For years I ruined my life with the excuse, "I'll start my recovery tomorrow."
I hated the reality that my life had become, but I wanted to put off facing the mess for one more day. I did that for over a decade. Every time I put it off, it got worse.
I had the opportunity to be done with my insane addiction to drugs and alcohol at the age of twenty-one, but I still thought that I could manage my unquenchable thirst for escaping reality through self-medicating on my own.
At the age of twenty-one, I landed in my first treatment center. I was lost, sick, and done with life. Here is what I didn't know at the time about addition, IT CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE.
The treatment center I went to was a nine-month program, and I was five months in and I was doing really well. At least from the outside looking in. The truth is that I was doing the best I could to obey all the rules and avoid talking about the real issues going on inside of me.
At about that five-month mark I realized that I would have to open up soon and start talking about all the chaos that was swirling around inside of me. That was frightening. The idea of talking through my feelings, without drugs and alcohol to help, nearly made my heart explode from a panic attack.
So one night I just up and split. I ran right out the front door and called some friends. I was high on drugs within an hour, and the next day I was back sleeping in my parent's basement thinking about how I could somehow manage my addiction this time around.
Within two weeks I totaled my car in a drunken blackout, fled the scene, got away, and continued my drinking all night. The next day I was in handcuffs, again.
For years I kept believing the lie that I could manage my addiction on my own. I always looked forward to one more day of partying, and then I would start my recovery tomorrow, and for over thirteen years that mentality made my life worse and worse and worse.
It wasn't until I got help and gave up doing it my way that things started changing.
That change started over eleven years ago and continues today. If I could go back and give my twenty one year old self a bit of advice it would be this, "Face your issues today, and get some help no matter what it takes. Your addiction will always get worse, so just face it and quit before it does."
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