November 9, 2011

Finding a Light in All That Darkness!!! 2

by Ronnie • Addiction, Drugs, Gratitude, Recovery • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To wake up and live through another day clean and sober is to see life a with a whole new attitude. I marvel at my new-found freedom, freedom from the bondage of drug abuse that is. My days are so much brighter, my nights so much easier and overall just a beautiful thing to live another day sober.

I didn’t have to lie or steal to make it through the day, I didn’t have to stress about money to get drugs yet another day, and that my friends, is a true miracle within itself. I look back at where I was this time a few years ago and I don’t ever want to be at that place again. Always struggling to find my next fix, lying to my family, hiding out in my bedroom so I didn’t have to explain myself to anyone. I was in complete and total hell and felt there was no way out at all.

I had said this prayer many times asking God to let me wake up tomorrow and make it through the day (just one day) without having to go get high. I had prayed it every night for the prior two years to this particular night in focus and not once did it work. Little did I know, its because I wasn’t ready for it to work. What would make me think it would work this time? This time I was sincere, it had meaning within it. God could see and feel the pain and struggle in my heart, with my heart telling me to get sober and my brain telling me to get high. What a struggle, a struggle that continues throughout the process of being sober.

I woke up the following morning and I had my mind made up that this boy has seen his last “buzz” in a long while, hopefully forever. Let’s not get to far ahead though, let me take this slow and just make it through this day, just this one day and when tomorrow comes we can work on it when it gets here. I was uneducated about one day at a time, about anything having to do with sobriety and recovery as far as that goes. I was sick, sick as you can possibly get and I wanted dope so bad but I fought and i struggled through it for three whole weeks. Sick, so sick I couldn’t even muster up the energy to crawl out of bed, so sick that I wanted to die rather than feel the pain I was feeling.

I went through three of the worst weeks of my life during a cold-turkey heroin detox with no meds, no nothing to take the edge off. I locked myself in my bedroom and didn’t leave it for the entire time except to use the bathroom and after about 6 days into it, to eat the little bit I could eat. I had fought my hardest battle in life and I was struggling, but I was doing it.

Little did I know this would be a life-long battle that would follow me until the day I die. I made it through the detox and put myself into a 90-day in-house rehab center to learn about the disease of addiction and to overcome the “sickness” as we addicts call it. That my friends, is the exact thing that keeps me sober day in and day out is the hell that I went through getting clean. The constant reminder of a detox without medicine stays in my mind on a daily basis. The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is thank God for giving me another day sober and remind myself of just how easily it could snatch me up and send me right back where I once was not so long ago.

Yet, I am no saint, I relapsed after about 9 months into my recovery and went back at it stronger than ever for another whole year and once again found myself at the same place I was before–only worse. So, I did it again and fought through the sickness with another no-medication detox and have been clean ever since and intend to stay this way. When my disease starts kicking my ass and tries to take over, I get on my knees and I pray to my higher power and he takes me right back to that hell I was in and reminds me of the pain and sickness that I went through, not once but twice and it snaps me back into reality and helps keep me sober yet another day.

There is a whole new life waiting for those of you who are still suffering with this disease, and I promise you it won’t be easy to fight your way through it, but when you do, do it, it is totally worth it!!! I can promise you that after the sickness is over that it gets better, way better!!! I can only hope that you to will find your way to living again. There is a lot of help out there if you only seek it out. That’s the best thing about it all is that you don’t have to do it alone! You have the millions of people who came before you standing behind you, backing you 100% of the time.

When you are ready to start living again, just look for an AA or an NA or any kind of sobriety meeting and go in there and look around and find someone that has what you want and go for it, don’t hesitate, go for it!!! They will help you, your higher power will help you and any of us millions of recovering addicts will do all we can to help you get your life back!!!!!