I just want to share my story to show that you can stop using drugs if you are addicted. Alcohol is a drug too. I smoked crack for the first time in 1986 when I was 25 years old; in the space of a few months I was addicted. Maybe someone can relate to some of the things I did or were done to me. Once I was being robbed of $60.00 in a park and someone broke a bottle over my head from behind when I resisted. Another time a 19 year old guy who I had never met broke the windshield of my car with a club and then turned and beat me. Another time I got punched in the face for something I said to someone. I sold my possessions like TV’s a $500.00 stereo, a jacket off my back, the tires off my dad’s car, my car stereo and I rented out my car to people I had just met and had to report it stolen 4 times; all for a few dollars worth of crack.
The small city where I got my drugs had the highest murder rate in the western U.S. and I was there a few times a week for three years. After I got clean I estimated I got cheated in drug deals about a 1/3 of the time. I also lost a job I had been at for four years and my housing. Near the end of my using I used to attend AA, CA, or NA meetings but I still used in between but then in 1990, I started going to an AA meeting steadily and the guy who ran it showed me where other meetings were near my house. Like I said I started going steadily. I forgot to say I had the obsession and compulsion to use, my life revolved around getting and using drugs. But then one night I was lying in bed and I had been attending this meeting faithfully, but the obsession and compulsion hit me and I thought, " I’m going to get up early, take a bus to some friends of the family who had loaned me money before, borrow a $100.00 and than take the 90 minute ride to the city I mentioned and get crack, But I woke up and I realized, that was insane and that night the obsession and compulsion had been lifted. It was January of 1990 and the craving has never come back.
I kept going to meetings and eventually I was taking the bus to six meetings a week. I recommend you get a sponsor and work the 12-steps as soon as possible but I waited three years before I did that. I started speaking at meetings and became a representative at once a month meetings where we took care of business related to our meetings, like saying we needed more support, or we donated to the World Service organization or I
brought back to our individual groups all the news of CA or NA.
What I mainly want to say is from my experience of 25 years in the three programs; it doesn’t matter how long you used, what you used, where you used or how much you used, you can still get clean. That’s not an opinion; I have seen this as a rule. No matter how far down you’ve gone you can be helped. I have heard speakers who were in prison for years or used to sleep in a puddle of their own urine on a park bench, or sold their bodies, or hustled and conned people for a living I have seen those people recover and become respected members of the community. Or people like me who have been in psych wards or people who have attempted suicide or lost everything like all their worldly belongings and their families, we can all be helped.
You don’t have to hit bottom, that’s a myth, addiction or alcoholism can be arrested at any point and you can start on the road up. It is said that it’s a simple program not an easy one but if you work the 12 steps and follow some simple principles your life will improve more than you ever imagined. In my recovery I have done things I never would have done while using, I’ve graduated college, I’ve been steadily employed, I’ve gone camping, water skiing, flown across the country a few times, gone to comedy clubs, After I got clean my sister trusted me enough that she gave me a key to her apartment in case she locked herself out ( which happened twice in two months ) or she needed her plants watered or her dog walked.
Just so many good things have happened to me. A lot of people are afraid they can’t have fun without drugs but look at me and there are many other people like me. Meetings are a big part of recovery. Try one out near you; they’re all over, you can go and you don’t have to talk, you can just sit there in the back and listen until you’re comfortable and you can see it’s a safe place to share and all people want from you is to see you get what they got which is clean and sober. If I have helped one person by this I will be happy. Good luck to anyone who tries this, it is proven to work. It was thirty four years clean for me January 1st, 2024. I can honestly say I don’t miss drugs at all. I don’t go to meetings anymore but I went so intensively in the beginning and I figure I got a lot of program in me and that’s what keeps me clean. Who knows, I might start attending again, they were fun.
