I have to chime in for the current abusers. Getting clean and sober is not impossible. Just go to an AA, CA, or NA meeting and hear the hardcore drug users tell their stories of using drugs for most of their life and the supposedly “hopeless” alcoholics who lost everything in their disease and ended up sleeping on public park benches in pools of their own urine while scaring kids who walk by them and see a “hopeless” wreck of a man laying semi-conscious for years at a time. And then they come to AA and wrack up 15-20-30 years of sobriety and become responsible, contributing, members of society.
Or the ex-cons who spent years in prison where they could get any drug tney wanted inside or drink pruno every day to get drunk but they somehow find AA and with some luck they get clean and come to meetings to help other people. I’ve seen too many cases of addicts or alcoholics who were written off as hopeless but with a little honesty, some effort, and faith they turn their lives around. I’m not saying this for the fun of it. I’m not making this up or exaggerating. I am saying it because I have heard it and seen it with my own ears and eyes countless times.
I’ve had paranoid schizophrenia for thirty six years. I got diagnosed in 1980 when I was 19. When I was 26 I got addicted to crack and smoked it like a fiend for the next 4 years. I sold almost all my possessions for drug money. I once gave a fellow user a ride in my car who I had just met a half-hour before. We drove through town smoking his crack. When we ran out I had no more money so I ripped out my tape deck in my car and traded it for two hits of crack.
I got car-jacked, beaten, a bottle broken over my head from behind, I hung out with hookers, murderers, ex-cons, homeless people, and people who acted friendly while really they were just using me for my drugs. I could go on.
But in 1990 I got clean. So I have not used any drugs or drank alcohol since then. After I quit my life blossomed. I got a job, I went back to school, I made a good friend. I started socializing all the time. I stopped hanging out with the wrong people. I started constantly doing fun things that were legal and healthy. I do not hang around anybody who uses drugs. If a family member has a drink now and then or an acquaintance has a drink now and then that is OK. But they understand to not offer me one or pressure me to have a even a sip.
I told my good friend that if I ever have one drink or even just one hit of anything then I will die. Because as I learned from AA, if you are truly an addict or alcoholic you can not take just one hit or one sip. It will trigger the disease. And I told him if I ever go out again I will not survive. He laughed and told me that I was being melodramatic and exaggerating. He did not know me.When you are a clean addict and you take that one hit again, you will not stop. You have to have more. That is the nature of the disease. And when you relapse, than you go right back to where you left off. And the way I used, and the risks I took when I was younger would kill me today. But like I said, recovery is not impossible. I am living proof. It takes work and time but it’s well worth it