Clean Date:February 28, 2014
Age:
From:Erial, NJ
I started smoking weed when I was sixteen. I was really good in softball, and had places to go with softball, but once I started smoking weed, from the minute I picked it up it became daily. I wasn’t able to even do that moderately. Then I started getting into pills and heavier things, and honestly it just turned into heroin because it was cheaper. It progressed pretty quickly, I was in my first treatment center by the time I was 18.
I wasn’t my true self when I was using. I dated guys when I was using, and I was never comfortable with them. I always knew something wasn’t there, but didn’t know that it was my sexuality. I didn’t know that I really liked women, but I never enjoyed being with a man and I did things that I normally wouldn’t do for drugs with men. It all tied in, and I definitely used to cover up my feelings for women.
It was more of an emotional rock bottom this last time. I got sober basically just using Alcoholics Anonymous. I went to meetings, started working the steps– it was an emotional thing for me, the drugs didn’t work for me anymore. They weren’t doing what they used to do, and I felt immediate guilt when I started using them.
There’s more and more resources popping up every day. There’s more and more ways to get help, and there’s never an excuse not to get help. If you still have breath in your lungs, I say that there’s still a chance to get help. Whether it’s going to meetings and just grinning through it, or if it’s going to treatment. Treatment is a part of my story, and so are the rooms of AA.
If you’re a family member of an addict, cut them off. Don’t give them any money. I did it with my own brother most recently. I had to stop letting him stay at my house and stop giving him money for cigarettes, or buying him cigarettes, or buying him food, because I was just digging his hole for him by continuing to fuel his being okay with not having. Even though it wasn’t giving him money for drugs. I was providing food for him so it’s not like he went hungry, so he could keep using.
There’s no excuse to use anymore. If I can get sober, anybody can get sober. I was just as bad as anybody else. I was in and out of 11 different treatment centers. I went to the depths of everything– I’ve been arrested, I sold myself, I’ve done numerous things for drugs and alcohol. And if I can get sober, anybody can get sober, and the excuses need to stop.