Wanna Kill Their Sorrows

Now Playing: Kendrick Lamar “Swimming Pools (Drank).”

There isn’t much to say except I’ve been out of rehab for 7.5 days and I’m already slipping back into my ways. If I try to find a reason why, I can’t. All I can do is notice what I’m doing.

I started fighting with my dad, just little things, nagging and trying to hurt him, overall just argumentative. I’ve been contemplating using for the sake of using because nothing much has been happening. But I’m isolating too. Haven’t gone to any meetings even though I want to. It’s more than that. It’s not a want but a need — something to hold me accountable because I’m not a place where I can function without it. It’s the little things that I’ve reverted back to, the irritation, the frustration — I just did something for my coworker because it frustrated me that she couldn’t figure it out herself.

It all boils down to this one question that I’ve been scared to ask myself: why did I come back when I knew this was going to happen? Coming back to work with less than 30 days under my belt, with 12 meetings that I barely made, with no community built, with lies that I still told — I knew I wasn’t ready but I did it anyway. And I knew the perfect things to say to have everyone believe I could do it. I still do. I could relapse and fake it for a little while. No one would have to know. Only I would. I’m learning that maybe I can be alone, or should be, because I’ve lost friends that I’m trying to get back but maybe they don’t want me back. That’s their right.

Maybe it’s not really drugs that I want. I want something more. I want to be better already and I’m not and I knew that I wasn’t going to be and everyone was treating me so gingerly. Everyone at my program was acting like I was so fragile, like I could break at any moment, like my efforts weren’t going to be enough. Like I’d need more time. Those 14.5 days helped me so much. I learned invaluable information. But I’m me and I will always self sabotage because I don’t want to stop.

I’m frustrated at the repercussions and consequences of my using but not the using itself. At this point I’m just feeling. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling but I don’t want to feel it anymore. I looked up a list of feelings and I’m fucking bored and I always said I wanted to come back to work so I wouldn’t be but I am. I’m so bored and lethargic and depleted and disappointed and desperate for a change that I don’t know how to bring about.

I can’t maneuver this life anymore and I want it to end. Not end life itself, I’m not suicidal. But I want to end this lifestyle, feeling so stuck, useless, immobile, envious of those who are actually following their dreams. I am doing nothing with my life and seeing those people who have moved on hurts me so much. I’m hurt and heavy-hearted and alienated and just want something more to get me through the days that won’t send me to an alternate reality where I’m happy. I almost wrote artificially happy but it’s not artificial. It’s real, so fucking real that my brain isn’t supposed to feel it and gets so tired it can’t handle it and needs time to heal. And yeah it’s bad and takes a toll on my body, and I’m glorifying it right now, but when I’m such a helpless and insecure state, I will do anything to escape. I’m not at the point of physical relapse, just emotional and behavioral; withdrawn enough to spend my time preoccupied with it — which is part of the definition of addiction — but just the slightest bit hesitant.

The feelings list helped me to identify what I truly felt and putting a name to all of the desperation building inside. I’m still shaky and frazzled, trying to pull up any of the skills I learned to get me away from this thought process — which ironically is what they told us to prepare before we got to a moment. Maybe I need to “ride the wave,” and “wait it out.” Because feelings and moments pass. Somehow I will make it through this. Ideally positively and drug free. Tomorrow I’ll have 30 days and I haven’t had that in a long time. If the motivation can’t be living a sober life, then maybe for today it can be making it to 30.

From June 10th, but I like it. “When we finally get our own selfish motives out of the way, we begin to find a peace that we never imagined possible.”

My Innocence Has All But Faded

Now playing: Ben Folds Five “Mess.”

Relapse is said to be a part of recovery. But what if you don’t feel like you’re in recovery at all? Does fucking up and getting drunk have the same bearing on your progress if you’re “cutting down” on drinking instead of stopping completely?

At this point it’s pretty common knowledge that I’ve got some sort of problem, at least. Whether you wanna go the BK route and call me a druggie/junkie/cokehead/alcoholic or the “I’m in denial route” like I do, it’s there and it’s giant and it’s not going away. So what do we do with this information? Oh right, we check ourselves into more intense treatment.

But that would be too easy, right? A quick and easy method to ensure my recovery — sorry, my Road to Joy — is linear and that I can finish the program in 30 days. So what do you do? Ask a friend/coworker to share their legally obtained and medically necessary narcotics and benzodiazepines. Duh. This friend knows about this “non issue” of mine and that I’m taking time off of work to get sober —  so naturally she gave me four. I don’t even usually fuck with benzos because of how highly addicting they are. But just having prescription anything in front of me left me with a rush that I hadn’t felt in months. It all came flooding back to me and my demeanor changed immediately.

