The plan is unique to me and I have concrete goals to accomplish that center on reaching out to other people and opening myself up through acting in an authentic way. I completed my intake and treatment plan last week and it was encouraging in several respects. My defense mechanisms tell me that being alone is the easiest way to prevent the excruciating sense of not being good enough from asserting itself once again.
Those experiences are hardwired into my brain and I’ve sought to avoid reliving those at any expense, with the greatest cost being a life of successes being voided by the failures that relapse have caused. Rejection, abandonment, and humiliation are possible when dealing with irrational human beings and all have been experienced throughout my life, no more so than when I was young. The great paradox of my life is that I crave human connection but it is also the thing I fear the most. Will trying a different approach to treatment provide new tools that will be more useful? I’ll be honest and say that I’m scared it will not… I’ve never had trouble getting sober but staying sober has been a different matter. All the previous treatments were 12-Step based and number 10 is not. I’ve been in treatment 9 times since I was a teenager and am about to start number 10 at the age of 47. It should have been the warning shot that foreshadowed the inevitability of what was to come. I got drunk to the point that I couldn’t talk and still not wanting anyone to know,(apparently they all thought I was on drugs given how quickly I went from normal to incapacitated) I got the hell out of there and drove 45 minutes to get home. Shame prevented me from wanting anyone to know about the relapse so a pint of 100 proof vodka was kept in the truck and I went out twice within an hour to drink the entire bottle. The third time I drank was at a going away party for one of the servers at the restaurant I used to work at. In hindsight those early experiences with drinking should have scared the hell out of me. In December of 2017 I drank for the first time in over two years. The isolation felt before relapse became ever more pronounced but it didn’t bother me much because it was easy to medicate those negative feelings away. I’ve never been one that could easily be dishonest so it was easier to avoid people than to lie or pretend. Interaction with all family members dwindled.
My relationships with anyone in recovery completely deteriorated. At lunch, before appointments, on my way to the gym, and back at home, I would get high.ĭespite being high all the time, I could still function. Before leaving for work, I would smoke again. What started as dabbling quickly progressed to daily use by the time 2018 rolled around. But by that time the seed was planted and it was easy to find pot. Or so I thought… After two weeks I told my roommate that I had rifled through his cabinets and all the substances were then disposed of. If I was going to be home alone watching TV, it was better to be high. Going through his room, I found Ritalin, Valium, Vicodin, Morphine, and marijuana. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and during a period of depression last fall, the idea came into my head that perhaps I should make sure that they had been removed. Prior to the move I requested that any narcotic medication be taken out of the house completely and he agreed. I moved here in September of 2016 after his wife passed away from cancer that July. I wouldn’t allow myself to be proactive in putting in the work to turn acquaintances into real friends and sober weekends were spent at home alone, watching Netflix. I sat back and waited for the phone to ring but without established relationships with friends, that never happened.
#IBETTERCHARGE YEAR FOUND FREE#
The second occurred in October 2015 and oddly enough, I feel more at peace this time despite the potential consequences ratcheting up.Īfter quitting the part-time weekend restaurant / bar manager position in July of 2017, the idea was that free weekends would allow me to connect with people and do all the things I couldn’t do by working those long shifts on Friday and Saturday nights. This is my third DUI since the first in 2012. I relapsed ten months ago and my use culminated in a DUI on my motorcycle two weeks ago. It has been a really, really long time since I wrote anything.
0 kommentar(er)
