OK I think it's time for me to weigh in. My name is Steve. I'm a friend of Seth and Brian and we all got to know each other back when we were housed together in treatment, smoking cigs and acting like assholes. Ha! Those were interesting days.
I'm the youngest of the three, I'm only 25. About 7-8 years ago, I was pretty athletic, played safety on my high school football team, I ran, played tennis (I was even better at tennis than any other sport actually). But I injured my knee pretty severely driving like a douchebag on a moped during my freshman year in college. I was actually drunk and would teeter a little heavy with alcohol at that age. It actually got out of control on several occasions. Anyway a couple of surgeries later and a knee replacement, I started taking pain killers and gained so much of an appetite that I bypassed my doctor who refused to prescribe more pain killers and tried Oxycontin, which I got from a friend of a friend of a friend! So, anyway I would pop those regularly. I eventually found out that you could smoke it too. Basically, you rub the tablet on a piece of tin foil, it leaves a residue. You take a lighter and hold the flame on the opposite side of the foil, you then suck in the smoke with a straw. I would get pretty solid hits from that method and it became my daily routine. A lot of times I would do this drunk. That almost has OD written all over it. Thankfully that never happened!
My parents didn't really have substance abuse problems themselves, but my dad was/is verbally abusive to my Mom and my sister. Plus, they sort of have money. Instead of dealing with me stopping by their house asking for money and "using" in their home, they put me in an apartment in a building they owned. Out of site and out of mind! That was my drug pad. I lost a lot of weight, acted like a needy and selfish motherfucker. In a way, my parents were feeding my habit putting me there.
Well finally, my sister convinced me, after many many tries, that I needed help. (She also abused prescription drugs for a time before getting help). Part of the recovery process was to process Dad's abusive personality. It didn't work right away, I fell off and relapsed one other time, but I tried again. It was during the first treatment that I ran into these guys. I think the three of us finally got it right. Now we're here, holding jobs, learning new things, moving on and writing about it.
I wish I didn't delete my blog. But I wrote a lot of angry stuff in there. At some point, I printed out those pages and deleted the blog. All the entries are in a binder in my bookcase as a historical reference to my darkest areas. I don't need to read it now, because I feel so freaking good! But anytime I don't feel so good about myself, it helps to go back and read about how far I've come.
By the way, I'm also a drug rehabilitation counselor and an studying to get certified. I think I'm pretty good! I do follow it from a spiritual perspective. I'm not really "religious" persay, but I'm spiritual. I would even invite a little buddhism if it gave me a clearer perspective.
Anyway, that's the jist of what's me. Discuss.
your old blog was the best. i remember that one time you were bitching about the dog next door for like a week, you said it would come over and jump on your door and bark at 2 am. Then finally you waited around the corner for it with a baseball bat and when it came running over you knocked it all the way over the fence. i fucking loved that blog. you said the neighbor was all like "hey i think my dog got hit by a car."
ReplyDeletethat was so funny.
Brian, I think the dog represented my dad. The way he'd constantly yell at me and say things. This dog was constantly barking, I was wasted on vodka at the time. I used up my pills and didn't get anymore until the next day. I was shaking. I sometimes would act out either violently or by using. I didn't actually knock the dog over the fence. I hit him, he rolled and rested against the fence post and I lifted him over into the hedge on the other side of the fence. I thought he was moving and he needed to shake it off. It's okay to talk about that. It's me. I can't run away from that shit.
ReplyDeleteyeah. then there was that other time with the cat in the garage. goddamn i miss that blog. i can't even remember why you were so pissed, but you wanted to kill the cat, so you tried to strangle it with a piece of wire. and this is the part i really remember, the cat scratched you and you flipped out. the way you wrote about it was so eloquent. you were talking about how you could feel the blood fucking through you neck and your temples. and then you grabbed a pin hammer and expressed yourself to the cat. oh god i miss that blog.
ReplyDeleteand then you said you put the cat's body in a trash bag, but it was stiff and the legs were kind of sticking up and your girlfriend was confronted by the neighbor lady. she said the neighbor was like "what did steve do this time" and she was so pissed. fucking hilarious. i love you man.
It's this ego thing and not having it fulfilled or fed. That grows out of the pain, do you see where that comes from? There's a saying in recovery. "Your ego is not your amigo."
ReplyDeleteMy amigo is really inner-understanding about the things that make me suffer which creates this unfed monster. We've all gone so far.
i used to claim that i did the things i did because of my ego too, but it turns out i just like to torture things and cause destruction. i sure do miss that blog. there were so many great posts. like that one time you were selling guns to that guy and his dog kept barking at you. then the guy was like "how do i know these guns work" and you shot his dog.
ReplyDeletei've always looked up to you. it's like you've lived the life i've always been afraid to. i have the urges, and i act on some of them, but i've never gone all out the way you have. you're a true inspiration
It's all about urges. We make so many impulsive choices while we're fighting this disease. That's what it is, the side with the compulsive urges has control of you and you act out negatively. I have a great academic journal I'm reading by a psychotherapist by the name of Robert Gately. It's called "Flames of Our Fathers: A Trilogy." It underlines our adherence to the thought structure of feral doubt which fuels our discourse with each other.
ReplyDeletei don't know. if you say so. my father was always afraid of me after my brother died. i don't feel like our relationship was a microcosm of my relationship with the world. sometimes it seems like people become therapists because it allows them to avoid themselves. even freud would talk about the importance of fixing a broken childhood, then get loaded on cocaine. as far as you being a sick fuck goes - to honor freud again - "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"
ReplyDeleteLet's discuss this thing with how you view your father. Because if it's a microcosm than it's that past history we need to repair. I didn't know that Freud "used." That is crazy.
ReplyDeleteMy father left after the incident with my mother. he was just a tool. he kept food on the table and clothes on our backs. he operated the way any decent tool would. now my mother, she was a different story.
ReplyDeleteWe talked about that. That was crazy. Did she go to jail for doing that to him?
ReplyDeleteOh, now you're speaking of the creature. fell out of a car on the freeway. lives in abilene now. get ahold of the phone on holidays. likes it in the
ReplyDeleteHi Steve,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post about how you're turning your life aorund and it's so cool you're helping others.
I was sexually abuse as a child by my grandfather and although I didnt do drugs, I certainly stopped eating for a while and was quite mental. I never thought I'd be happy, but here i am - happy. I'm married, have four kids and have almost finished a book for people who have been abused to help them to heal.
I totally agree with you on the spiritual side of it - we are made of mind, body and spirit and I think to heal we have to address all three. I'm a Christian, I believe in God and he was a huge factor for my healing. I've incuded some of that in my book because I think people need support from something bigger. I tried to not make the God factor to heavy, just wrote about how it helped me.
Anyhow cheers to you guys - Seth, Steve and Brian. The three omigo's who are changing the course of their life. Well done and keep going it's worth every effort you make to be whole and to be happy. ;)
this is a really great idea for a blog. Look forward to reading more.
ReplyDeleteoh, and please keep writing. It helps. All of us.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the support guys!
ReplyDeleteBrian, you still got my number bro?