Edward's Road to Recovery, Entry #3

Woah, this is a strange new format.  Hopefully everything looks okay when finished.

Anyways, today is as good a day as any to write about my experiences in the IOP (intensive outpatient) program of CATS, which immediately followed my stay in the day-treatment detox facility of the Inova hospital, because I just completed the ten week program last night.  I got out from detox on a Tuesday, I believe, and on a Wednesday began my first day of IOP.  At the time I was a bit hesitant, but because I had had such a good experience at CATS thus far--sharing my story and really feeling connected to both my fellow patients and the staff in ways that I never expected--I was pretty positive that IOP would be a worthwhile experience.  To make a long story short, it was most definitely worth it.

The logistics of IOP are this: it is a group that varies from approximately 5 to 12 patients, led by one counselor.  We would meet at the same place at the same time three times a week, for three hours per session.  Nine hours a week at first seemed daunting, but as the chemistry of the group slowly gelled into something really amazing, I honestly wanted the sessions to last even longer.  Like a support group, we would typically check in and/or talk about our plans for the upcoming weekend, to make sure we were staying busy and had a plan to get through the weekend without drinking or using.  However, IOP provides more of a structure than a group like SMART Recovery or AA, because each class was usually based around a unique topic.  The majority of the class would be spent with us going through various worksheets and discussing the topic of the night in great detail, with our counselor Becky pushing us back on topic if we strayed too far (and we inevitably always did).  We talked about things like PAWS (post-acute withdrawal symptoms, which can last physically for up to one year, and mentally for up to two, and consist of things like headaches, nightmares and bad sleep, body aches, and depression), self-soothing exercises (yoga, meditation, breathing, etc.), coping skills to deal with cravings, and creating a recovery plan.

I don't remember too much of the academic material from our group.  What I do remember is the people and the good times we had.  I think our group was very unusual in that we had an almost perfect chemistry, even as old members left (either to graduate, to sadly relapse, or just to drop out) and new members joined.  There was always someone there to welcome the new people and show them that in our group you could be completely at ease.  There was absolutely and truly no judgment, and people could say whatever they wanted.  I especially tried to cultivate an environment where everyone felt comfortable sharing their most troubling and embarrassing issues and stories.  I was known as the member who was the most willing to go all-out in terms of baring my soul and all the many blemishes of my past behavior.  Even people who were court-ordered into the group because of a DUI got a lot out of it, because we encouraged them to speak up and share their viewpoint, which more often then not was that they felt they didn't really belong in our group.  But we loved them just as much as we loved everyone else, because most of us had been there in our past, at a time when we weren't ready to admit that we were powerless over our addictions. 

For some reason the group seemed to excel because of its all-male demographic.  I know that others who had been in other classes said that the other groups were very weak compared to ours.  Basically people didn't really put much effort into sharing or participating in the other groups, and everyone just looked at the clock till the three hours ran down.  Ours was so different.  Maybe people would be shy for their first session or two, but eventually everyone would participate and share very intimate details about their lives, to which almost all of us could relate.  Our counselor was a girl, but she was pretty awesome, and being younger, she could hang with our group of guys quite easily.  My main job was when she asked us tough, personal questions, I would turn it back around on her.  For a while in there we did have one girl, who in my opinion was a bit much of an attention whore (although I enjoyed her own perspective in the class, since she was by a good bit the youngest member), but she left after a few sessions.  One of the lecherous old guys in the class, JR, told me that he thinks she left because she realized that he had seen her working (apparently not as a dancer that night?) at a strip club somewhere in the Crystal City area.  That might actually be the truth, considering she said she hadn't had a normal job in a long time, but still lived on her own and had a heroin habit.  In any case, it did feel like a bit of a boys' club, and there was that sort of foul-mouthed sense of humor that comes with the territory.  Another thing I was known for was being the one who cursed the most.  Dat's me.  (Oh, and I was known for my lust for food whenever someone brought snacks in.)