Ativan Halen and Deja Vu. Right.

In the blink of an eye I found myself reaching out to friends I hadn’t spoken to much since I started talking groups. Friends with other friends (but those friends are also my friends? We pretend I don’t know that.) Started asking what kind, how much, when can I get it? In .2 seconds I went from “yeah I’m gonna kick sobriety’s ass!” to Googling “how long does Ativan stay in your system?”

BK was a real one and offered me the chance to come pick them up. Said he’d toss them for me. I was so close to saying yes — in fact I did originally say yes. Like the plan was made! BK was going to actively put himself in a situation that could lead to his own relapse by picking up four perfectly safe-to-use-not-laced-with-fentanyl pills to help me. Because I knew I needed help; I even cried.

Then I said “nah, I’ll be okay.”

Then I had a drink after getting home.

Then I took an Ativan.

And it didn’t do anything. Granted it was .05mg because I don’t take benzos and haven’t taken prescription drugs in a long time and relapse scares me because I’m always chasing the high and my body’s all fucked up and if I was using like before, I’d have just taken all four at once. I’m surprised I didn’t even take the second half.

But why am I always self-sabotaging? Why am I always rationalizing shit? Why am I a drug addict? Why is there a persistent need inside of me that drives me to alter my state of existence so that I feel comfortable enough to exist? This pressure is so much all of the time and I don’t know how to make it go away. It has been there all of my life, clouding me, and all I can do to numb out the noise is to slow it down.

There are moments where I consider the possibility that the stressors I’ve identified might be perceived rather than real. Maybe I’m making it all up type of thing. That happens, right? While I was writing my thesis, articles on the effects some situations/events/what have you had on people and whether it was real or perceived provided me with a lot of insight but my main take away is: whether I’m imagining the disparities or not, they’re still having this negative impact on my life, I’m having the same consequences, and I’m being harmed in the same way.

Whether someone doesn’t like me or I just think they don’t like me, I will respond the same way physiologically, socially, and psychologically.  It doesn’t matter what the answer to these questions are if I’m not going to do anything with the answer.

All of my life I’ve been finding some way to exist, to explain my existence, when my existentialist ass faux intellectual heaux self really could have just accepted that there is no one way to “be” and that the only explanation beyond my parents procreating is whatever I make it out to be. As the search went on and led me to (perceived) dead ends, the explanation factor turned more into an escape, and it got easier to drown in a sea of vodka and norcos than to deal with dissatisfaction, boredom, and insecurities. Trying to remember a time when I felt naturally welcomed and like I “fit in” anywhere and didn’t need to drink is hard. Within the last two years I can only think of one time. My grad school interview. I loved it there, immediately. White people aside (I mean, it’s in the city of Buckaroos. I knew that.) the institution is exactly where I want to be all the time. Always. A huge part of my desire to seek more intensive treatment is so that I can go back to school and be alright.

So back to relapse. Where does it fit in? Because in all honesty, I probably will use today. I started, so why stop now? Treatment starts Tuesday, it’d be out of my system by then, pretty much.  I’m aware that there’s a higher chance of overdose after a period of recovery and I’m pacing myself; I’m aiming to not take all at once and not with alcohol. I don’t want to use, really, but I rationalize and bargain with my use because I’m a druggie. I’m scared and nervous and self-sabotage because I can’t handle not knowing and I only know how to function if I’m not myself. I don’t have a life. I have a drug problem. They’re there and I’m here and I feel weird and I can’t process anything at all anymore.

Jesus. This was supposed to be lighthearted. Maybe some posts about “back in my day, we used to roll our blunts with cocaine” type of shit. Not this crap.

I’m gonna start reading again. I need to do something besides destroy myself.

EMO KID OUT.

You Always Say It’s the Best.

Now playing: The Weeknd’s “The Hills.”

I’ve got a lot to say today, so buckle up kids.

Let me start off by saying that this morning, I woke up at 7:38 am, showered and got ready, and caught the 8:26 bus to my talking circle group. It must be months since I’ve been able to do this; that’s a victory in and of itself. To start my day without stress, frantic free — I’d forgotten it was possible. Perhaps it’s because my body feels better, looks better, and isn’t hungover every morning. Maybe.

So talking circle today was really heavy. It was very goals focused and since my meeting with my counselor yesterday, I’m not sure what my goal is. Honestly, before February 2018 I thought that I was somehow engaging in moderation. Like, if I don’t do a gram of coke in two days, then it’s not a problem. Yeah right.

