After 10 years living in addiction I realized that if I was ever going to be free from the drugs then I needed a way to empty my brain of memories. Someone to just sit and listen, that would not judge or be shocked by what I had experienced. I did not want someone that would feel pity or sorrow for me, I just wanted someone that could be open to the fact that the way they experienced life was not the way that everybody did.
It took another 10 years after realizing that before I found someone that could look objectively at my past and help guide me to where my wrong thinking started so that I could implement some beneficial changes to the way I think and process these memories.
I would like to share a blog post I wrote from about 3 months into my sobriety. It is amazing, looking back, how much my thinking has changed yet how much of it is still true. While you read this, remember it is being written by a man in his 30's that never in his life ever saw value in himself. He wasted his entire life with drugs because of an inability to comprehend or articulate what it was that truly held him where he was.
...I don't know...I don't think I will ever be free of my memories but perhaps I can learn to not allow them to have such control over me. I do not want to walk into a 'time warp' every time I try to sleep and be brought back to a places that I did not ever want to revisit.
I am just as unsure about my past as I am about my future.
I can not allow myself to waiver though. I will figure out a way to give myself complete peace of mind that does not involve drugs, alcohol or other mind altering alternatives. It will probably take years to do but I will do it, eventually, but for tonight I lie awake with my eyes open staring into the dark. I will try to give my memories their own space and time. Maybe if I give them their own time then they will allow me to rest. I am so tired of waking up, my body shaking and sweating, with tears in my eyes. I am tired of feeling the horror and terror I lived with in my youth. I'm tired of allowing these things to have control over me still...
I want to close this myTake with a poem that I wrote around the time of this blog. I was just starting to allow myself to grieve for all the friends I had lost along the way.
I lie awake dreaming of days gone by.
The people. The faces.
Their last quiet sighs.
I remember quite well as I held in my arms,
their last vestige of life,
as they let go I cried.
I try to block out.
From agony I flew.
The fear and the loathing.
The horror I knew.
So into the drugs,
I go sell my soul,
trying to hide,
if truth will be told.
Don't want to remember.
Don't want to relive,
but memory escapes me
I feel it's bitter kiss.
Now though I'm sober.
No drugs in my life.
I try to live daily,
to fight a good fight.
The memories remind me,
every day of my life,
of days that I hid from,
of death and of strife.
So now I lie wishing that someone would help,
put things in perspective, I can't do it myself.
But until that sweet moment,
when free I can sleep,
tears of horror will wake me
my memories I'll keep.
If you find yourself presently undergoing sleepless nights filled with night terrors or insomnia due to choices that have had a profoundly negative impact on you, then reach out to someone. Nobody needs to go through these alone and no matter how much you may think that you are the only one the truth is that there are always others. Reach out and ask for help today, even if it is just a listening ear that will do nothing but be there for you when you need it.
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