My only complaint about the group (and it's a small one) is that over time it became completely dominated by alcoholics, and (although I do have an alcohol addiction) because my drug of choice was heroin and opiates, I felt like a variety of viewpoints were not always expressed.  This isn't really the group's fault, though.  It just shows how many more alcoholics there are out there than other kinds of drug addicts.  I believe there were only three other heroin addicts in the group, and usually only one at any given time besides me.  We were all young.  There was also Ben, who I went through detox with, who was an oxycodone addict.  For whatever reason (perhaps because it's a suburban, predominately upper-class and white area outside of DC), I only saw one person in my entire stay at CATS who was there for anything else other then alcohol or opiates (his drug of choice was cocaine).  Though in general, an addiction is an addiction is an addiction, I do think there are differences in experience between older businessmen who drink too much and junkies.  But in a sense I like that they put everyone together, since we could all share and relate to our own unique experiences.  A lot of times I related more to older alcoholics than I did to other young heroin addicts.  I think there is a sort of shared brother/sisterhood among all addicts, no matter what kind of drug they were addicted to.  The treatment is essentially the same for all kinds of drugs, with some minor differences in the beginning, and the heavy burden of addiction bears down on everyone through the years in the same ways.

What I gained most out of IOP wasn't an absorption of knowledge.  Most of the facts about addiction and the methods of treatment and self-help techniques I knew about before going in, since I researched drug addiction so heavily during my years of use.  What I gained was simply the kick-in-the-ass impact of getting out there and doing the shit that I'd read about for so long but had been too scared to do.  I hated, hated, hated social groups and that sort of thing before treatment, but I would wager that I was the most talkative member of the group throughout my entire ten-week stay.  To me, what recovery is about is really conquering the fears which we've held so tightly and buried, leading to self-destruction and hatred.  It helps tremendously to not just sit there and dream about goals for the future, but to talk about them and write them down on a regular basis.  There is a great sense of accountability when I talk about my goals and then people ask how they're going the next week.  Although I already had a lot of aspects of my recovery plan compiled before I went into IOP, every single day I spent in the group I was more and more motivated to actually get out there and do the stuff: reading, writing, music, film, yoga, meditation, cardio, lifting weights, dancing, breathing, having sex, playing video games, traveling to new places, and of course making new relationships, and maintaining and improving old ones.

One of the key things to take from addiction recovery is this: there is a difference between compliance and acceptance, a difference between abstinence and sobriety.  We can quit because we have to; we can stop using drugs and still be unhappy.  Accepting sobriety means trying to do something every day of your life to better yourself.  It can be at times a very selfish project.  Because we have spent so long hating and destroying ourselves, early recovery is often a time where you are supposed to focus very strongly on yourself, sometimes at the expense of others' demands.  Laws of AA include that you're not supposed to date for the first year of sobriety or make any major decisions in your life.  It's all about a time of self-healing.  That is the most important part of recovery.  With time we can learn to give back to all those we have hurt, and most importantly to learn to help others who struggle with the disease of addiction.  Sobriety isn't being off drugs.  It is a lifetime journey towards happiness and contentment, and I think for me towards some kind of greater truth.

--Edward

Edward's Road to Recovery, Entry #2

Greetings from the ocean floor and from the eagle's vista perched high above, for the beauty of sobriety--after an extended stay in the rusty cage of intoxication/experimentation/growing dependence/physical addiction/depravity/hopelessness--finds me in a state of mind where I feel that I'm exploring the entire world again. Like a child, those of us who are newly sober have to learn how to do everything over again. To stumble over our feet, yes, but to get up again. Everything is so new, and our bodies feel like a raw nerve, but that is the beauty of life, something I have missed out on while constantly numbing myself for the last 7 years of my life. Whether through the warming embrace of opiates, the vicious implosion towards coma of alcohol, or the sheer white light of cocaine rushing through my bloodstream into my brain, I was seeking ways to hide from life. From feelings. From relationships. From responsibility. From growth. And I suppose ultimately from myself. All of these things are scary at first, but I finally feel like everyone else. I feel a comrade of those in the street, struggling against the everyday grind of existence, whereas before I was hiding from the beast, putting on a mask to pretend that I was like everyone else, when in reality I was a coward.