Limits is what that was. I’ve tried to set limits for myself i.e. with alcohol. I’ve said hard “no’s” to continuing to use certain stimulants — I’m even reducing my caffeine intake! But that’s not a goal, or that’s what I’ve concluded. My sober brain finds it easy to say that I’ll only drink 2x a week and it’ll stop at 3 drinks. But when moderation is discussed, you have to acknowledge that after 3 drinks, you have a choice to make and you are not in a place to make that choice. In a perfect world, I’d pace myself, consume the drinks over a period of 3 hours with water in between. What reality tells me is I’d probably down them all in an hour, drink no water, not have eaten properly earlier during the day, keep drinking, and end up laying down in the bathroom of your favorite bar texting BK about how sad you are and how you can’t go home.

I talk a lot about alcohol and not about using other substances and I think that with the exception of cocaine, I moderate them very well. Opiates were being abused, majorly, for a while. Maybe a year and a half. I’d go so far as to mix them with alcohol because apparently, I don’t fear death. There was even the time that I was on like, Tramadol and had drunk one of those $15 bottles of Grey Goose (I think it’s 20 mL?) and even learned that you have to take them before Gabapentin so they work, because they won’t after Gabapentin (if I remember correctly.) But that night wasn’t good, I felt like I was going to die. I even texted BK that but I knew he couldn’t do anything — he doesn’t have my address despite having been to my house multiple times and there’s no way I could have asked a family member to take me to the hospital.

I continued to use them and only stopped in February; oh God, the fucking pain. I’m a total wimp but I don’t think that was it. My whole body ached, I was sick, just — don’t do it kids. Just don’t.

The point of that is that besides alcohol and opiates which I’ve now kicked (almost three months clean!) everything else was fine. Sure, I had to budget about $180 per pay period (biweekly) for blowcaine itself, not counting the alcohol, the occasional molly or shrooms. Or like, whatever the fuck else I wanted. Many of my friends I’ve discovered are drug dealers so like, they’re fine with hooking me up and letting me pay later, or I’d use my credit cards (they take Venmo now!) or like, I’ll admit it: I’ve done shit I don’t like for drugs. In retrospect, something tells me that’s not moderation.

I’m pretty good at moderating things like hallucinogens. Research (Reddit) tells me that it’s not good me to take MDMA more than quarterly due to my mood disorder; I need a higher dosage and it takes longer to take effect which is awful for me. I have a substance abuse problem, I want that instant gratification. Oftentimes that leads to me using more and that’s never good. The opposite of that happened at the last music festival! I took half to see how it’d affect me and I felt comfortable taking the second half on the first day. The second day I only took half. To me, that’s moderation. LSD is moderated in that it might be a yearly thing for me. I still have only done it once but I’d like to try it again. Shrooms I do use more regularly so I’d have to investigate what moderation would mean. Quarterly seems attainable.

Moderating cocaine is like moderating…. something that’s difficult to control, I don’t know, you make up the example. Like controlling the amount of times a baby cries. I cannot and will not even try to do it. Somehow, my self aware highly intelligent self still has the end goal of moderation. My bank account is going to hate me forever. I used to tell BK that I could never imagine my life without blow and I still can’t. It’s not even fun anymore, it’s mostly just there and something I’m comfortable with. Something to do when I’m bored*.

Coke is an expensive, habit forming, brain and nostril destroying habit. So moderation is up in the air but abstinence seems so far away. And maybe it’s because limits are my internal motivations trying to control this thing called addiction without anything external to maintain it. How am I supposed to motivate myself when I started this program without a reason? Nothing’s pushing me forward, not really. Today in a moment of anger at my current work situation I messaged BK “what’s the point?” I left it at that because the full thought was “what’s the point of sobriety if my life falls apart anyway?” Maybe investing in myself isn’t enough either.

Moderation is full of choices: do I order that next drink? Do I pop a molly at this concert? Is it a good idea for me to even go to this event? Abstinence makes the choice for you: Don’t fucking do it.

Something has to mean something, anything, to keep me going. Some people said it was their health, their families, hell even being court or work mandated. Me, I’m just floating. Treatment feels like it’s part of the dream right now even though it’s going well and I’ve met some great new people. Maybe right now my life’s at a point where my goal is to have a goal (PLEASE watch this clip of what I’m referring to.) To have motivation and meaning. Huh. Time to pick up The Stranger again.

Part 2 coming soon* I’ll be touching on boredom and substance misuse. Hell yeah.

P.S. title chosen because no, Abel, I am not the real me when I’m fucked up. Or I’m trying not to be.

 

I Wanna Take You for Granted.

Now playing: Matchbox Twenty’s “Push.” 

I know, I know — you missed me yesterday. But I had nothing to say. I needed some time away seeing as how my previous post was one of those dramatic ones that I wasn’t expecting to ever write. Funny how I forgot recovery would have good and bad days.

Today has been better.

