this is how crazy addiction is

Some­times it’s all we fo­cus on. All we care about.

Un­til we’ve fucked up our lives again and by the time we re­al­ize it’s a prob­lem again, it’s al­ready too late.

And then maybe, MAYBE! You’ll be lucky enough to have at least ONE PER­SON in your life who cares enough about you to try and help you out of this mess … even though they know you’ll prob­a­bly do it again and you hate know­ing that they are prob­a­bly right.

Be­cause it’s just such a sick, twist­ed game that it plays with your mind.

Mak­ing you think that it’s the MOST im­por­tant thing in your life and if you don’t have it when you need it, you start to PAN­IC!

(But where were you when they need­ed you?)

You start think­ing about all the pos­si­ble ways that you can get more of your poi­son, be­cause you’re will­ing to do ANY­THING to get it.

ANY­THING.

And at the ex­act same time, you have a voice in your head that’s try­ing to con­vince you to stop.

THIS IS ENOUGH! NO MORE!!

You don’t want to live like this any­more!

You have so many tal­ents, so many dreams that you need to work on but none of those mat­ter as much as the DRUG.

You don’t want to put your fam­i­ly through this again and AGAIN! You HATE your­self for what you’re do­ing to them.

WHY CAN’T YOU JUST STOP.
JUST STOP.
DON’T DO IT ANY­MORE.

So you’re able to stay clean for a while. A few days go by, a week, a month … hell, if you make it to a year then you’re re­al­ly get­ting some­where!

Your life is start­ing to come back to­geth­er.

Pieces at a time. But it’s okay. You’ve learned to be pa­tient. Let things go at a slow­er pace …

You build re­la­tion­ships with your fam­i­ly and friends again. They might even start to trust you a lit­tle bit more, but they’ll al­ways have to be cau­tious around you.

You start think­ing that you might ac­tu­al­ly be able to do this. To live life with­out the ad­dic­tion hold­ing you back.

Maybe you should fi­nal­ly try and get a job. A real one this time. Heck! Maybe you could even start tak­ing some col­lege class­es that you haven’t done in years.

You feel em­pow­ered. Over­whelmed with so many emo­tions. Hap­pi­ness! Ex­cite­ment. A feel­ing of peace but at the same time … you can’t ig­nore the feel­ings of sad­ness, guilt and shame.

You just feel … bro­ken. Abused and mis­used. But by your own hands.

Which means … it’s all your fault.

YOU DID THIS!
YOU CHOSE DRUGS OVER FAM­I­LY.
Over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a great ca­reer.
Or even some­thing that you just had so much pas­sion for .….
It lit­er­al­ly sucks that feel­ing away from you.

You stop do­ing the things that you used to al­ways love to do. They just don’t seem to mat­ter.

KEEP IN MIND, HOW­EV­ER –
There is a lot of men­tal health is­sues that come along with it.

I mean fuck. Isn’t that the rea­son why we do these things in the first place?!
To mess with our minds. To try and find some kind of an ES­CAPE from real life.
It’s just .….

it’s a lot more than some­one get­ting high be­cause they JUST WANT TO GET HIGH.
GET HIGH AND FLY AWAY FROM:
All of your wor­ries.
All your pain.
All your suf­fer­ing .….

It re­al­ly doesn’t make sense at all, but at the same time … it kind of does?

I DON’T KNOW, MAN.
I’m just an­oth­er hu­man be­ing.
Who suf­fers from some of the same prob­lems that oth­ers might have.

And … though our ex­pe­ri­ences are dif­fer­ent, I think it’s safe to say that those emo­tions …

Those FEEL­INGS we have when we go through our dark times … and even our bright times!

We all share those feel­ings.

Right? It might not be the same ex­act sto­ry, but your emo­tions and re­ac­tions are of­ten quite sim­i­lar to some­one else.

For ex­am­ple:
My dad likes to watch foot­ball all day on the week­ends.
Like … ALL DAY.

And for some rea­son, I thought that it was lame. Or stu­pid. Or even self­ish?

(I guess I’m just re­al­ly not into sports 😅)

But then I thought:
DUDE. I do the SAME EX­ACT THING when it comes to watch­ing my fa­vorite shows and movies.
And so, maybe he thinks MY shows are lame, or stu­pid!

BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY –
We both had the same feel­ings of EX­CITE­MENT and JOY while watch­ing our char­ac­ters (or play­ers) score a goal, (or for DBZ, when Goku and the team fi­nal­ly DE­STROY the bad guy for good!)

And so we might have dif­fer­ent in­ter­ests.

But those FEEL­INGS.
Those feel­ings are the same.
And we should try to re­mind our­selves of that.

Heh. Idk.

BUT ANY­WAY!
Where was I? Oh yeah­hh …
Some­thing about DRUGS!

It’s just … it’s a mind trip, man.
You get to a point where you can’t even trust your­self any­more.
And that’s dan­ger­ous.

Which is why we need peo­ple in our lives that we can reach out to.

Peo­ple we know will un­der­stand, or at least, do their very best to try and un­der­stand.

We need those peo­ple when we’re in trou­ble.

And the very fact that they are will­ing to try and un­der­stand is a beau­ti­ful gift.
To “walk a mile in some­one else’s shoes.”

It’s kin­da like what I men­tioned be­fore.

About peo­ple hav­ing dif­fer­ent in­ter­ests but at the end of the day, the feel­ings are the same.

And I think, if we tried do­ing that more of­ten.
Maybe the world would be a bet­ter place.

Or at least – not so DAMN CRAZY!

(EDIT: NO! I haven’t re­lapsed. But I was talk­ing to some­one about ad­dic­tion and I said this, and I thought it was good, so I de­cid­ed to share it.)

 

—kait­lyn­jane

Flom­mist KAiT­LYN­jane has been draw­ing and writ­ing sto­ries ever since she knew how to scrib­ble on a piece of pa­per, or her sister’s fore­head when she was just two weeks old. Copy­right © 2021 KAiT­LYN­jane.

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