So let me backtrack to where my last post left off. Through the help of my sister and parents and a therapist, I found myself in the Inova CATS Day Treatment program. I had just had a two-month heroin relapse, after months of alcohol addiction, and I was throwing my hands into the air in surrender, because I knew that drugs were a force stronger than me. Why try to tame something which will in the end kill you? I knew from experience that I couldn't win that battle. With trepidation I went into the hospital for my check-in and first day. I wasn't really sure what to expect, other then an environment like the previous AA and NA meetings that I had been to. I was not a big fan of these, since I always felt that they had a cliquish environment which I found to be socially intimidating. Furthermore (and I know that the 12-step programs help a lot of people, so God bless it), I have always found the AA type of person to be excessively boring. They always seem like the lame, New Age type of person who believes more in meditation and sipping herbal tea than they do in humor and fun. I figured that this detox/rehabilitation program (technically, inpatient and day treatment at CATS is detox-only, since most stays there don't last more than 7 or 8 days) would be something similar.

So I went into the waiting room, and after much paperwork and slightly anxious waiting, I went in to see the admissions nurse. She asked about my health, bare-bones questions, and then asked me to tally off my abuse of all the various drugs that exist in my 7 years of intimacy with them. It was a rather sobering moment, and made me feel like a bigger addict then even I normally do, since I had to tell her about my dozens and dozens of alcohol black-outs, the thousands of times I've stabbed myself in the arms (and other places) to inject heroin, opiate pills, stimulants, or even far worse substances (which make me cringe even more than the more notorious drugs, since these undoubtedly did far more internal damage to my body), and basically the sheer variety of drugs that I had tried. I once prided myself on trying as many drugs as possible (and using the most potent ways of administering them) for research's sake, as if by doing this I was gaining some compendium's worth of worldly knowledge, instead of letting my soul slowly rot from within. However, as my various posts on Demons can show, I have never had a difficult time being honest to those around me about my addiction problems, except to those who would "get me in trouble" (i.e., girlfriends and my parents), so I tried to be as true as possible in my details.

I was eventually let upstairs to the more hospital-like section of CATS, which was where the inpatient people met and slept. As part of the day treatment crew, I would come every day from 9 to 4 to go to meetings and basically do everything that the inpatient folks did, but at the end of the day I had the freedom to go on my very merry way back home. Most of the people there were inpatient, not day treatment. And I think it's also safe to say that the majority of those there were alcoholics, as opposed to other kinds of drug addicts. However, this isn't to say that they weren't all just as bad off as me. I know a lot were worse off. Alcohol has some of the worst withdrawals possible--worse than heroin's if you are a bad enough drinker--and most of the people in early alcohol withdrawal stages simply stayed in their rooms, medicated into near-unconsciousness to prevent the incapacitating tremors and ghastly hallucinations of delirium tremens. I saw some people come to meetings that would talk nonsense, and a lot who were still shaking all over from the tremors (luckily I had only had minor bouts of this from drinking--I can't imagine what a full-blown bout of alcohol WDs would be like), so I always had a particular brand of sympathy for the alcoholics there.

I went to my first meeting there, and quickly, before the meeting, several people, including a very nice alcoholic woman, already introduced themselves to me and assured me that the place was full of "good people." Almost from the get-go I found CATS to be a much more welcoming environment than the various 12-step meetings I had been to before. I found it very easy to participate in the meetings and to interact with my fellow patients. I believe this is because we were "all in the same boat." When you go to a NA meeting, you are often surrounded by people who have been going to the exact same meeting with the exact same people every week for years. You are surrounded by people who have been sober for 2 years, 5 years, sometimes 10 or more. It's pretty easy to feel like an outsider at AA, especially since they have their own particular lingo, a shibboleth that consists of phrases such as "One day at a time," "Keep coming back, it works if you work it," and "One is too many, a thousand is never enough" (although, like most of their quotes, these do all have some truth in them). But it is the way they say them--in unison, timed exactly correctly, and so dispassionately that they sound like robots--that makes them feel like some foreign tongue to the newcomer. The air stinks of groupthink. But at CATS all of the patients are newly sober. They have come into the day treatment/inpatient center to detox from being on drugs, so even if they are followers of the 12-step program, they aren't sitting on their high horse anymore and are right alongside you in the trenches.

