Addicted Like Me (20 page)

The bottom line was that I didn't set out to have a crappy life—no one does—but I was born into a legacy of family addiction that I didn't know I could choose to change. I had walked away from the best thing that probably had ever happened to me. When I realized that I had, I chose to walk myself back.

I HAD STEVE take me to my mother's house after I chose to go back to the residential house. I had a few hours before the next group meeting and used the time to explain to my mother and Bob that I had run away from group but that I truly had a desire to try again. While I was waiting for my meeting to roll around, there was a huge battle in my head. My addiction was still fighting for its life, while the rest of me, which had decided to hope, was ready to experience the feelings of my real life. When I arrived at the coffee shop, my counselor asked me to explain to my fellow housemates why I had left and why I wanted to come back. At this point I knew that if I stood any chance of them allowing me back,
I would have to get honest about my real length of sobriety. To their knowledge I had ten days sober, which was the truth at that time, but that was before I had run away with Steve and got high. This was my last chance, so I told them that I had ten days sober even though that was a lie, because it was as close to honest as I was capable of being.

I was paranoid that I might not be let back in if the group knew I had relapsed that very same day. After I pleaded my case I was asked to step out of the room. It was up to the group whether I was going to be allowed to return. I paced back and forth, fully feeling like the decision they were making was a life or death one for me. When they called me back in, I was greeted with hugs from every group member and counselor, welcoming me back. I hadn't come completely clean with them, but it was the closest to the truth that I had come in a very long time. I spent the next weeks in group, listening, talking, and arguing. I began to go through a process to change my old ways of thinking and to evaluate my decision-making skills as they had functioned in the past so I could learn new tools to help me make better decisions to stay sober in the future. This process included taking a closer look at the people that had been in my life. I came to the conclusion that they were all there for the same reason: so I could use them either for drugs or for getting loaded. This included everyone from my best friends to acquaintances to even my own boyfriend, when I had dated Robert. I realized that there was no one in my life, no one that I had surrounded myself with, that I could count on to understand the place I had reached.

At the very bottom, transformation only happens at the moment the pain becomes extreme. Nobody I knew at that time could have understood I was at the end of my using, whether that meant getting sober or pushing myself to die an addict. I was choosing to use the pain I felt at the bottom to work my way back up to a normal life. I could have transformed myself in death just as easily by choosing to let the bottom drop out when I hit it and then freefall until my life ended. But to live and do the opposite now meant I had to completely surround myself with new people who didn't get high, didn't drink, and were sober. Because I didn't have the tools yet or the willpower to say no, it was crucial that I cut ties with everyone who could or would enable me to use. During inpatient treatment I wrote a number of letters cutting ties with people that I knew I couldn't have in my life. One of the hardest letters for me to write was to Robert. As far as he knew I was still on vacation.

The letter I wrote Robert was very short and blunt and gave no details of my whereabouts. I had a good idea that it would not be the last contact that I would have with him if I were to tell him where I was, knowing that he would want more answers than those that I gave him in the letter. Also while in inpatient I received a letter from my father. It was postmarked from the Yavapai County jail, where he had been locked up following a third conviction for driving under the influence. I knew everything the letter was going to say before I even opened it. By then I distrusted his promises. I guess you could say that I was not surprised or even excited to read all the empty vows to me that things were really going to be different this time. The letter read:

This was just one more thing for me to bring up in group so I could get support for my emotions instead of getting high to make them disappear. I was learning to make new decisions about who to keep in my world. Was I going to start any type of relationship with my father once he was out of prison? Part of me didn't want to believe him that anything would ever change, because I didn't know if I could handle being hurt by him once again. This led me to realize why my addiction was such a powerful illness. I had been using it to numb my feelings, so I didn't have to feel the pain. This was nothing new for a person in my family. I was so much like my father was at that time and what my mother used to be. It was through her family that she learned that addictions held this power. It was realistic to ask if I would be able to stay sober even if my father didn't, and that brought me pain. With the help of my counselors, I was able to sit down and write my father a letter about these thoughts. I let him know that I was also trying out sobriety and that it was important for me to surround myself with sober people. I told him I would love for him to be in my life if he was able to stay sober. At the end of the letter I wished him luck and told him that I loved and missed him so much.

Once I wrote the letter, part of me became very excited. I
thought that maybe this was a new beginning, not just for me, but for my whole family. At this point I needed optimism as a way to look forward to and be excited about life. It opened new doors in my imagination. I tried to fathom what it would be like if my father were sober. My whole life, I barely ever saw him this way. I came to the realization that I couldn't imagine my father sober because I had no clue what type of person my father was without his alcohol, and he had no clue what type of person I was without my addictions. If we did reconnect, we were going to have to get to know each other all over again.

