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My Struggle with Addiction and My Bittersweet Solution

The story of my struggle with addiction and my bittersweet solution

I was angry and couldn't believe that after doing such a hard and important thing for my life everything was crumbling around me.


I had my last drink on October 18th, 2016.


Some may read this and roll their eyes thinking I'm another statistic that will only last another couple of months or a year before I return to my old habits. Maybe they're right ,however, this is a story of what I hope to be just the beginning of life as a happy and content individual who has walked through hell and lived to tell the tale. I've come back with ambition and intent to make my dreams my reality.
In the last couple of weeks leading up to my decision to quit drinking and doing drugs, to say I was living in a nightmare is an understatement. I had given up.


I'll change certain names in this recollection of events for the privacy of others.


I had rounded up quite a few of party friends in the days coming close to my decision. My phone was constantly ringing off the hook with endless invitations to parties and it seemed that the more I tried to get away from it all, the more it became available and the more my phone would ring.


I had recently met a young kid while drunk outside the sky train station. He was 20 years old, extremely outgoing and unique. We were totally drawn to each other and became instant friends. It was like we had known each other for years. I'm going to call him James.


James and I went back to my house and drank another bottle of booze laughing it up and smoked some weed. We didn't go to sleep until the sun came up. When we woke up we had one hell of a hangover and were dying of laughter at all of the funny things that happened during the night before. I felt like I had found my new best friend and we spent the next month together having the time of our lives.


James and I went to his father's house one night. He had a bag of crystal meth which someone left at his house. We weren't supposed to touch it but .. we thought what the hell. Our conversation was so interesting and we had so much in common. We ended up walking to the store at 5:00 AM to buy a pack of cigarettes and go swing on the swings at the park. James told me the story of his life. It was sad and he had started a fire that burned his family's house down when he was younger. It created a strain in the family and was what he believed caused his parent's divorce. He was an only child. James told me that his drinking was becoming a problem, that he had only just begun dabbling in drugs and was voicing his strong desire to stop. I told him I felt the same and that maybe it was something we could do together.


I'm not going to drag out our friendship's history, not only because I don't want to be a bore but also because it pains me. To think back on the wonderful time we had fills my heart with sorrow and bitterness. It makes me sick to my stomach.


James was found murdered during the month of November.


Other friends of his and myself had been posting missing flyers all over the city for weeks.
On October 18th I had filled up a coffee mug with cider and hit the town by myself. True signs of someone with a problem, masking the poison and pretending it's not there at all.


When I was laying in bed that night, I began to wonder why I was doing this to myself. I recalled the certain recent conversation with James and decided I was done with it all. I wanted something else. This life of self created sadness was overwhelming and pathetic. I decided to let go of my pride and make a promise to myself. I would change from that moment on to make the best of my life and never take it for granted again.


James and I had spoken the night before he went missing. He text me telling me to call him but I went to sleep and never did.


Weeks later my brother called me the night that James appeared on the news. Not as a missing person this time, that his body had been found.


"By the sound of your voice you haven't heard.. James was found." I replied with OH MY GOD!!!! That's such good news!!!!!! "Monica, he wasn't found alive, he was found dead. I'm so sorry." My ears were ringing and I felt faint. My knees buckled and I was in complete shock and denial. I was on the floor eyes blurred and when I finally was able to compose myself after telling my brother he must have heard it wrong and that it wasn't true..I realized it wasn't a joke. I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I had never looked more like a zombie. My face was pale green.


My best friend Ashley and quite a few others had also heard the news and called me soon after my brother. Ashley drove 2 hours into the city to pick me up because I was home all alone.
There was a celebration of life for James in the following week. Everyone was pouring liquor and saying how James would have wanted everyone to party and get wasted in his honor. I couldn't help but feel that it really wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to be happy, get off of drugs and stop drinking but nobody knew.


This made my decision to continue on my chosen path a lot easier. His death was very "sobering" and a reality that life wasn't something that is just there. It could be taken away just like that. I almost didn't believe death was real until James was taken. Life at this point was a gift. I began to think very intensely about my life and how my dreams had only ever been dreams. I had barely made an attempt to make something of my life and I had wasted many, many years on feeding my body toxic garbage and poison.

Not soon after James passed, my great adoptive grandmother who raised me as a child became sick with liver cancer. We had lost touch over the years but she still called me her angel. I was so wrapped up in my selfish existence trying to keep up my reputation as the life of the party that it seemed from the outside I had stopped caring. This couldn't be further from the truth but I no longer knew how to show my love for her. The thought of her being half way across the country sitting on the phone in that old chair in our family home depressed me and it was all I could do to block the pain. Ignore it.
I was dreading the thought of lying to her about my life. I was planning on fabricating everything about how well I was doing and all of my success to put her mind at ease so she could go in peace knowing she had raised me well. I wanted her to know I wasn't my mother or my father, that I had become something great and finally ended the cycle of pathetic losers.


I called a day too late.


She was gone. I never got to tell her how much I loved her and how sorry I was that I hadn't kept in touch. She was gone and the fact that I left it too late will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Soon after, I was fired from my job and there are other things that happened after that I won't go into detail about as these were the main events that shattered everything. They were all cherries on top and made things so much harder than they already were.

Some how.. some mysterious how, I was sober for all of this.


I asked one day why all of these horrible things had happened to me just as I was bettering myself. I was dwelling on it and so angry that even though I was trying to change my life, life was shitting all over me.


My grandmother put a twist on my depression. We were driving through the mountains to her lake house as I needed a break from life. I was crying telling her how I felt. What she said went something like this: "I think you're looking at this in the wrong light. You're seeing everything happening as a consequence. This is a blessing. The choice you made to drop everything is the best choice you ever made. It was divine intervention, perfect timing. If you had waited and been in a drunken haze while these things were happening, you may have spiraled into a dark place. Who knows, it may have lasted forever and been the final chapter to your life. You may have chosen to lay down and die."
She had a saying tucked away for these kinds of situations which was, "I believe in the sun even when it isn't shining."


So I did just that, I chose to believe in something greater that although naked to the blind eye, was in fact there.


I believe there is a reason for everything. There is a reason for every moment in time and every place that leads to the person you are today.


Today was one of the hardest days I have had since that rough patch and I'm taking it as a blessing. There is always a bright side and for me that involves having gratitude daily and not giving in when things seem too heavy. When things make me want to lay down and die, when they make me want to walk into the liquor store to numb it all I just don't. There are days where I wonder how long I will go before I become a statistic but mostly It's becoming easier as time goes by. Some days I don't think about when my happiness will end, I picture a long life of happiness and visualize being an old lady thinking back with gratitude on the day my life changed for the better.


To each there own, if these programs work for you then that's wonderful. However, personally, there was no involvement of AA or NA in my life change as I refuse to say that I am powerless over anything.


I am in power of every single thing in my life, and so are you. We, as people are strong. We are as strong as we will ourselves to be.


Here is to another (approximate) 70 years or so of happiness and good choices.

Thank you for your time,


Take care.

My Struggle with Addiction and My Bittersweet Solution
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