Another aspect which I love about this sort of professional treatment (which thank God I have insurance for) is just that: the fact that it's professional. 12-step sober support groups are a great idea, and clearly work for many, but they all have the feel of being rather amateur. This is even worse in the one SMART Recovery meeting I went to (SMART Recovery is an "alternative" to the 12-step programs, in that it promotes a recovery plan that doesn't depend on the "higher power" of the 12-step groups, as well as a more individualistic approach to recovery), which lacked even the basic organization and focus of an AA meeting God bless ya, I love all addicts on some level for the connection that we share, but most of them aren't exactly the smartest cookies in the batch, so it's nice to be in a program run by medically-trained professional doctors, nurses, and counselors, who have researched all about the disease of addiction and the treatments for it. One of the biggest things I get out of my continuing time in the CATS program is the sense of structure that it provides me in my recovery. The counselors work with each person to try to come up with an individual treatment plan, and while they are inevitably swamped with patients, at least this is better than AA/NA, where everyone is expected to do exactly the same thing, which is go to meetings all the fucking time to talk about what you are doing to get your life back on track (instead of actually doing things to get your life back on track, since you are spending all your time at meetings) and to get a sponsor. Everyone says that without a sponsor (someone you talk to as often as possible who has been sober for a while and is in the 12-step program; their main task is to lead you through the "12 steps" of the AA/NA program) you will fail. I find this to be a bit presumptuous. Why can't we be open with the people in our everyday lives instead of relying on this sponsor? I know that you are supposed to have close relationships with other former addicts, but I just don't see how this should replace the meaningful relationships that are already in my life. Perhaps this is because most addicts find themselves in lives surrounded only by other addicts, but my life is full of (relatively) sober people, and I think I can trust in them. What concerns me most about the 12-step programs (which even the professionals of the CATS program tell us to attend regularly) is the sense that it is like a lifetime without freedom. You are supposed to always go to meetings. I heard a member tell us the story of a woman who had 33 years of sobriety under her belt. She relapsed, and when this person went to ask her what happened, she said she had stopped going to meetings and that's why she relapsed. There is this sense of group pressure, much like organized religion, weighing down on the shoulders of a newcomer to go to the famed "after-meetings" (which I assume are just trips to a food establishment to hang out with other group regulars [what if I already have friends that I want to see that I like for their personality, instead of just for the fact that they have a shared group identity with me as a person in recovery?]) and to get a sponsor and to "work the steps." I wouldn't care if I thought the people at 12-step meetings were cool, but honestly (and I know this is the child in me, but I can't help it) I just see them as being the opposite. I see them as being people who can't fit in on the "outside," so they stick with their AA friends. And let's be honest, if you are friendly to anyone at an AA meeting, they'll be your friend (there is a saying that [and this is paraphrased] there are no strangers at an AA meeting; there are only people waiting to be your friend). I don't want that. I don't want forced phoniness, like any sort of organization breeds. I want to do my own thing. So that is my big beef with AA. The people just all seem so fucking New Age and, frankly, unintelligent, because anyone who follows anything--whether it be a religion, a political party, a way of life, or whatever--blindly and without hesitation or individual thought I believe to be a fool. I do see the point of AA. Many addicts aren't the smartest, or are surrounded by a world of poverty and unfairness, so for them AA is a group that provides them strength where they are weak. And I do aim to get the most I can out of the 12-step program, whatever that may mean in my future, but I don't plan on being a devout member the rest of my life.

Anyways, sorry for that extended rant. It is one of the biggest issues for me in recovery, as my peers and counselors always tell me I should be attending sober support meetings. To not do so seems almost out of the question. So I feel some sort of guilty need to do so, instead of actually ever wanting to (and the meetings I have been to have really done nothing for me--especially compared to my various CATS meetings, which do a lot for me).

I met some good people while I was in my day treatment program there. Most of the young members were opiate addicts like me. There was some heroin addicts, and some painkiller addicts. I met a very nice and well-spoken alcoholic man that said that he had blacked out every single time he had drank in the last 2 years, and was caught two nights in a row naked in a fancy hotel somewhere in Eurasia, blacked out and locked-out from his room, with nowhere to hide except behind a window curtain, which he wrapped around himself when he strode downstairs to the front desk. This isn't too far off from my own story of being awake for 2 or 3 days on amphetamines, finding myself locked in at my office building, late at night, trapped without a pass card, locked out from my car keys and phone, and without pants or underwear. Such is the craziness that drug abuse causes.