Except I injured my foot twice in two days and the pain’s pretty bad, but given my history of narcotic and prescription pain pills abuse, I don’t want anything and I wouldn’t be given anything anyway. So there’s that. Just something else to deal with. Work — where this injury happened — has also been weird. I was reprimanded for something that I shouldn’t have been reprimanded for, and it’s affected my entire mentality. Essentially I was accused of not wanting to do my job, of insubordination.

When that happened, all I could think of was “I want a drink.” I even asked my coworker if she wanted to go out but she had to get home. I never realized just how many Thursdays after work I’d go to the bar with BK and drink away my workday stress. Because work sucks the life out of me and I only have so much energy.

That sort of, kind of, except not really brings me to the point that I wanted to touch upon earlier in the week but didn’t because I suck — alcohol! And how pretty much everyone drinks and it’s everywhere.

My bitch ass is trying to “get sober.” Whatever that means. For right now, it means drinking a maximum of 3 drinks, two days a week. That is nothing compared to what it was before but it is also (I think) manageable and attainable. Challenges with that goal are that if I’m drinking vodka Redbulls, 3 drinks go by very quickly and before I know it I’ve drank so many that I’ve started drinking Jameson and I end up on the floor. Five times a week. Funny how alcoholism works.

But like, I always think about how my friends go out for drinks multiple times a week and don’t seem to have a drinking problem and can control themselves. They have stressful jobs too. So what’s different between us? Sure they don’t like, do drugs, but they have and drugs don’t necessarily mean you have a problem. My intake counselor said it might just be genetics or bad luck. Or the fact that the first time I had a drink it was to quell a deep loneliness and I was 10.

But who knows, really?

The worst thing about this stupid sobriety thing isn’t the fact that I want to use, it’s those stupid Facebook memes. The ones from those pages your aunt likes that say stuff about how you’re spending your weekend drinking a bottle of wine, or how you used to lie to your parents about spending the weekend with your bff and it was really keeled over drunk. God, have some respect. It’s fucking normalized problematic behavior.

Everyone I match with on Tinder is like “let’s go get drinks!” You are a damn stranger, how about we go to Starbucks? Every profile has a photo of them with a beer. First of all, beer is disgusting unless it is laced with acid and I’m already drunk. Alcohol is everywhere and it’s just never going to go away.

And I need to learn to say no to it. But I can’t. BK and I went to the bar where I got (slightly) drunk before a concert (then I got trashed at the concert. Lovely.) He repeatedly asked if I wanted a drink. I kept shrugging because I honestly didn’t know if I did. Looking back, I probably didn’t want anything, because I didn’t want to be out at all. Sometimes I experience that pesky discomfort I mentioned before and I don’t allow myself to be present, so naturally when he brought me a cider with a shot of fireball, I drank it. Or most of it. I hadn’t eaten (because eating is hard when I’m actively using) and if I had kept going, it’d be bad. The glass sat there on the table, mocking me, calling out to me, as if I was doing something terrible by not drinking it. And BK completely understood and said if he wasn’t sober, he’d have finished it. Because we’re alcoholics.

So then shame took over because I wanted to finish it, not because I was enjoying it, but because it’s alcohol and I’m obligated to. Same goes for the day we hit up That Alley and he bought me a bottle and proceeded to tell me I’m only fun when I drink but amended it to say that it seems I’m only having fun when I drink. (But I am fun when I drink, or roll, or trip, just FYI). I didn’t want the bottle, I didn’t want to drink, but I took it and did anyway. He told me, with such fucking ease, “then you don’t have to take the alcohol.”

Wouldn’t that be fucking nice?

But I haven’t drank in a while. I don’t keep track, though. That way I won’t be disappointed. I haven’t drank and I haven’t used. I still want to. Cravings are still pretty bad though I suspect that’s more psychological than physical at this point. I work in an area that’s drug heavy and though I’ve never purchased drugs there — and would never — it’s tempting every time I walk there.

Alcohol is everywhere and it’s going to be everywhere. It’s far too important in this universe to ever go away. People drink and don’t become alcoholics and then some do and develop problems and they get help and they come through on the other side. I want to get to that side. I want to be able to sit at a bar with some friends and have one ridiculously sugary drink and be done after that. I want to experience things, like my friends birthday at a bar with a lot of coin operated machine games and feel welcome instead of out of place and unwanted; to be able to join in conversations without thoughts of wanting to down a bottle, pop a molly, or snort a gram. Let’s face it, snorting a gram would have me depressed after 45 minutes anyway and who wants that when you’re supposed to be having fun?

BTW ever since I stopped using, I’ve been eating like a fucking pig and I’m pretty sure I’ve gained at least 5 lbs. I’d complain but these enchiladas are delicious. Oh well, back to Leah Remini’s Scientology show. Ta ta!