We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-- that our lives had become unmanageable.
Obviously this is the same for drugs as well. I go to AA as opposed to NA for a couple of reasons which I'm sure I will expand upon later. Suffice it to say for right now that I feel like alcoholism and heroin addiction are very similar and I can almost always relate to what alcoholics say in meetings. I consider my main problem to be my heroin addiction, but I have an addictive personality in general, if it's not one thing it's the next. Before I ever shot dope I was binge drinking with my friends in Tompkins Square or on the rocks in Portland, Maine and waking myself up with sidewalk slams, so it applies either way.
The exact wording of this step is, in a nutshell, exactly why I got onto a clinic and started going to meetings in the first place. I was willing to do anything at all that might help me kick my heroin addiction, I didn't know anything except for the fact that my life was out of control and I could not continue to live the way I was living. I would honestly rather have died than live another day trapped in the nightmare of my addiction. It is essential for me that I never forget the reality of that nightmare, the exhausting and painful personal hell I had created for myself with drugs and alcohol and mental instability. In order to keep that reality in the forefront of my mind I need to fully understand the nature of my old life and why it was so unmanageable. My sponsor M gave me some step work, essentially writing exercises that help you work the steps, the first 'assignment' was to make a list of the ways in which my life had become unmanageable. The second was to write about some of the specific instances in which my life was unmanageable. The second list is a work in progress still but I am going to share with you my first list and also what I have done so far on the second one.
Ways in which my life as an addict had become unmanageable
- The financial cost of supporting my habit was becoming impossible to afford
- Multiple legal issues had arisen from my criminal efforts to pay for my habit
- I was losing my fucking mind, going insane
- My health was rapidly deteriorating
- My relationship with my mother especially, but also with the rest of my family, was being destroyed by my selfish actions and unwillingness to look at my addiction
- I was unemployable and had no job prospects or means with which to support myself, I was relying on my mother to pay my rent, and stealing to supply whatever else I needed
- I felt like I wasn't taking very good care of or paying enough attention to my dog, I would subject her to stressful situations, environments, and individuals while using
- I had no real friends, lots of fair-weather friends
- My level of criminality and my criminal mentality / activity continued to increase, i was consistently crossing my previously set moral boundaries, I had no rules for myself or my behavior
- I was trashing my physical experience, I looked like crap but I didn't realize it because when I'm high I think I'm hot shit
- I was frequently put into, or put myself into, situations where my physical safety and even my life was in danger (violence, overdoses, etc)
- I was frequently a victim of physical violence and intimidation, I felt afraid for my safety all the time, paranoia set in as a result
- I was surrounded by crazy, untrustworthy, mean-spirited, and dangerous people
- I felt completely hopeless, like I had no future, and I wanted to die
Times that my life was unmanagable
- I stole a hundred dollars from my mother by adding money from her bank account to a linked paypal account she helped me set up. I did this even though she was sending me money on a regular basis at the time to pay for shipping on my ebay sales. This is the incident that resulted in us not speaking for the past four months. I have yet to fully take responsibility and apologize.
- I have been arrested for shoplifting three times this year.
- I can't return to a certain east coast city because of a (hypothetical) unresolved legal issue there. This was (theoretically) the result of multiple drug charges over the years and failures to appear in court or attend drug classes.
- I was arrested for shoplifting at Ross when I had a previous bench warrant for shoplifting. To avoid going to jail, and because I am a lunatic when I am on heroin, I cut my wrists in the bathroom while being detained by loss prevention awaiting the arrival of the police. The police came and had me stand at the top of the escalator, bleeding profusely. The entire store saw me standing there in restraints with a cop holding my arm to stop my blood from flowing out of my wrist, a pool of blood already collecting on the tile floor. This was obviously a humiliating experience. I was 5150ed, brought into the hospital for mandatory psych evaluation, and held for 20 hours before being released.
- I got into a physical altercation with the security guard at the Fillmore Safeway. While trying to escape with stolen coffee, dog food, socks, and people food; and while holding my small dog Kali, I was thrown to the ground. Kali easily could have been hurt.
- I used my stun gun on a Walgreens employee who caught me shoplifting in order to flee the store because I was dopesick and didn't want to go to jail. This is especially reprehensible because I have been attacked with a stun gun myself and it was arguably the most traumatic experience of my life. (I know that I'm getting ahead of myself, but how the fuck do you make amends for something like that!?)
- When I was selling coke and heroin in large quantities on the east coast (maybe), a customer stole a spare set of keys from my apartment and gave them to a friend to rob me. I was alone in my apartment with my dog one night when the door opened and a 6'5'' + man ran in brandishing a tazer. He proceeded to taze me with the stun gun upwards of twenty times leaving burns all over my face, neck, and stomach, and throw me around the room breaking everything in my apartment and demanding I give him all of my money and drugs. I fought back and screamed for help the entire time, the adrenaline coursing through my body was stronger than the zaps from the stun gun. He tried to go towards my dog to attack her and I used every ounce of strength I had to get her out of the room and focus his violence back onto myself so she could get to safety and hide in the other room. He finally gave up and ran out of the apartment with nothing after I managed to open the door and scream into the hallway twice for help. This is when I noticed the keys in the door. Looking out the window, I saw my custy, who I thought was my friend prior to this incident, drive him away in her truck. For the next month I holed up in my friends apartment behind three deadbolted doors sitting on his bed with a loaded AK-47 beside me. I was absolutely terrified, yet I continued to meet with my runners and sell drugs through them in order to support my massive dope habit and my addiction to making easy money. I still frequently have nightmares and flashbacks about this experience.
Besides working on my first step I am going to meetings almost every day and working with my sponsor. I am trying to challenge my own sense of inadequecy (sic?) in social settings and working on feeling more comfortable in my own skin without being high all the time. I feel much better in general, and I am coming to terms that I am not the party girl and social butterfly I have tried to force myself to be for years and years, there is nothing wrong with being an introvert, I just need to challenge myself and not isolate completely.
I shared in a group for the first time since going to meetings in San Francisco the other day. I have been trying to listen more this time because I used to share a lot when I went to meetings and I did it for the wrong reasons. I have no problem, as you can see, talking about myself and being introspective. I have years of therapy and institutionalization throughout my adolescent and teenage years to thank for those lovely boundary issues. I went to the Elan School for three years growing up, if you do not know what that is I am sure I will talk about it later, and you can always look it up on Wikipedia as it has garnered quite a bit of media controversy recently. Anyways, I have just as much to gain from listening and internalizing other peoples shares as I do from sharing myself. I talked about having blind faith in my recovery and the promises of AA, that even though I have no idea what recovery for me will look like because I have always been fucked up, I am willing to try anything that might help me get closer to happiness.
More later, thanks for reading. Please use the contact form or comment on this post if you have any questions / comments or just need someone to talk to.
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