I met people who said they spent in the excess of $100,000 on painkillers, and those that stole tens of thousands of dollars from their parents and others to get money to buy them heroin. I met a man who spent 16 years of his life in prison (he is 42 years old), with a very gruff voice and an eagle-like intimidating stare, but that I feel has the heart of a teddy bear and remains one of the core members of my outpatient support group. For the most part, everyone was pretty damn cool I met. What made them cool is that we all shared our own minds, our own pains, and most importantly, our own personalities. 12-step groups have a way of erasing the watercolors of our personalities into a blank slate, where everyone repeats the same phrases and tell their life stories using the exact same narrative (the only thing changed are the names of the people in the stories). There were lots of AA/NA-devotees in the CATS detox, but there were lots of others who weren't. I found this mix of people to be very refreshing, and we all brought different viewpoints to our daily discussions and activities.

On my last day I was even a bit sad to leave. I wasn't quite sure when I would leave the day treatment program, since they told me I had to test negative to drugs two days in a row before I could leave. A slip-up that I eventually admitted to the staff of CATS when questioned had occurred after my first day of treatment. I got off at 4 and immediately went to buy some cocaine (which turned out to be crack-cocaine). I had had it on my mind all day, since I still had some money in my account and a hook-up for it, so immediately that went into my arm. As it goes, I do not regret this slip-up, since it proved to be a deciding factor in my sobriety this time. I ended up overdosing that night, surprisingly, since the shots that did me in were just 3 spoons' worth of remnants from all my previous shots. It actually took two needles full of vinegar (to dissolve the crack) to shoot it (I shot one, then immediately pulled it out and shot the second), and what hit me was the most intense rush on my lifetime. For the last 4 or so years I've been trying to find new heights in terms of IV rushes, but this one was the cap of my career as a rush-junkie. The bellringer started coming on before the first shot was even injected, but heedlessly I pulled out that shot after its completion and pressed down the plunger on the second. Even typing these words my heart starts beating fast and my mouth salivates and I can imagine my pupils dilate somewhat. IV cocaine has a way, like no other drug, of bringing about sensory recall when I remember the rushes. I think this is because it has the most intense of all rushes, so the body can easily recall it again. I believe that IV cocaine causes the greatest dopamine release in the brain out of all drugs (the sound effects that the bellringer is named after are caused by such a massive amount of dopamine flooding the brain at once--dopamine being the pleasure neurotransmitters of the brain), so it's no wonder that the body can recall its effects even months and years later. But this particular bellringer just kept getting louder and louder. I remember starting to get worried, since usually after a little bit, the noise subsides and the physical feelings grow less intense, but this just kept getting stronger. I started getting tunnel vision and my mouth was completely dry. I couldn't look anywhere else but at the tile floor of my bathroom, since I was growing scared and to look anywhere else would just be too intense. I felt like I would puke if I looked anywhere else, and that kind of physical exertion seemed out of the question, since I was gripping the toilet seat I was sitting on just to be able to handle this kind of unbearable force and intensity. My body started shaking, gradually at first, but then wildly, as my legs kicked uncontrollably and my hands flayed out against the wall and the toilet. I knew that I was having a seizure and a cocaine overdose, and I knew that if I went unconscious it would be a very bad sign. I was scared I'd fall unconscious and hit my head on the floor. I was scared I would bite my tongue, so I tried putting a towel in my mouth. My legs and arms were kicking everywhere, completely out of my control and contorting into unnatural positions, and I could only look on with horror, realizing that I no longer had any control over my own body and that something terrible had happened. My heart was beating in excess of 200BPM. I knew Bethany was watching in shock from my bedroom, and I vaguely got the idea that she came over a few times, but I kept pushing her away since I was afraid she would call 911. I was also dimly aware that my cat was on the floor near me, but none of this seemed real whatsoever. Even to this day, the entire event seems like something out of a dream--blurry, formless, like milk instead of the clarity of water. I knew that as long as I stayed conscious, I would make it out alive. I knew Bethany had an intense fear of death and also an intense fear that I would overdose one day, so I knew that she would be paralyzed. But I also knew that there was nothing else I could do but ride this out. It seemed to be taking literally a half hour to get out of this seizure. I was shaking uncontrollably, and my body hurt from the incredible strain I put my heart under. I just kept whispering to myself, totally helpless, "Fuck, fuck, fuck." I am a very fearless person when it comes to drugs. I won't say I was completely scared shitless, but this was the first time I had had a real, genuine drug overdose, and it was from an IV stimulant, which is definitely one of the worst things to overdose on. Only because of my extensive knowledge of IV cocaine and overdoses through research did I know that I would make it out of it alive. Had I been more ignorant, I probably would have been scared that I would die. But luckily, the intense surges of seizure passed by after a few minutes (according to Bethany, since to me it seemed like at least half an hour of my body being out of my control), and I climbed into bed. My body kept shaking for the better part of three hours, gradually less intensely. I had only once before come this close to dying from doing drugs, and that was the night I was arrested after a 7-drug binge that ended with me running my car into a guardrail, almost hitting someone else, and getting pulled over outside of the Clendenin's house. But this time, because I wasn't blacked out like I was that night, I felt the full conscious effect of just how close I had come to the razor-thin line of mortality. I wouldn't say I was "scared straight," since even if I hadn't had this OD, I still would be exactly where I am today, but it was nevertheless a good kick in the ass on my way out the door of intoxication. I took it as a sign that that was all the rush I ever needed.

