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Hi. My name is Stuart, and I am an addict.
Some of you may remember a couple of articles I penned for this very site. They were articles that I’m now slightly embarrassed by as when I read them back, I’m all too painfully aware of the naiveté that they’re coated in.
I thought I’d beaten my addiction with knowledge. I’m a clever guy—at least I like to think I am—and I pride myself on being able to outthink any problem that presents itself. But no. Addiction was one problem that bested me—intellectually, physically, and spiritually.
The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous (which is the text we use in the fellowship that I am now a member – Cocaine Anonymous), despite being written almost 100 years ago, is as fresh today as it was in 1939.
When I sat down in those rooms for the fifth time, finally on my knees, finally waving that white flag, those pages sang to me. They sang a song of illness in the mind and allergy in the body. They sang a song of pain, of misery, and of self- destruction. But above all else, they sang a song of hope. Recovery. It is possible. There is a solution. It’s not knowledge or self-will that saved me. It was surrender.
As I write these words, just for today, I am 85 days clean of alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. And that, my friends, is a miracle. Don’t get me wrong, I have had longer periods of sobriety, but they were miserable. They were spent lamenting the fact that I “can’t” get loaded any more. The bitter truth is, I “can” get loaded. Anytime I want. I could pick up my phone right now and there are a hundred and one people that could furnish me with a number at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, and I could be snorting my first line by 10. The key, I’m finding, is in the language. I “can” use. But I “won’t.”
For many years, I’ve resisted my own recovery. The excuses were myriad: “The twelve steps don’t work for me,” “My higher power doesn’t work like that,” “It’s a cult!” I could go on and on. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can safely tell you one thing. I didn’t want to stop using. I wanted to want to. But I didn’t. And that’s a terrifying place to be. We call it “using against our will,” the phenomenon of knowing that you’re killing yourself, knowing that you’re destroying your life and the lives of your loved ones, but being simply unable to want to stop.
I had hit rock bottom before, many times. And each time I relapsed. Rock bottom, it appears has many levels, many basements, cellars, side rooms, the lot. It wasn’t until I encountered my higher power, truly, and for the first time acknowledging its presence, that I finally crossed that line, until I finally realised that I wanted to stop. And herein lies a tale.
I had been using for four days straight without food or sleep when the heartburn set in. This was a precursor, I knew, to one of the vomiting episodes that periodically would see me in hospital. Of course I ignored it. I always did. I remember that I had scored six grams of uncut cocaine—known here as flake—and I was determined to get through it before I started vomiting. I never made it.
As the heartburn rose, I sniffed more and more regularly, longer, fatter lines, quicker inhalations. But before I had finished, the vomiting began. This one was different. It was so severe that before long I was bringing up blood: my stomach lining and beyond. The pain was excruciating. But even that didn’t stop me from finishing my entire stash. Such is the nature of addiction. The second I finished that final line, almost relieved, I called my poor mother and told her that I needed an ambulance.
Of all the places they could have taken me, of all the times, of all the wards. This was the moment. My higher power in action. And this was the moment I would finally see it, working for me, to save my life. Opposite me on the ward there was a guy. He was an older guy, maybe in his 50s. He was quiet; he said and did very little and had no visitors in the two days that I was opposite from him. Then the phone call happened. The ringtone woke me from a troubled and feverish slumber, and I lay there with my eyes closed listening. It was the first time I’d heard him speak.
My memory of that first two days in the hospital is hazy, so this is not verbatim, and I could only hear his side of the conversation, but it went something like this: “No, I’m in hospital. Because I’ve done it again. Why? Why do you think, because I’m a cocaine addict. I’ve lost everything. No one will speak to me any more, not even Mum.” The genuine devastation in his tone was heart-wrenching.
As I lay there listening to his conversation, a sensation dawned on me. It was a deep chill in the soul as I heard my future playing out before my ears. An hour or so later, a nurse came to the man and they left together. As they departed the ward, I heard them talking. He was headed to dialysis. I never saw him again. It rushed in then: this idea that the Universe placed me exactly there, exactly then, in order to show me an echo of my future. I would become this man, alone, penniless, miserable, and dying. But there was something within me that rose up to defy that notion, for the first time, something in me that said “No. I won’t accept it.”
That day, I picked up my phone and called the one person that I knew was in the fellowship. He answered almost immediately as though he were awaiting the call. That was the first conversation I had with my sponsor and the exact moment that I took the step off the path to hell and placed two feet firmly on the road to recovery.
It’s not all about gospel choirs and angels singing. My higher power came to me subtly, quietly, and it presented itself for me to see. It was my choice to look. And now…well, once you see it, you can’t unsee. My eyes were opened then, and I could see it in the distance: a life beyond my wildest dreams. It was faint, but it was there. And that day, I took my first step toward it.
This has been the first entry into “The Recovery Diaries,” a series of articles that follow my journey out of the madness and into recovery. With issue one, I wanted to cover the beginning. But stay tuned, it only gets better from here.
So I’ll just end with this. This is a song I wrote shortly after joining the fellowship that pretty much encapsulates the beginning of the journey.
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