What a life?

This article/blog is not about alcohol, I just couldn't work out how to get rid of that particular category so left it. Having said that alcohol also played a walk on walk off part of my life so it is appropriate I suppose.

I know so little about the internet I didn't even know what a blog was so I looked it up and read about it on Wiki. I'm so bloody dumb. But one thing I'm not so dumb about any more and that life, people and myself. You could say that my decades of drug use have given me insights into the lives of many people, have given me insights into the experiences, good and bad, that can occur when drugs are a big part of your life. But mostly my own drug use has given me so much self awareness, and that awareness has allowed me to assess more acurately how I operate, what my payoffs and motivations are when I behave in certain ways. But most importantly my own level of self awareness has given me an opportunity to be able to look at others, and using the same psychological tools that I've used myself to learn and grow I can now use these and pass on to others a glimpse into their own dark places and enable them to shine a little light on their own personal secrets and experiences.

Because it's that inner embarrassment, guilt and shame that kept me gripped so tightly in my own addiction cycle. So frightened to be open about who I really was, so scared that others would look at the real me and judge, condemn and finally reject me. Who wants to take that risk, you? Not me. So what did I do, that's right, I kept taking the drugs that allowed me to ignore those inner demons, carried on using so that I could keep up that facade of who I wanted people to think I was, someone that was acceptable to others, someone that I knew wouldn't be rejected by others as unlikeable and unlovable. Basically I allowed drugs to use me, it was a fair exchange, or so I thought. My addiction to drugs enabled me to feel nothing, to ignore the pain I was in, but mostly it allowed me what I thought was "normal." Unfortunately in the end whatever I took, whatever dosage I used all of that stuff that in the past was hidden by my drug use became so glaringly apparent, bursting through the curtain of fog that drugs provided. Funnily enough, although drugs sheilded me from the pain I was always aware of it, but when I did try to focus it was like trying to grasp smoke.

And the psychological and emotional damage that had occurred as a direct result of my drug use was piled layer upon layer until I couldn't tell what was the original pain and what had been added over the years. The thought of just trying to differentiate between the two seemed like a mountain that I knew I just couldn't even begin to think about climbing. What was real and what wasn't? "Get some help" I was told. But if I couldn't tell what was true how could a complete stranger help me, who could I trust? After all, this all started, all began because I had to keep it a secret, a secret from myself, so no I wouldn't, I couldn't tell another person. But the emotional pain began to cut through my heart like a knife, ripping my very soul apart. And by extension the life I'd made for myself, the person that had been fabricated over all of these years began to fall apart, to disintigrate bit by bit. It was like playing emotionally and psychologically strip poker with me becoming naked a layer at a time, like an onion being slowly peeled. As every layer was removed more and more pain seemed to break through into my real world.

My behaviour slowly chnged with me clutching at every straw I could find. Alcohol, benzodiazepines, anything I could get my hands on. I believed that the more drugs that I added the easier it would be to stop this nightmare from continuing. What I couldn't know is that every drug I took just made this horror not only continue but it actually seemed to speed up the process. I was falling apart from the inside out. The self loathing I felt was indescibale, un expressable. At the time I thought it was the end of my life, literally. But looking back, as painful as it was it was the very best thing that coud have happened to me. And today although I can still quite vividly remember that pain it no longer has any power to hurt me, it's just a memory. They're all just memories. Gradually as I shed each layer of pain I felt better, cleaner. I realised that I hadn't been afraid of not being loved, not being goof enough, rejected by everyone I was actually afraid of the very opposite. I knew that deep down I was lovable, was good enough and wouldn't be rejected by everyone. I was afraid of succeeding. I'd been indoctrinated from an early age that I was such a bad person that eventually I not only believed it but as I grew up I set myself up to fail. Did things that guaranteed that I'd never succeed. I created my own self fullfilling prophecy.

I now allow myself to look back, but now I no longer stare at what was, looking back reminds me of where I never want to be again, somewhere I'll never go again. That's really all I want to say at the moment. All I will add is that the horror that was my life has given me such a wide range of experiences that I can now relate to so many people. People who are in the place that I was in and people who are just breaking through that curtain of fog and just need a little reassurance that it will be ok. And it will be ok, I promise.

Drug:

• Alcohol