So these are some more of my experiences in beautiful, raw sobriety. I hope to write more about it in the future.

Cheers,

--Edward

Edward's Road to Recovery, Entry #1

First off, I want to apologize to all of the readers out there. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. This blog was my baby, and I had a lot of hopes and dreams of it becoming something special and bringing all of us together while allowing each writer to express themselves both creatively and emotionally. I have been completely absent on here since Sex Month back in June, and while I could say that I was busy with "more important shit," in truth I neglected my writing and commenting because I was lost in the depths of an intense drug relapse that ended with me shaking on a toilet uncontrollably in a seizure caused by an IV crack overdose. I want to make it up to you guys. I originally had an idea for this series that I would start writing about my time in day treatment rehab, chronicling each day as it was happening, but that proved too difficult, as there were a lot of things to take care of at that time and I didn't have enough time to really sit and concentrate and brood over my psychological neuroses that led to this relapse (I will talk later about how it wasn't even really a relapse, since I never totally gave up substance abuse in the first place). In any case, I will write about my road to recovery and happiness, away from the depths of polydrug addiction and depression and other woes, whenever the whim strikes me. My sincere wish is that this series will inspire others to share their own feelings of hopelessness, pain, and hope, and their own intellectual ideas about the nature of addiction and substance abuse, and how society deals with it.

I write this today while still sweaty from a brief workout at the gym, a place that I was paying $25 a month to be a member of even though I hadn't worked out there in almost two months (and I hadn't really consistently worked out in ever). This neglect of health and my interests symbolizes one of the most obvious facets of my substance addiction: it causes me to neglect the things that I am passionate about--whether they be my loved ones, my hobbies, and the things that I care about--because nothing is as important as getting loaded on whatever substance I find myself drawn to at the time. This is because these substances (for me, alcohol, opiates, cocaine, and meth/amphetamines) refuel the dopamine receptors (pleasure center) in my brain, which has lost the ability to maintain its own normal levels of dopamine through drug abuse and tolerance. I look back on my days of active use with disgust. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an obsession with cleanliness and health. How could I have gone days without showering, without brushing my teeth? Left my apartment in a squalid mess? Ate the kind of crap that I ate on a daily basis? I use this (Bethany would say OCD) obsession with cleanliness and organization, with health and strength, as a way to combat the self-destructive, yet soothing siren song of addiction that forever tries to creep up the walls of my consciousness and plant its egg of doubt in my dream of hope.

Let me try to backtrack here in our first entry to talk about how the last few months have been since my previous brush with opiates. It had been ten months since I had last gotten high on anything other than alcohol. I suppose on the surface, for someone not very educated on the topic of addiction, I was doing good, because drinking alcohol's a lot better than shooting heroin, right? When it comes to addiction, not really. Though I don't claim to have been at their level of dependency, I saw a great number of patients shaking and talking deliriously in the depths of their alcohol withdrawals when I was at rehab. Alcohol can suck your life and your wellbeing away just as fast as heroin can. In truth, my drinking was not as bad as my opiate use was in terms of how it affected my day-to-day life. It was probably worse for my health (alcohol being more of a toxin than opiates are), but I wasn't dead-broke and utterly physically dependent upon alcohol. I did begin to experience the symptoms of mild alcohol dependency towards the end of my ten-month binge, waking up in a bed soaked with cold sweat and piss, hands shaking uncontrollably, each day the same as the last. I wouldn't for a moment question whether I'm an alcoholic or not. I am one.

