodwork, worked hard, been given fights and represented the team successfully. I resent friends who've moved on, got partners and go on holidays. I resent those that aren't inflicted with this addictive pattern that I'm perpetually stuck in. I resent myself more than anything. Even though I haven't hit what most people would consider rock bottom on here, I'm a long way from the top and the opportunity to turn it around is fleeting.
I could die at any time with this cocktail of poison I subject myself to so regularly, or even worse, I could kill someone. This has to end, and 08/08/2014 seems like a good enough day to start again and close the proverbial bar. The fun ended a long, long time ago and I need to change. No cutting back or just social drinks - it never, ever sticks. I always fall back and usually sooner rather than later. Today I acknowledge that I can't EVER do drugs or alcohol again.
Sorry for the long rant, but even typing this has been a somewhat cathartic process. In the years I've been battling this monster, I've never told anyone about my problem, and while declaring "I'm a ******* addict!" in the anonymous setting of an internet forum is only a very small step, it's a step nonetheless. I just want someone to read this, really. Passing the load, even if it is just to a total stranger. With the load slightly lessened, some hope creeps back in and I can think back to that happy, optimistic young boy who had so much potential and think that maybe I'm not completely lost; maybe he's still in there somewhere. I used to think, what's the difference between that young optimistic boy and this resentful, destructive man? Why did he have so much hope? Why did he look forward as opposed to backwards? Why did he like himself? What changed so much? I know the answer.
The boy only ever knew life sober.
Forum Leader
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Wisconsin, USA
Posts: 16,945
Welcome Span and thanks for sharing your story. Know that it is a very familiar one and many here were in the same place or even worse.
Do you have any specific plans for what you might do today to make it a day one that will last?
Do you have any specific plans for what you might do today to make it a day one that will last?
Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah.
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 2,887
Welcome Span. You are amongst people who understand.
Have you met my friend here JDOONER yet ? I encourage you to read his story.
I think you will find a kindred who gets you more than you could possibly imagine...
Welcome to the best thing you will ever do for yourself. Sobriety.
XO AO
Have you met my friend here JDOONER yet ? I encourage you to read his story.
I think you will find a kindred who gets you more than you could possibly imagine...
Welcome to the best thing you will ever do for yourself. Sobriety.
XO AO
You can do it, span xxx
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