In group therapy I was making progress but continued challenging some of the concepts the counselors were trying to teach me. In day-to-day life, the choices they recommended seemed so difficult to make. They told me that I had to change three things in my life: people, places, and things. To imagine changing all this was the same as giving up everything I knew. I fought against changing so much all at once. I had let Robert know that I didn't want to see him, but my head told me that I could handle being around my other friends that used because I just wouldn't go back to using. I felt loyalty to these friends, and I couldn't grasp the concept of turning my back on people that I had known for years just because some counselor I had known for two weeks told me to. Over time it became obvious I was wrong. The one thing that I had never tried before in my life was to change my circle of friends. Even during the time I had been involved in the youth group at my church, when I tried promises to God and to myself that I would change, I refused to hang out with anyone who didn't get high.

I always had a sixth sense for seeking out the people who were addicts. I went on church retreats and had plenty of opportunities to make friends that were clean, or to stop using, but it never worked because I found users that kept me focused on my addictions. While on the retreats I would roll joints on the bus with other users, and we would spend our time in the woods getting high. The retreats gave me plenty of time to think about the way my life was going, which at the time seemed like it was going fine. It thrilled my mom that I was willing to try the retreats. She thought that maybe these would save me. The retreats did help me to realize that I was heading down the wrong path. I wanted something more in my life than the empty and hollow feeling I had inside. When I came home and told my mom I had decided to give up drugs, I did think I could do it. Once I got back to my regular routine, I couldn't. I went right back to hanging out with my old friends and lost any of that hope for a better way. That kind of cycle became a repetitive one until I got that first glimmer of hope at the parking lot of the twelve-step center. The kids I saw there were sober because they had surrounded themselves with sober people. That was the change I hadn't tried.

I was easily influenced all my life. I would do anything to feel part of a group or get an opportunity to lead. It connected with me when my counselors kept telling me that if I was going to continue to hang around with people who got loaded, then I was most likely going to end up loaded, too. To me being accepted by people was just like getting high, except on an emotional level, so my counselors were right. I was willing to go to any lengths to gain acceptance,
whether that meant doing drugs or stealing money or telling lies. I felt good when I was accepted by a group of people and bad when I was not. All of it was to try to fill this void inside of me that was caused by an absent father. My effort to feel whole became its own addiction, and so I was scared to let go of the nonsober people I depended on to make me feel okay. I was also okay when I could go to safe places where I knew I would be welcomed, but my counselors said I had to stop.

One of my favorite places to go to was a pool hall, where I spent countless nights drunk with friends trying to shoot pool. Bars had been out of the question because I was too young to get in, so the pool hall was the one place that was open late that we could smoke in. I can't recall a time that I ever made it to the pool hall sober or left without a high. In my reality, everyplace I went was related to my using, and this included the pool hall, church, and school. I hooked up in those places with people who could get me high. I went to school only to score dope. My friends would leave me lines on the toilet lid, and we would take turns going to the restroom to get high. I had friends who would bring me chaser beers for my hangover cure in the mornings, and I would plan my day according to who had the dope and what house I could go to smoke out and spend the rest of my day. I had even memorized the bus schedules to my dealer's house.

Living at the residential house pushed me to learn about feelings I had not allowed myself to experience. I was an angry, guilty, unfulfilled, drug-abusing, alcoholic teen. I had thought that there was no other avenue left for me to take by a certain point
and that no possibility existed for happiness or a good quality of life without drugs and alcohol. I had no idea how to cope with all the new feelings that were coming out when I admitted these things. After I stopped self-medicating with my addictions, feeling real pain transformed me. My spirit was broken, I realized, in addition to the physical and emotional parts of me. At the residential house, all of these dimensions came into focus through the twelve steps, which was a different system from other approaches I had tried. When I would throw myself into church, leaders there dealt only with the soul. At the hospital or in rehab it was mostly about getting physically clean. When I put my faith in the power of personal transformation that the twelve-step program teaches is possible, I experienced honesty about all three dimensions.

In group counseling, I got honest about my need for acceptance. I understood that I would resist making changes to my friends and to the places that I went because I had built up a life that put me in the center of all these things, where I had always wanted to be. My counselors respected my need for acceptance and recognition and fed that need in a positive way. That's why I had been drawn in closer to them each time I tried to quit the program or run away. I was being given a lot of attention and positive feedback because the way to stop me from using drugs was to give me something better than the drugs. Treating people positively was designed into the program. It gradually changed my definition of happiness. For example, seeing all those kids having a great time without drugs and alcohol was unbelievable. It brought me to the realization that before, I didn't have a clue how to even choose
friends that encouraged me to be happy. I had to be taught a lot of things over again about living a normal life, so I threw myself into the recommendations of the program.

Every day of the week I went to meetings, hung out at the coffee shop at the twelve-step center, and went to sober dances and functions. I got to know people but also let them get to know me. It was a time of self-discovery because along with allowing others to get to know me, I was also getting to know myself. It became apparent to me that I didn't have a clue about my likes or dislikes. Choosing to write letters to cut ties or to think about the places I needed to stop hanging out caused me to consider who or what I might like to fill those spaces in my life. For so long the drugs were the only thing in my life that decided whether I liked or disliked something. Addiction totally consumed me to the point that I walked around in a fog for years; therefore, I never had the time for growth and discovery. I wasn't able to tell you my favorite color, my favorite activities, or even the type of movies I enjoyed the most.