But most importantly, by continuing to abuse alcohol, I never really got rid of my addiction altogether. I never even really tried. I know that I acted all tough and optimistic a year ago when I was writing blog posts on here about how my life was going to change, but it was really all a bunch of bullshit. Yes, I really did believe those things. Yes, I did want to change. But I wasn't ready to take the necessary steps to get well. An addict can't go on using other substances like I was. An addict needs sober support. I can't just go to a therapist who I didn't even connect to and expect by doing that that my problems will suddenly up and disappear. What was most important with my drinking is that I retained the sly habits of an addict. I would lie about my drinking all the time, and hide it in shame after I told everyone that I was going to stop drinking (I did not have the strength to stop on my own without help). I would regularly get off from work at 5, alcohol having been on my mind all afternoon, drive to the nearest liquor store, and pour myself a very strong mix drink to drink on my commute home, already being drunk by the time I got out of the car at home. I blacked out almost every time I drank. Hangovers were an unfortunate part of daily existence that I had to learn to cope with. I cannot use any mood-altering substances with control. That is why I have learned I have to quit ALL mood-altering substances. That's how it is. I know it's hard for others to understand why I can't just have one drink, or drink socially, but I'm a person with the disease of addiction, and for me it's impossible.

Anyways, my drinking got worse and worse, to where I was occasionally drinking on my break hours at work, and, on weekends or off-days, drinking throughout the day starting in the morning. I went drunk to an ASAP (Alcohol Substance Abuse Prevention or something like that) class, which I was assigned to for driving under the influence in the first place. I was just drinking to shut my brain the fuck up. This isn't any different from shooting up cocaine or heroin or anything else. So really, my slip back into drugs was inevitable.

It started with some Percocets that I heard a friend was prescribed. I begged this friend for them, and offered them an exorbitant sum so that I eventually got them. I took all of the 20 pills in two different sittings over less than 24 hours, and wound up feeling slightly dopesick. My brain was again already hooked on the deadening warmth of opiates, something I hadn't even craved for months and months. My dad was prescribed them soon thereafter, and I stole large amounts of his, which he found out about, causing me even more pain and shame. Soon enough, I was back on heroin.

It is true what they say, that each relapse is darker than the previous one. Almost immediately (I knew this would happen, honestly), I was back at the same place I was before after months of using. I needed a big amount just to kill the withdrawals, much less get high. Every time I use again, there are more negatives and less positives. I stole money on a daily basis from work, pawned all of my prized possessions at home, and manipulated people I cared about to get drugs to shut my mind off. I don't regret my relapse and any of the actions it caused, because it made me who I am today and the suffering allowed me to hit a bottom that forced me into the treatment I've always needed, but I am deeply sorry to anyone I hurt or let down or manipulated in the throes of my completely selfish drug binge. I say this from the bottom of my heart.

Luckily by this point in my life I knew that I couldn't get out of this hole on my own. I knew that I needed help, and admitted as much to those around me. Although resistant to the idea at first, I ultimately knew that I needed more complete and organized treatment then I had received before. I needed to work the process that millions of addicts have worked before me so that they could get better: detox/rehabilitation, counseling, group therapy, sober support, and medication. I wasn't willing to do any of those steps before other than counseling, and that is why I never really got better. I will talk more about how treatment is going and went at the beginning in my next entries. I really truly have hope that this time I can finally slay this very real demon of addiction (please remember that addiction is never the root problem--something else always lies underneath, but what that is with me, I am not sure of at this time). But having hope without having a plan and support is a futile thing. I think I have all three right now.

One day at a time.

--Edward

PS: For anyone interested, my sober date is 8/26/11. As someone said in one of my meetings, I don't like to put too much focus on my clean time, since it is like you are counting down towards something that is going to end (these were his words, and although I don't truly understand them, I like what he had to say). For me, it just puts too much pressure on an abstract number that is ultimately meaningless. What matters is happiness.